EN300
Spring 2002

Paper 2. Due April 1. Write a 4-7 page paper on one of the following topics.

2. Gray uses graves as a way of representing or talking about the lives of the people who are buried in them, and it doing so he juxtaposes the lives and graves of rural peasants with the graves of the rich and powerful-the village graveyard to the "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault," the "short and simple annals of the poor" to "storied urn and animated bust." What do the differences in the graves suggest about the differences in those who are buried there? What does the poem imply about the relationship between power and money? To what extent and in what ways is Gray's poem about class differences?

3. Despite his concern for memorializing the dead, the Poet of Gray's "Elegy" mentions no names and does not seem to see the "Forefathers" as individuals. But (although, according to the most common reading, he imagines his own Epitaph as a youth unknown to fame) he does not mention his own name either. And the poem was first published with no attribution of authorship. Discuss Gray's "Elegy" as a poem about anonymity.

4. At the beginning of Gray's "Elegy" the Poet and the Churchyard are carefully located in a natural setting, and the forefathers buried there led their lives in that setting. At the end of the poem the "Youth to Fortune and the Fame unknown" rests his head "upon the Lap of Earth." Discuss the functions of nature as depicted in the poem, especially in contrast to civilization and art.

5. Gray's villagers are stuck in their lowly social position because of both poverty and lack of education. What is the relation of literacy to poverty in Gray's "Elegy"? What is gained (or lost) by literacy? Discuss Gray's "Elegy" as a poem about education.

6. Gray depicts his villagers as prevented by their social circumstances from achieving greatness. Is his poet in the same situation? What is the relationship of fate to choice for the various figures of the poem? What is the relationship of fate and choice to the theme of death that pervades the poem? Does the poem advocate a passive acceptance of one's lot? Is accepting the inevitability of death similar to accepting the inevitability of social injustice?

7. What is the Poet's attitude towards the villagers described in Gray's "Elegy"? Does he depict them and respond to them in a realistic way, or does he romanticize them (perhaps in a patronizing way)? Is the "Elegy" a pastoral poem in which idealized rural characters enact significant patterns of behavior, or does it move toward important social analysis? If the characters are idealized, what is the relation of that idealization to the reality of death?

8. Describe the various voices in the poem. What are the alternative ways of identifying the Poet? What other voices are represented in the poem, and how are they related to that of the poet? What does the identification of voices tell us about the subject of the poem? What does it suggest about alternative ways of reading the poem?

9. However else we may identify him, the speaker of Gray's poem is self-consciously a poet. The subject of the "Epitaph" (whether the speaker of the poem or the memorializing Stonecutter, is also a poet. What is the function of poetry itself in the poem? Can Gray's "Elegy" be seen as a poem about poetry? (If so, what is the connection of that subject to the poetic style of the poem?)

10. Who is the likely eighteenth-century audience of Gray's poem-the rural poor; the proud, rich, and ambitious; the bereaved; or others? What do the poem and ways of interpreting the poem suggest about nature of its audience? How does the implied audience (the one we are talking about) compare to the fact that, somewhat to Gray's surprise, the poem became quite popular immediately after its publication?

11. Gray's only overt historical references are to central figures of the British Civil War: John Hampden (whose early resistance to Charles I was one of the factors precipitating the war and who died in one of its early battles), John Milton (the poet who served as a major propagandist for the Parliamentary cause), and Oliver Cromwell (the dominant Parliamentary general and statesman, who became Lord Protector of England). In the Eton manuscript Gray referred instead to Cato, Cicero, and Caesar. What is the function of these Civil-War references in the poem as a whole? In what ways do they connect the poem to its historical context?

12. In 1775, William Mason described for the first time a manuscript version of Gray's "Elegy" (the Eton manuscript) which was apparently written before the completion of the final version, which Gray agreed to have published. The Eton manuscript itself seems to contain two versions of the poem: one ended with four deleted verses (indicated by a line in the left margin); the other resembled the final version, but recorded a number of verbal changes. Compare the versions in the Eton manuscript to the published version of the poem. Consider both the different ending and the verbal changes. What is the significance of the differences in these versions of the poem?

13. William Mason and Horace Walpole suggested different dates for the probable inception of the poem. (Mason thought Gray began it in 1742; Walpole thought he began it in 1745 or 46.) Which date seems more probable? What do the different alternative dates suggest about the personal importance of the poem to Gray, the relation of the poem to its historical context, the different versions of the poem, and the ways in which the poem can be interpreted?

14. An important crux in interpreting Gray's "Elegy" concerns the referent of the pronoun "thee" in line 93. Most readers see it as referring to the Poet, who then becomes the subject of the "Epitaph," but some argue that it makes more sense if it refers to the author of the epitaphs on the tombs of the villagers or to the "Stonecutter" who carves them. What are the arguments that support both readings, which seem to you most probable (and why), and what difference do these readings make for an interpretation of the poem as a whole? Your paper should refer to the articles that Lonsdale cites by Frank Ellis (in Publications of the Modern Language Association 1951), by Morse Peckham (Modern Language Notes 1956) and by J. H. Sutherland (Modern Philology 1957).

15. In his brief but important comment on Gray's "Elegy" (Life of Gray, 1781), Samuel Johnson celebrates the authority of the "common reader" in praising the poem and claims that it is filled "with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo." The reader may also identify with the speaker of the poem, and it is finally the reader who must interpret it. What is the significance of the reader of this poem? What difference does it make if the reader sees the poem in the eighteenth century or in the twenty-first?

16. One of the more accessible earlier analogs to Gray's "Elegy" is Milton's "Lycidas," a pastoral elegy that Milton wrote in memory of his fellow Cambridge student Edward King. Although different from the "Elegy" in verse form and in its intellectual concerns, its concern for the significance of death and much of its poetic language makes "Lycidas" a possible (if remote) source for Gray's poem. Compare the two.

17. In 1742 Gray wrote the following "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West." It was not published in Gray's lifetime. Compare it to the "Elegy," particularly in relation to its treatment of death and of nature.
        In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
        And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire:
        The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
        Or cheerful fields resume their green attire:
        These ears, alas! for other notes repine,
        A different object do these eyes require.
        My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine.
        And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
        Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
        And new-born pleasure brings to happier men:
        The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
        To warm their little loves the birds complain.
        I fruitless mourn to him I cannot hear,
        And weep the more because I weep in vain.

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