Friday, April 26, 2013

Are there characteristics of the literature of sentiment and sensibility in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"?

The poetry of sentiment or sensibility strives to evoke
sympathy in the reader, thus prompting the reader to commiserate with the feelings of
the speaker and his/her suffering, or to sympathize with the speaker's feelings for
another person.  In Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," the speaker
elicits the sympathy of the reader for the country rustics buried in a "Neglected spot"
who are lost to the memory of the living.


In his elegiac
poem, Thomas Gray employs sensibility, elevating emotional or intellectual reaction. 
For, he appeals to the pity for the ploughman or poor whose "Chill Penury repressed
their noble rage," preventing them from any glory.  In the village Hampden there lies
buried some "mute inglorious Milton" or some "Cromwell guiltless of his country's
blood."  Instead they "kept the noiseless tenor of their way" and were
unrecognized.


Poetry of sentiment and sensibility seeks to
manipulate the reader's emotions; it would seem that Gray's poem accomplishes this by
arousing the reader's sympathies for the abandoned residents of a small country
churchyard.

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