gray

A detailed Summary of gray

Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard. Thomas Gray¦s Elegy laments the death of life in general while mourning long gone ancestors and exhibiting the transition made by the speaker, from grief and mourning to acceptance and hope. It was written in 1742 and revised to its published form in 1746, and is one of the three highlights of the elegiac form in English literature, the others being Milton¦s (Lycidas¦ and Tennyson¦s In Memoriam. It was first published, anonymously, in 1751, under the title "An Elegy wrote in a Country Churchyard." Although believed to be started in 1742 the exact date of composition of the Elegy, apart from the concluding stanzas, cannot be exactly determined. The Elegy was concluded at Stoke Poges in June, 1750, where Gray was buried. The churchyard as described by Gray is typical rather than particular; of the five disputed "originals" Stoke Poges bears the least resemblance to the graveyard in the Elegy. The poem starts off dark and dreary often rousi!

ng images of death. The first four stanzas establish the time and setting of the poem. There was a curfew around the time that this was written and the first line supports this. It was wrung at eight o¦clock as a signal for extinguishing fires and marked t

the hollowness and shallowness of people in the world. Now the person is

personal epitaph is just a place where their head rests and Even "Fair

God is a part of life which gray dispises. He goes against the

of the fire(line 21) or the love of a woman(line 22). They will not experience being welcomed by their kids when they come home from work or the fields(line23) and having them (climb their knees¦ for a kiss. All these things are worldly pleasures that the dead will no longer experience. Stanzas seven through nine deal with death as a part of life. For instance, in line 29 and 30 the speaker states that they shouldn¦t let their ambitions confuse their destiny, meaning the dead. Every one of us awaits the (inevitable hour¦(line35) and all our work, wealth, possessions and beauty that our life bestows on us all lead to the same (paths¦. (The paths of glory¦(line 36) which (lead but to the grave¦. This also evokes the feeling of hopelessness (brought about by the death of his friend) which Gray must have been going through at the time he wrote this. The basic concept of these few stanzas is that no matter what one does in his or her life and how valuable he or she believes it is o!

dead, there is no other help that you could give him. "Large was his

judgments and leaves some people for broke. "The bosom of his father and

used to be life. Gray speaks out against the way this person was treated

Gray's style is very intriguing. He speaks of god and how there

Thomas Gray's The Epitaph shows the way that we treat moral and

In the Epitaph, Thomas Gray shows his discontent toward the way

age and it had a traumatizing effect on him, then he turned to writing of

important but they will always be a (part of history in a nations eyes¦(line 64). They will live on in the memories of their friends and relatives. The people who are being described by the speaker could have been (pregnant with celestial fire¦(line46), in other words they might have been special, but they never were. However they will live on forever as ordinary people in our memories: (...in our ashes live their wonted fires¦(line 92). This is exemp

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1451
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous