Thomas Gray  Neoclassical

Info

- first mood poetry - feeling is more important

- best of the mid-century poets of solitary meditation, who revived tradition of John Milton in era still dominated by Dryden and Pope

- a life whose input exceeded output

- fear of fire

Works

- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

- finest poem of somber reflection

- best loved poem in English language

- praised on neoclassical grounds - human breadth of its thought and appeal

- the need to be remembered

- Collected Poems

Terms

- elegy - lyric poem honoring the dead or meditating on death

- poetic diction - artificially selected and refined language once considered essential to poetic expression; neoclassical - excluded much ordinary vocabulary

- romanticism - reaction against neoclassicism; emphasized individual, imagination,natural, and originality

Citation

Horton, Ronald A. British Literature for Christian Schools. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1992.