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E211: British Literature to 1760 Thomas Gray Study Questions Alfred J. Drake. Office: Hum. 520 | W 3-4 | ajdrake@ajdrake.com "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" 1. The poem's title implies that the poem was actually written in a country churchyard, not merely that it is an imaginative reconstruction of such a scene. Why is this claim significant to any interpretation of the poem's meaning? 2. How does the pastoral environment affect the narrator's emotional state? 3. The purpose of this poem is to memorialize and reflect upon the memorialization of otherwise unremarkable people. What ties still bind the living and the dead in the churchyard? What does the speaker most regret about their passing, and what lessons does he draw from that passing? 4. An elegy is by definition about someone else, but how does the speaker fold himself into this poem, making himself as much an object of reflection as the scene and those buried in the cemetery? Edition: Abrams, M.H. et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vols. 1A, 1B, 1C. 7th. edition. New York: Norton, 2000. ISBN #'s: 1A = 0393975657, 1B = 0393975665, 1C = 0393975673.
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