Compare and contrast the treatment of nature as a theme in the poems "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'' by Thomas Gray and "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth.

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Jasper Smith

English

11 April, 01:30

Compare and contrast the treatment of nature as a theme in the poems "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'' by Thomas Gray and "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth.

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Miles · Answer 1

Both Poems were written and published in the second half of the 18th century with 50 years separating them. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard was the first to be published in 1751 and Tintern Abbey was published in 1798 near the turn of the century. Both poems use nature as a mirror of their own inner life, though the reflections that the mirror projects are different:

- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is supposed to be an elegy (a poem that laments the death of someone) inspired by the sight of nature. However, the poem is more an ode that meditates about death and remembrance after death. It wavers between a stoic acceptance of death as an inevitable part of human existence in the wake of the death of several people that were close relatives or friends of the poet. Their own reminiscences awaken a reflection of what his own death will mean for other people and for his own existence. In it, nature elicits such meditation but actually causes an introspective outlook in the author's gaze where the pathetic fallacy is completely absent and the poet's musings are more solipsistic.

- Tintern Abbey on the other hand is definitely not an elegy but a hybrid form that borrows a lot from the ode and from introspective monologues. In it, nature is more imbued with the projection of the poet's emotions and thoughts, i. e. with his own pathetic fallacy. Nature here is actually a mirror that elicits a luminous outlook on existence which is introspective yet not existential in the classic sense. The perpetual renewal of nature and its cycles of life-death-resurrection. Indeed, restoration seems to be one of the key words. Nature here does not deny death but it acknowledges it as a phase in the cycle of restoration previously mentioned. Death is just a door to something else, a continuation of the self, with a more optimistic and luminous outlook on existence