Churchyard Essays

  • Feminist Reading of Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard

    578 Words  | 2 Pages

    Feminist Reading of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard While Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" overtly deals with the distinction between social class and the opportunity for greatness, the poem also contains a subtle yet strong message against the dominant role of men over women in society. Gray's tone throughout the poem is permeated with regret and a sense of something lost, voicing his opinions clearly against social class prejudice. This emotional tone

  • Formal Approach to Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard

    921 Words  | 2 Pages

    Approach to Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a very structured poem with a set number of lines per stanza, and a specific rhyme scheme throughout the entire poem. The poem focuses on Gray's thoughts while he visits a country churchyard, and ends with an epitaph written on one of the tombstones in the churchyard. The setting of a country churchyard automatically gives way to a small and unknown graveyard, and

  • Dialogical and Formalistic Approach to Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dialogical and Formalistic Approach to Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard Elegy in a Country Courtyard, by Thomas Gray, can be looked at through two different methods. First the Dialogical Approach, which covers the ability of the language of the text to address someone without the consciousness that the exchange of language between the speaker and addressee occurs. (HCAL, 349) The second method is the Formalistic Approach, which allows the reader to look at a literary piece, and

  • The Pastoral Ideal in Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard

    1987 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Pastoral Ideal in Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard Thomas Gray’s "Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard" portrays the pastoral ideal through many different images. The traditional pastoral notion of idyllic life changes in this poem to form a connection with people themselves. The speaker of this poem creates a process by which laborers come to symbolize the perfection of the pastoral through their daily toils. These people come to represent the ideal form of pastoral

  • Dialogic and Formal Analysis of Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard

    583 Words  | 2 Pages

    Country Churchyard By combining the formal and dialogical approaches, patterns and voices within the text seemingly interplay and overlap to reveal a deeper sense of the author's intentions. While the formalistic analysis focuses on the text and the unfolding themes within, the dialogical analysis recognizes "...the essential indeterminacy of meaning outside of the dialogic - and hence open - relationship between voices" (HCAL 349). When applied to "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," these

  • A Comparison of Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard and Bryant's Thanatopsis

    1771 Words  | 4 Pages

    A Comparison of Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard and Bryant's Thanatopsis Thomas Gray and William Cullen Bryant both chose to write about nature and death being intertwined. Since Thomas Gray lived in a time of social injustice, he chose to use death to illustrate the problems inherent in a socially stratified society. William Cullen Bryant, on the other hand, lived in a rapidly expanding young nation that cherished the vast amounts of untouched nature and he used

  • Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    either his first name or his last; doing his best, he called himself "Pip," and the name stuck. Now Pip, a young boy, is an orphan living in his sister's house in the marsh country in the west of England. One evening, Pip sits in the isolated village churchyard, staring at his parents' tombstones. Suddenly, a horrific man, growling, dressed in rags, and with his legs in chains, springs out from behind the gravestones and seizes Pip. This escaped convict questions Pip harshly and demands that Pip bring

  • Dreyer's Vampyr

    1804 Words  | 4 Pages

    narrative. The film is filled with memorable images: a skull turning to watch; a shadow walking over to join its subject sitting in repose; point-of-view filming from inside a glass-topped coffin as the lid is nailed down and then carried out to the churchyard for burial. The story goes that the first few days of filming was damaged by a light leak in the camera, but Dreyer liked the effect so much that he had the rest of the film photographed to match. As a result, the image quality on this picture has

  • Elegy by Thomas Gray

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    “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

  • The Power of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

    1968 Words  | 4 Pages

    and a predominantly comical pastoral section. For this act, tragedy is chosen, "A sad tale's best for winter," (24) and the story begins, "There was a man... dwelt by the churchyard" (28-29). Here is where the play's self-consciousness starts to appear. It is the play which is a sad tale about a man who dwells by the churchyard, namely Leontes, who mourns at the grave of the wife and son he damned. It is also at this moment that the tragedy of the play begins, when Mamillius' tale is interrupted

  • Great Expectations - Chapter Summaries

    4806 Words  | 10 Pages

    Great Expectations Notes Chapter 1 Setting: early in the 1800s; Churchyard in tiny village east of London  Joe Gargey and her husband in the Marshes.  His parents died Pip- Phillip Pirrap- main character- 7 years old- Lives w/ sister Mrs. when he was younger  One time while visiting his parents grave he meets a strange man- He asks Pip to get him a file and some writtles (food). Chapter 2 Setting: At home; We meet Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, and Mrs. Joe, Pip’s sister 

  • The Woodlanders

    1130 Words  | 3 Pages

    soon after his wife’s death, he married his secretary. The marriage only lasted for a little while because on January eleventh of 1928 Hardy died in his hometown of Dorset, England. His heart was buried in the "Wessex" countryside, in the parish churchyard at Stinsford. His ashes were placed next to those of Charles Dickens in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. Wessex is a fictional place in England that Hardy made up, and placed his novels in its scenery. Its lush landscape is what is described

  • The World Is Too Much With Us

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth In the churchyard of Grassmere’s Saint Oswald’s Church, lies a simple tombstone laid in reverence to William Wordsworth; now one of the most visited literary shrines in the world. “The World is Too Much With Us” is one of many excellent poems written by William Wordsworth during the early 1800’s. The poem’s theme revolves directly upon the material inclination of the world, and the tragic result of human kind losing sight of all things truly

  • Hamlet’s Dashing Laertes

    1959 Words  | 4 Pages

    of Revenge”: Hamlet’s agony of mind and indecision are precisely the things which differentiate him from the smooth, swift plotter Claudius, and from the coarse, unthinking Laertes, ready to “dare damnation” and cut his enemy’s throat in a churchyard (222). Laertes makes his appearance in the drama after Marcellus, Barnardo and Horatio have already seen the Ghost and have trifled with it in an effort to prompt it to communicate with them. Laertes is in attendance at a social gathering

  • Shakespeare's Hamlet – The Character Laertes

    3320 Words  | 7 Pages

    of Revenge”: Hamlet’s agony of mind and indecision are precisely the things which differentiate him from the smooth, swift plotter Claudius, and from the coarse, unthinking Laertes, ready to “dare damnation” and cut his enemy’s throat in a churchyard. (222) Laertes makes his appearance in the drama after Marcellus, Barnardo and Horatio have already seen the Ghost and have trifled with it in an effort to prompt it to communicate with them. Horatio and Marcellus exit the ramparts of Elsinore

  • Comparative Elegies~Similar or Different?

    682 Words  | 2 Pages

    authors are able to convey their deepest remorse and grief through the eloquent use of the English language. Three elegies in which show the possible interpretations and moral convictions of death are “Elegy for Jane”, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, and “A Satirical Elegy”. Jane's unfortunate death in an equestrian accident prompted one of her professors, the poet Theodore Roethke, to write a moving poem, "Elegy for Jane," recalling his young student and his feelings of grief at her loss

  • Analysis Of Elegy Written In A Churchyard

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    Elegy Written in a Churchyard: An Analysis on the Messages Presented in This Title Thomas Gray wrote his literary work entitled, “Elegy Written in a Churchyard” in 1750. The narrator in this story sits nexts to a church yard and just observes. This was close to the Age of Science and Reasoning, which in other words means that people were challenging reason and logic. Therefore, Gray came up with many messages to portray in this piece of work. In “Elegy Written in a Churchyard” written by Thomas

  • Pastoralism In 18th Century Poetry

    998 Words  | 2 Pages

    often looks to nature and the simple life as a retreat from the complications of a society in which humans have become degenerate. Two poems from this era which we have studied, The Thresher’s Labour, by Stephen Duck, and An Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard, by Thomas Gray, fit well into this category of literature. The first poem, The Thresher’s Labor, gives a first-hand account of the hard life of a farm worker. Lexico LLC’s Online Dictionary defines the verb “thresh” as: “To beat the stems and husks

  • Romanticism In Literature

    513 Words  | 2 Pages

    Romanticism In Literature Romanticism in literature, began around 1750 and lasted until 1870. Different from the classical ways of Neoclassical Age(1660-1798), it relied on imagination, idealization of nature and freedom of thought and expression. Two men who influenced the era with their writings were William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both English poets of the time. Their edition of “Lyrical Ballads';, stressed the importance of feeling and imagination. Thus in romantic

  • Examples of Authors Who Wrote Elegies

    615 Words  | 2 Pages

    truth about a side of a persons life, that no one knows about. An elegy could be a real breath taker, if taken the right way. There are many well known elegy authors. One of them is Thomas Gray. Gray wrote the elegy “Written in a Country Churchyard.';In Gray’s poem, he compares the life of a human with a day. The morning would be the person when they were young. High noon would be around middle age. The evening would be when they are elderly. For the obsticles people have to go through