ThomasGray解读

Sentimentalism (感伤主义),One of the significant and popular trends in English literature in the second half of the 18th century. Sentimentalism means overindulgence in ones emotion for the sake of his overwhelming discontent towards the social reality, and pessimistic belief and emphasis upon the virtue of man.,Historical Background,Continuous, large-scale enclosures of land caused the bankruptcy of the rural economy as well as the mounting poverty and misery of the exploited and unemployed labouring masses in the cities, which naturally led to skepticism and disbelief in the myth about the bourgeois society as the best of all possible worlds. The Walpole government was so corrupt that the Prime Minister was fiercely attacked by many literary men at that time. All these made it increasingly difficult for the enlighteners to justify what Pope said “whatever is, is right.”,Intellectual Background,The enlighteners believed in reason, but now they found that the power of reason was insufficient, and that despite all reasoning, social injustice still held strong. They then appealed to sentiment as a means of achieving happiness and social justice, because the philosophy of the enlighteners, though rational and materialistic in its essence, did not exclude senses, or sentiments, as a means of perception and learning. With some writers the excess of sentiment served as a kind of mild but unmistakable protest against the social injustices. Hence sentimentalism in literature.,Sentimentalism,Leslie Stephen: Sentimentalism could be defined to be indulgence in emotion for its own sake. The sentimentalist does not weep because painful thoughts are forced upon him but because he finds weeping pleasant in itself. He appreciates the luxury of griefbut the general sense that something is not in order in the general state of things, without as yet any definite aim for the vague discontent was shared by the true sentimentalist.”,Sentimentalist Literature,Poetry: Edward Youngs celebrated blank-verse dramatic rhapsody Night Thoughts夜思(1742) and Thomas Gray's An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard 墓畔哀歌. Drama: Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his The Rivals 情敌(1775) and The School for Scandal 造谣学堂, a fine comedy of manners (风尚喜剧), was staged in 1777. Fiction: Oliver Goldsmiths The Vicar of Wakefield (1776) 威克菲尔德牧师传 The Deserted Village 荒凉的村庄; Lawrence Sternes Tristram Shandy项迪传 (1760-1767), Sentimental Journey 伤感旅行.,Thomas Gray (1716-1771),the dominant poetic figure in the mid-18th century and a precursor of the Romantic Movement. Gray had begun to write English poems, among which some of the best were “Ode on the Spring,” “Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard West,” “Hymn to Adversity,” and “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.” These poems revealed his maturity, ease and felicity of expression, wistful melancholy, and the ability to phrase truisms in striking, quotable lines, such as “where ignorance is bliss, Tis folly to be wise.”,Thomas Gray,Its not until “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” was published in 1751 that Gray was recognized. Gray died at 55, buried in the country churchyard celebrated in his “Elegy.”,Elegy (悼亡诗，挽歌),In classical times and in the Renaissance: love poetry written with a specific meter, Since the 17th century: a formal poem of lament and consolation concerning a particular person's death, or reflection on death in general. Miltons “Lycidas” (1638) is an example of the pastoral elegy (田园挽歌), in which the speaker and the person mourned are shepherds. Dirge (挽歌)：A less formal and lengthy form of elegy. Usually sung.,An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,a poem of 128 lines, more or less connected with the melancholy event of the death of Richard West, who was closest to Gray at Eton; Published in 1751, an instantaneous and overwhelming success. Often described as “the best known poem in the English language”. It marks all early romantic poetry. the beginning and representative of “literature of melancholy”.,The Graveyard School (墓地派),a group of C18 poets whose writings frequently touched on themes of death, mortality, religion, and melancholy. Often taken as precursors of the Romantic interest in the commonplace. Departure from considerations of human life to those of death, and shifts from thoughts of human nature to those of wild nature Often elegiac in tone (and title) frequent use of funereal or gloomy imagery of night, death, and gloom in spiritual contemplations of human mortality and our relation to the divine. An important factor in the development of the Gothic novel Edward Young and Thomas Gray are famous poets of the graveyard school.,Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard 墓畔哀歌,Theme: reflections on death, the sorrows and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy. The sure control of language, imagery, rhythm, as well as his subtle moderation of style and tone give the poem a unique charm of its own. The well-conceived struc