Download or read book The Poetry of Thomas Gray written by Thomas Gray, Sir and published by Portable Poetry. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Gray was born on 26 December 1716 in Cornhill in London. His father was a scrivener and his mother a milliner. He was the fifth of twelve children and the only one to survive. With his father becoming mentally unwell and abusing his wife she left with Thomas in tow for a safer life. Thomas was sent to Eton, where two of his uncles worked, and although he was a delicate and scholarly child with an aversion to sports he found it suited him. Whilst there he made three close friends; Horace Walpole, son of the Prime Minister Robert Walpole; Thomas Ashton, and Richard West. The four prided themselves on their style, humour, and appreciation of beauty. They were called the "quadruple alliance." In 1734 Gray went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge. Although his family wished him to study law he spent most of his time reading classical and modern literature, and playing Vivaldi and Scarlatti on the harpsichord for relaxation. In 1738 he accompanied his old school-friend Walpole on his Grand Tour of Europe. It was Walpole who later helped publish Gray's poetry. Gray began to seriously write poems in 1742, mainly after his close friend Richard West died. He moved to Cambridge and began a programme of literary study. Gray was a brilliant bookworm, a quiet, abstracted, dreaming scholar. He became a Fellow first of Peterhouse, and later of Pembroke College where he had moved after the students at Peterhouse played a prank on him. It is thought that Gray began writing his masterpiece, the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, in the graveyard of St Giles parish church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, in 1742. After several years of leaving it unfinished, he completed it in 1750. When Gray sent it to Walpole, Walpole sent off the poem as a manuscript and it appeared in many magazines. Gray then published the poem himself and received the credit he was due. The poem was a literary sensation. Its reflective, calm and stoic tone was greatly admired, and despite the piracy it was imitated, quoted and translated into Latin and Greek. Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only travelled again later in life. Although he wrote little he is regarded by some as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused. Gray was extremely self-critical and feared failure. He once wrote that he feared his collected works would be "mistaken for the works of a flea." Gray came to be known as one of the "Graveyard poets" of the late 18th century, along with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Christopher Smart. Gray perhaps knew these men, sharing ideas about death, mortality, and the finality of death. In 1768, after the death of Lawrence Brockett the Regius chair of Modern History at Cambridge, a sinecure which carried a salary of 400, fell vacant and Gray secured the position. Thomas Gray died on 30 July 1771 in Cambridge, and was buried beside his mother in the churchyard of Stoke Poges, the setting for his famous Elegy.
Download or read book The Latin Poetry of Thomas Gray written by Estelle Haan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-11-11 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first full-scale edition of Thomas Gray's Latin poetry, the Latin text and facing English translation are complemented by a detailed introduction and comprehensive commentary that situate Gray's Latin verse in relation to his vernacular poetry, epistolary correspondence, and, especially, his appropriation of classical and Neo-Latin literature. This book also traces hitherto unlocated manuscripts of several of his Latin poems, and includes an editio princeps of recently discovered Latin verses pertaining to his Neapolitan sojourn. Gray's Latin poetry presents an illuminating portrait of the artist as a young man, mapping his growth and development from his Etonian days to his undergraduate years at Cambridge University, to his continental journey and his return to England. Impressively eclectic in its scope and tone, it ranges from experimental renderings of English, Greek and Italian verse to more strikingly original pieces, including poetic reinterpretations of Alexander Pope's Essay on Man and John Locke's An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. Gray looks back to a classical past, offering imaginative re-readings of Lucretius, Virgil and Horace. At the same time, his Latin verse is firmly rooted in a postclassical world. At its heart is the theme of presences, whether sacred, imagined, absent or remembered, conveyed with a linguistic ingenuity that facilitates the encoding of homoeroticism in a Neo-Latin language of sensibility.
Download or read book Select Poems of Thomas Gray written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Poems of Thomas Gray written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1814 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Elegy in a Country Churchyard written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1888 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays and Criticisms written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1845 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Latin Poetry of Thomas Gray written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Offering the first full-scale edition of Thomas Gray's Latin poetry along with a facing English translation, this book balances accessibility and readability. Estelle Haan provides the reader with a detailed introduction and a comprehensive commentary that situate Gray's Latin verse in relation to his works on translation theory, queer theory, feminist theory and, especially, his appropriation of classical and Neo-Latin literature. This book also traces hitherto unlocated manuscripts of several of his Latin poems, and includes an editio princeps of his recently discovered Latin verses pertaining to his Neapolitan sojourn"--
Download or read book Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry written by David O. Ross and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the developing attitude of poets of the first century BC, considering why they came to write as they did.
Download or read book The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Fatal Sisters written by Anon and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray English and Latin written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Select Poems of Thomas Gray written by Thomas Gray and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection features the works of Thomas Gray, including his most famous poem, 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'. Despite being widely popular, Gray was a self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime. This volume showcases the timeless beauty and depth of Gray's poetry, which remains relevant and engaging for readers today. Here's an excerpt from his celebrated poem, 'Elegy': "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day / The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea / The plowman homeward plods his weary way / And leaves the world to darkness and to me."
Download or read book Thomas Gray written by Robert L. Mack and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mack incorporates recent scholarship on Gray, drawing on developments in 18th-century and gender studies, as well as on extensive archival research into the life of the poet and his family. The result is an eloquent and enlightening book, sure to be the definitive biography of this great poet, a forefather of the Romantic Movement. 50 illustrations.
Download or read book The Works of Thomas Gray in Prose and Verse Poems journals and essays written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Works of Thomas Gray Poems Memoirs including letters Two translations of Gray s Elegy the Latin by Messrs Anstey and Roberts written by Thomas Gray and published by . This book was released on 1814 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
