The Poet Without a Name: Gray's Elegy and the Problem of HistoryHenry Weinfield offers a new reading not only of the Elegy itself but also of its place in English literary history. His central argument is that in Gray’s Elegy the thematic constellation of poverty, anonymity, alienation, and unfulfilled potential—or what Weinfield calls the "problem of history"—is fully articulated for the first time, and that, as a result, the Elegy represents an important turning-point in the history of English poetry. |
Contents
A Reading of Grays Elegy | 43 |
Grays Elegy and the Dissolution | 150 |
Wordsworth and the Reconstitution | 164 |
Elegy Written in | 195 |
| 225 | |
Other editions - View all
The Poet Without a Name: Gray's Elegy and the Problem of History Henry Weinfield No preview available - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
actual Allen Mandelbaum Ambition and Grandeur anonymity antithetical argue argument artless tale Bertrand Bronson Bloom chapter conception confronted context country churchyard course criticism dialectic dumb Forgetfulness echo Ellis Ellis's English English poetry Epitaph Eton Manuscript fact Fame unknown figure Forefathers formal problem formalist Frank Brady Georgics grammatical mood Gray Gray's Elegy Harold Bloom hence heroic human ideological interpretation irony issue Johnson language literary Lonsdale Lucretius Lycidas lyric lyric poetry lyric-I Lyrical Ballads meaning meditation melancholy Memory merely metaphor metonymic muse Nature noted originality passage Pastoral Poetry pathos personification perspective poem poem's poet poet's poetic process poetry poor posed principle problem of death problem of evil problem of history prose reason reference relationship sense Shepard's shepherds social standpoint stanza 21 stanzas 12 stanzas 5-7 Stonecutter synecdoche tendency thee theme Thomas Gray tion tradition unfulfilled potential University Press utopian vision William Wordsworth Wordsworth Youth to Fortune