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E211: British Literature to 1760 Thomas Gray Study Questions Alfred Drake | Uni Hall 329 | 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? "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" 5. Do you think that the solemn speaker's mood overshadows the youthful sporting he surveys? Or does something of it come through in spite of that? Explain. 6. If time permits, compare this poem to Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality" ode—it's in the Norton Anthology Volume 2A, Romanticism, and is also available from many internet sites via Google search—does Gray offer us a similar understanding of childhood, or a very different one? Explain. Edition: Abrams, M.H. et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1C. 7th. edition. New York: Norton, 2000. ISBN 0393975673.
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