The Pastoral Ideal in Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray’s "Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard" portrays the pastoral ideal through many different images. The traditional pastoral notion of idyllic life changes in this poem to form a connection with people themselves. The speaker of this poem creates a process by which laborers come to symbolize the perfection of the pastoral through their daily toils. These people come to represent the ideal form of pastoral life. In this poem, however, Gray consigns these people and their lifestyle to darkness and death in order to save them from a world whose changing ideals support their idyllic lifestyle.
This poem can be broken into four parts. These
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The images of nature portrayed before line 29 show a very active setting. Owls and beetles interact with each other, and birds make themselves heard. This is put into friendly opposition with the images of the "rude Forefathers" (16) There is no kind of opposition between these images of nature, and the people who used to interact with them. Instead, Gray shows us a lifestyle which was firmly imbedded within the pastoral tradition. The active feature in this section is the use of the past tense. Although these farmers had a good relationship with nature, they are all "sleep[ing]" (16) now. Though a pastoral lifestyle was once alive and flourishing in this country area, the human element has since died out--leaving only nature in its wake. This first section deals with the pastoral ideal as a natural way to live one’s life. These people did not choose to live his way, they did not have to work for this interconnectedness, instead they were given this life because of who they were. Because they lived in nature, they lived with nature. The notion of free choice in this matter never comes into the equation. The working people had the harvest yield to their sickle (25) and had the forest "bow [to their] sturdy stroke" (28). This type of relationship does not call for either side, human or nature, to give up any type of freedom. The people who worked the land never call into question the type of relationship they have with nature. The
So her trek into the woods was to kill an elk, like she had done with her father. However, it was the encounter with two older men, who assisted in gutting out the elk, that she had learned the most. “Did this make them somehow, distinctly like… fathers and daughter? The two men becoming the soil then, in their burial, as had her father- becoming as still and silent as stone.” Here, the connection between human interaction, and experiences with nature is shown vividly.
Nature is first described in a peaceful and confident mood as something majestic, with the sun as the powerful being which controls this nature. However, by the end of the first stanza, “The hawk comes”. This phrase is said as if the narrator is afraid of the hawk and its presence is going to change the mood of the rest of the poem. The next stanza suddenly uses sharp diction, such as “scythes”, “honed”, and “steel-edge”, to illustrate the hawk’s stunning motions and the powerful aura of the hawk that is felt just from its existence, causing the mood of the poem to slowly transition to fearful, yet respectable. The narrator adores this change the hawk is causing on nature, and describes the scene with the hawk in awe, showing how the poet finds the changing of nature attractive.
Humanity is but a facet of the sublime macrocosm that is the world’s landscapes. In the relationship between man and landscape, nature is perpetually authoritarian. In her free-verse poems, The Hawthorn Hedge, (1945) and Flame-Tree in a Quarry (1949), Judith Wright illustrates the how refusal to engage with this environment is detrimental to one’s sense of self, and the relentless endurance of the Australian landscape. This overwhelming force of nature is mirrored in JMW Turner’s Romantic artwork, Fishermen at Sea (1796). Both Wright and Turner utilise their respective texts to allegorise the unequal relationship between people and the unforgiving landscape.
The narrator's vision of her ancestors expanding a plentiful life is emphasized with the picturesque “blue fields…with leaves and vines and orchards.” This then strikes the narrator with the realization that cutting down the tree would be a betrayal to their ancestors, their dreams and the demise of the heritage of the
She became accustomed to the perception of a desert being portrayed as dull and lifeless (Being raised in Kentucky) until this trip. Throughout this scene, she expresses her fascination for nature, and uses a tone of awe and allurement while describing the attributes about the land with metaphors. This narration occurred following the first rainfall, when Mattie and Taylor decided to go to the desert. This passage which is distinctive of Kingsolver’s portrayal of the natural landscape shows her sudden awareness diverse atmospheres. By linking to the scenery to “the palm of a human hand”, the author uses the literary device of personification with the mountains and the town. Her phrase “resting in its cradle of mountains” associates the basin to a child, and the phrases “city like a palm”and“life lines and heart lines hints a grown-up. The terrain exemplifies a life from the beginning to end. Taylor describes the land my linking each attribute with lots of metaphors, which then confirms that the tone is “wonder and allurement” because it demonstrates that she is emotionally connected to the
Both speakers ply nature as setting to express their emotion.the speaker in the poem “The Lonely Land”apply “cedar and jagged fir’s action” as setting to express the lonely environment of the poem and the negative attitude.
Berry’s mention of the farmer and an understanding of his farm is a constant theme in this essay. Agriculture, a distribution of products born from the earth and its entrance into our bodies as nourishment, describes an interdependence. The development of highways, industry, and daily routine of work and obligation, has caused a romanticization of wilderness. High mountain tops and deep forests are sold as “scenic.” Berry reminds the reader that wilderness had once bred communities and civilization, and that by direct use of the land, we are taught to respect and surrender to it. But by invention of skyscrapers, airplanes, we are able to sit higher than these mountain tops and this is his first representation of disconnect from Creation. Mechanical invention leads one to parallel themselves with godliness, magnifying self worth and a sense of significance. What is misunderstood is that through this magnification, because there is no control or limit, we “raise higher the cloud of megadeath.” Our significance is not proved by the weight of our material wealth, rather
The speakers in “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and “A Nocturnal Reverie” present themselves as somewhat
In this passage from Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv puts a strong emphasis on the increasingly distant relationship between people and nature. Louv uses specific examples to support his argument, as well as imagery, sarcasm and an appeal to ethos and pathos. By using these rhetorical strategies, Louv appeals to his readers and convinces them of his argument.
Imagery was also used in the poem. I found that the yellow in the first line represented that the future the writer was facing was bright and warm regardless of his choice. The undergrowth was, as undergrowth in any forest, damp and dank smelling, but not necessarily unpleasant, just something that the writer would have to face. The image of traveling through a forest also brings to mind thoughts of birds in flight, chirping and singing. Squirrels dashing through trees, rustling leaves and dropping the occasional acorn or nut also create an image of sight and sound. The sun reflecting through the trees, casting shadows and creating pockets of warm and cool air and the occasional breeze stirring through the trees are also brought to mind by this poem. The end of the poem brings to me
In this passage, he begins to bring about his idea that businesses are turning the focus off of nature and onto ads, which result in money. He has a tone of passion by subtly condemning the people who “use nature as ad space (lines 14-15).” He uses forceful syntax including “stamp their messages (lines 9-10)” and “simulating nature (line 14).” He later on asks two great rhetorical questions with a tone of confusion toward the parents who say they do not want their children to watch so much TV, yet they provide many opportunities for the children to watch TV.
In this case, this movie shows simple folk who are invaded by modern society. “When the creatures awake from their hibernation they discover that while they were sleeping, a soulless suburban development stole their woodland space and the humans have erected a huge partition, a hedge, to fence them out” (Halberstam 10). For the creatures who lived in the woods that were taken over by the humans, the simple life is replaced by fast moving, wasteful and irresponsible people. These animals had to adapt to the changes in their new environment, food choices, new creatures, and relationships with those creatures. They had to work to outgrow their title of “vermin” given to them by the humans by proving that this was their territory and they were not going to let it be taken away from
Marlowe’s perspective on nature is a rather positive one, and with the use of imagery and structure he explains to the reader why his perspective is so. This can be seen when Marlowe states “And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.” In the stanza that has been presented, Marlowe uses very delicate examples of nature to persuade the reader that nature can provide for humanity, as the examples make it seem as so. In addition Marlowe also uses a very calming rhyme scheme to support his perspective. He uses this to persuade the reader that that is what nature is, very calm and delicate. The use of rhyme scheme also allows for a very nice flow throughout the poem, giving the readers a more enjoyable experience when reading. With the use of both imagery and structure, Marlowe is easily able to support his perspective upon nature.
The land in this poem is very important to the development of the theme. So the Pauline Johnson spends most of the describing it. Pauline uses a unique structure similar to slow close up to emphasize all the features of the land and give them depth and color. In the first stanza she starts of with a shot of the skyline. Witch at first only gives an basic idea of the landscape, we know not of the bleaching skeletons of the never coming herd of buffalo. In the second stanza she zooms in add a whole new layer of nuanced description breathing life into anything that occupies the land. "Etched where the cloudland touch and die" In the
People would not want to hear that their loved ones merely gave up and died passively. This poem in itself is a celebration of life, the poem is not only about death but it is an affirmation of life. To further emphasise the points being made Dylan Thomas utilises a wide range of literary devices. Parallelism is used from lines seven to fifteen to juxtapose the different attitudes of the so called “genres” of men at their death. This is used to outline that if you continuously lead one set type of lifestyle whether it is as a “wild man”, a “grave man” or a “good man” you will not be satisfied when your time comes to die. The only true way to be satisfied is to live a life of balance; only with a good contrast can you be at peace.