Henry Weinfield - The Poet Without a Name: Grays Elegy and the Problem of History

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title	:	The Poet Without a Name : Gray's Elegy and the Problem of History
author	:	Weinfield, Henry.
publisher	:	Southern Illinois University Press
isbn10 | asin	:	0809316528
print isbn13	:	9780809316526
ebook isbn13	:	9780585186672
language	:	English
subject	Gray, Thomas,--1716-1771.--Elegy written in a country churchyard, Pastoral poetry, English--History and criticism, Literature and history, Romanticism--England.
publication date	:	1991
lcc	:	PR3502.E53W45 1991eb
ddc	:	821/.6
subject	:	Gray, Thomas,--1716-1771.--Elegy written in a country churchyard, Pastoral poetry, English--History and criticism, Literature and history, Romanticism--England.

Page iii The Poet Without a Name: Gray's Elegy and the Problem of History Henry Weinfield SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS Carbondale and Edwardsville

Page iv Copyright 1991 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Edited by Ruth Kissell Designed by David Ford Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga 94 93 92 91 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weinfield, Henry. The poet without a name : Gray's Elegy and the problem of history / Henry Weinfield. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Gray, Thomas, 17161771. Elegy written in a country churchyard. 2. Pastoral poetry, EnglishHistory and criticism. 3. Literature and history. 4. RomanticismEngland. I. Title. PR3502.E53W45 1991 821.6dc20 90-9892 ISBN 0-8093-1652-8 CIP The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Page v In memory of my father, Mortimer Weinfield (19121987)

Page vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi 1 Popularity, Resonance, Originality: The Question of Evaluation 1 2 Structure and Meaning: The Formal Problem of Interpretation 17 3 A Reading of Gray's Elegy 43 4 Gray's Elegy and the Dissolution of the Pastoral 164 5 Wordsworth and the Reconstitution of the Pastoral 164 Appendix A: Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard 195 Appendix B: Stanza's Wrote in a Country Church-Yard (The Eton Manuscript) 200 Notes 207 Bibliography 225 Index 231

Page ix Acknowledgments My sincere thanks to the friends and colleagues who, in one way or another, have shared in the development of this study, from its inception as my doctoral dissertation through the various vicissitudes it has undergone in the course of becoming a book. At the City University of New York Graduate Center, the late Frank Brady went over the original manuscript with meticulous care, Angus Fletcher was unstinting in his generosity, and Allen Mandelbaum was an unfailing source of support, as indeed he has remained over the years. My dear friend Stuart Liebman was a constant interlocutor from the beginning: his insights are everywhere mingled with my own and his analytical rigor alerted me to many an ill-conceived thought or phrase. Other friends who provided intellectual companionship along the way and to whom I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude include William Bronk, Daniel Feldman, Norman Finkelstein, David Katz, Laury Magnus, Dale Ramsey, Gale Sigal, and Walter Stiller. Paul Fry and John Shawcross, in reviewing the manuscript, offered penetrating insights and helped me to hone my argument. Curtis Clark, my editor at Southern Illinois University Press, had the courage to believe in a project that some might have regarded as eccentric and was steadfast in guiding it through the shoals of academe. I was fortunate also in being the beneficiary of the expertise and patience of Susan Wilson, managing editor of the Press, and Ruth Kissell, the copy-editor of the book. My gratitude to my wife, Joyce, pertains to another order of magnitude altogether and cannot be put into words.

Page xi Introduction This book is a study of Gray's Elegy from the dual standpoint of literary history and literary theory. Its central argumentand this will explain why I have devoted an entire book to a poem of only 128 linesis that the Elegy constitutes an important turning point or watershed in the history of English poetry. In making this claim, I am of course aware that Gray's status in the canon is currently rather tenuous, not to say peripheral, and that the Elegy itself, although generally acknowledged as a beautiful poem, has rarely been considered a particularly original one. I argue, however, that in the Elegy certain themes that are of fundamental importance to the tradition as a whole are fully articulated for the first time, in a way that was not previously possible, and, as a result, acquire a resonance that they did not previously have. Specifically, where the thematic constellation of poverty, anonymity, alienation, and unfulfilled potentialor what I refer to as "the problem of history"was not central to earlier poets, this thematic constellation is directly confronted in the

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