Poetry & Remembrance: Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard - Professor Belinda Jack

[@iamfayko]

elegy form 17:50 lends itself to contemplation and reflection - emphasis on absence - something lost, or something unfulfilled

[@abooswalehmosafeer173]

And as with solemn deception The reading of the poem began with the text and no sooner vanished without knell leaving my heart vapid

[@jdouglasj2000]

Thank you for posting this. I heard many a lecture like this at school, but I have to admit the style led me to look at poems like puzzles. So I went through each poem in the following manner: (1) Do I understand what the hell is going on here? (2) What poetry tricks/techniques is this poet putting to work? (3) Where are the consistencies broken? and so on. After I had answered enough questions for myself, I'd think "okay, I got it. I can handle this one being on the test." Like Billy Collins once wrote, I strapped the poem to a chair and wanted to torture a confession out of it to find out what it really means. Thirty years later, I have finally come back to poetry by avoiding all that. In most cases I still want to know what the hell is going on, but I find that the things I like about the poem--the images that come to mind, feeling like I have a sense of things, the way lines come to mind in different contexts--all of this is stuff that can't really be tested. There are probably some great teachers out there who know how to teach appreciation, but I never had one.

[@mansooralam7142]

Spot on!!

[@adamgreen9093]

I enjoyed the discussion of the first line, though there's nothing 'curious' about a cognate accusative (toll a knell, play a game, sing a song). The miracle is that, within a few words, many of which appear to mean much the same thing, Gray manages to evoke ideas of the ending of the day, the passing of time, death, departure, commemoration, the stifling of light and heat, and so on.

[@cbooth2004]

The link above is to the transcript and recording of a different lecture. Please correct the link so that those of us who found this lecture valuable might enjoy it further. Thank you.

[@GreshamCollege]

It has now been changed. Thank you for pointing this out to us!

[@cbooth2004]

Thank you. I am pleased be able to access that page. I have one more niggle: The second link down in the text above, after "The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:" still takes us to the "locally green" lecture. While that is no doubt excellent itself, and the photograph lovely, that is where others will probably look for the transcript of this lecture first and be disappointed. I don't mean to be a "noodge", as we say in New York City. I enjoy the online lectures from Gresham College, but as someone who has also done Web pages with links, it is sometimes tricky to get them all to be right and some are easy to miss. Thank you.

[@GreshamCollege]

You certainly are not being a "noodge", it is our job to get these things right. Is the second link now working? On my end, both links in the description lead you to the Poetry & Remembrance page on our website. Best.

[@cbooth2004]

Perfect! Thank you.

[@Debunker246]

thanks for this

[@adamgreen9093]

So...so...so...so... I wish academics could find a way to quell this current tic. Having said that, I thought this a very worthwhile talk.

[@plekkchand]

Agree, utterly

[@manashsahu5998]

Please provide history of english literature

[@manichairdo6346]

Try googling.

[@manichairdo6346]

The tone in which people read poetry is a tad off-putting, me thinks.

[@nitishdas5875]

Anyone from India in Literature field

[@venicecostantini7285]

Thomas gray died at age 54 btw not 55.just saying :) sorry.

[@plekkchand]

You should be sorry.