The Graveyard School of Poetry

Graveyard school. genre of 18th-century British poetry that focused on death and bereavement. The graveyard school consisted largely of imitations of Robert Blair’s popular long poem of morbid appeal, The Grave (1743), and of Edward Young’s celebrated blank-verse dramatic rhapsody Night Thoughts (1742-45). These poems express the sorrow and pain of bereavement, evoke the horror of death’s physical manifestations, and suggest the transitory nature of human life. The meditative, philosophical tendencies of graveyard poetry found their fullest expression in Thomas Gray’s “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” (1751). The poem is a dignified, gently melancholy elegy celebrating the graves of humble and unknown villagers and suggesting that the lives of rich and poor alike “lead but to the grave.” The works of the graveyard school weresignificant as early precursors of the Romantic Movement. 

It was not until “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,” a poem long in the making, was published in 1751 that Gray was recognized. Its success was instantaneous and overwhelming. A dignified elegy in eloquent classical diction celebrating the graves of humble and unknown villagers was, in itself, a novelty.

Its theme that the lives of the rich and poor alike “lead but to the grave was already familiar, but Gray’s treatment which had the effect of suggesting that it was not only the “rude forefathers of the village” he was mourning but the death of all men and of the poet himself gave the poem its universal appeal. Gray’s newfound celebrity did not make the slightest difference in his habits. He remained at Peterhouse until 1756, when, outraged by a prank played on him by students, he moved to Pembroke College. He wrote two Pindaric odes. “The Progress of Poesy” and “The Bard,” published in 1757 by Walpole’s private Strawberry Hill Press. They were criticized, not without reason, for obscurity, and in disappointment, Gray virtually ceased to write. He was offered the laureateship in 1757 but declined it.

He buried himself in his studies of Celtic and Scandinavian antiquities and became increasingly retiring and hypochondriacal. In his last years his peace was disrupted by his friendship with a young Swiss nobleman, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, for whom he conceived a romantic devotion, the most profound emotional experience of his life. 

Subcribe on Youtube - IGNOU SERVICE

For PDF copy of Solved Assignment

WhatsApp Us - 9113311883(Paid)