Thomas Gray: The Progress of a PoetFairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997 - 279 pages "The book is divided into five chapters. The first examines Gray's earliest poems and imitations for evidence of his sense of himself as poet, of prosody, diction, sources, or traditions to utilize. By chapter 2, Gray's impulses toward his goal as a poet become more evident, as he is manifestly determined toward a life of poetry. The "Elegy" occupies chapter 3 - his drafts and composition of the poem, and the poem itself, the resolution to his complex of problems as poet and as man. Close study of Gray's notebooks in chapter 4 shows that the Pindaric odes, "The Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard," though ostensibly radically different from the "Elegy," were conceived at the same time as the "Elegy" and thus draw crucial depictions of his movement toward serious revision of English poetic style and his own role as poet in society. Chapter 5 continues Gray's scholarly impulse that led to the study and imitation of Pindar, as he turned to Northern European sources for proof of poetic antiquity equal to the Greek. He found what he wanted in Welsh and Norse lore and wrote several poems imitating their style."--BOOK JACKET. |
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Page 33
... language . Gray's interest in the dramatic passion of a Dante would have been abetted by his knowledge of ... language ( to which I will return ) . West ventured that Shakespeare's language was too remote and thus inappropriate for ...
... language . Gray's interest in the dramatic passion of a Dante would have been abetted by his knowledge of ... language ( to which I will return ) . West ventured that Shakespeare's language was too remote and thus inappropriate for ...
Page 43
... language not being a settled thing ( like the French ) has an undoubted right to words of an hundred years old . ( GC 192–93 ) 35 Citing our great authors as " creators , " not imitators , as means to develop his language , Gray ...
... language not being a settled thing ( like the French ) has an undoubted right to words of an hundred years old . ( GC 192–93 ) 35 Citing our great authors as " creators , " not imitators , as means to develop his language , Gray ...
Page 85
... language appropriated by the satirists , place it in his own contexts , and let its distracting associations with satire be shaken or slowly drained away . Was not Gray aware that he was accepting tremendous risk ? His poetry was ...
... language appropriated by the satirists , place it in his own contexts , and let its distracting associations with satire be shaken or slowly drained away . Was not Gray aware that he was accepting tremendous risk ? His poetry was ...
Contents
Introduction | 9 |
Early English Poems | 44 |
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard | 105 |
Copyright | |
5 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
allusion antistrophe Arthur Johnston audience Augustan Bard bardic British caesura Cambridge classical Common-Place Books composition couplets dance Dante death dramatic Dryden Dunciad echoes edition Eighteenth-Century Elegy emotional English poetry epitaph Essays Eton College Eton ode eyes final Gray wrote Gray's Elegy Greek harmony history of poetry human imagination imitation John joys language later Latin lines London Lonsdale Lucretius lyre lyric Mason Milton mind Muses narrator narrator's nature o'er Oxford Paradise passion pastoral personification Petrarch phrases Pindaric poem poem's poet poet's Pope Pope's Principiis Progress of Poesy Propertius prophetic prosody revision rhyme role satire says scene seems sense song sonnet sound speaker spirit Spring ode stanza Statius swain syllables syntax Tasso themes Thomas Gray Thomas Warton thou thought translation University Press verb verse vision voice Walpole Welsh West West's Wharton William words writing written