The Sentimental Literature
• Samuel Richardson: Pamela • Laurence Sterne: A Sentimental
Journey through France and Italy
• Gray: “Elegy” • Thomas Young: “The Night” • Coy as a leader of the Sentimental literature
• his life experience happened to make him the forerunner of this new literary trend
• his masterpiece “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” once and for all established his fame as the leader the sentimental poetry
Walpole • Professor of History and Modern
Language at Cambridge
Life
• lived at the time when Enlightenment Movement was coming to its end
• the sentimental literature was flourishing
• started a new school in poetry called “ the Graveyard School”.
Other works of Gray
“Ode on the Spring” (1742)
“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” (1747)
An illustration to Gray's poem Ode on
the Spring
“Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat” (1748)
the Graveyard School poetry
“Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard”
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
• A result of eight years’ careful composition and polishing
• The reflection on death, the sorrows of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy
Lecture Nine Thomas Gray
Teacher: Wang Xingwei
The Pre-Romanticism
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
Life
• Unhappy childhood • Left Cambridge without a degree • The friendship with Horace
• He reveals his sympathy for the poor and the unknown but mocks the great ones who despise the poor