THE POET WITHOUT A NAME: GRAY'S "ELEGY" AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY.
Item
-
Title
-
THE POET WITHOUT A NAME: GRAY'S "ELEGY" AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8508745
-
identifier
-
8508745
-
Creator
-
WEINFIELD, HENRY.
-
Contributor
-
Allen Mandelbaum
-
Date
-
1985
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, English
-
Abstract
-
This dissertation is a study of Gray's Elegy from the dual standpoint of literary history and literary theory. It examines the poem in relation to its thematic development; in relation to the generic issues posed by the elegiac, heroic, lyric, and pastoral traditions; in relation to formal issues of structure and meaning; in relation to stylistic and rhetorical issues; and finally, in relation to the social, political, and philosophical questions that the poem engenders. The dissertation argues that although the poem's subject and thematic dimension have generally been taken for granted, its centrality to the history of English poetry is due not only to Gray's formal mastery but also to the originality of his conceptions. The dissertation proposes, however, that the poem's "meaning" is grounded in its struggle to arrive at meaning in the context of conflicting philosophical perspectives. Its "subject," in this sense, is the problem of locating meaning and value in human existence generally.;The central argument informing this dissertation, as far as its relationship to literary history is concerned, is that in the Elegy certain themes of fundamental importance to the tradition as a whole are fully articulated for the first time. Specifically, where the problems of poverty, anonymity, and alienation--or what might be termed the "problem of History"--had not been central to earlier poets, these problems are directly confronted in the Elegy, and in a way that marks it as a turning point in the history of English poetry. This discussion then leads to an examination of the Elegy's relationship to the pastoral. For it is argued that since the pastoral, in its transcendental formulation, is the embodiment of a vision of social harmony in which the utopian ideals of an aristocracy are superimposed upon the fictionalized image of the peasantry, the "problem of History" is precluded from emerging as long as the pastoral maintains its hold on the literary imagination. That this problem finally emerges in the Elegy suggests that the poem may be considered as representing the "dissolution" of the pastoral in its older, transcendental formulation.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
English
