Manchester University Press
1 Touched by the dead
Abstract
This chapter explores transformations between the elegy and a poetic discourse of the elegiac in the mid-eighteenth century. The notion that the dead elicit our sympathy can be found in Adam Smith and Edmund Burke and this empathetic reaching out to death underpins the elegy of the time. By examining Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, Robert Blair’s The Grave (1743), James Hervey’s Meditations amongst the Tombs (1745-7), Thomas Warton’s The Pleasures of Melancholy (1747) and Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ (1751), we can see how a discourse about death, dying, and mourning was established. Repeated tensions between natural spirituality and processes of memorialisation appear across these quite diverse texts. How to produce an aesthetic which captures feelings of loss appears at different levels of self-consciousness in these writings which all outline, often competing, artistic positions that the elegiac poet might occupy.
Abstract
This chapter explores transformations between the elegy and a poetic discourse of the elegiac in the mid-eighteenth century. The notion that the dead elicit our sympathy can be found in Adam Smith and Edmund Burke and this empathetic reaching out to death underpins the elegy of the time. By examining Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, Robert Blair’s The Grave (1743), James Hervey’s Meditations amongst the Tombs (1745-7), Thomas Warton’s The Pleasures of Melancholy (1747) and Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ (1751), we can see how a discourse about death, dying, and mourning was established. Repeated tensions between natural spirituality and processes of memorialisation appear across these quite diverse texts. How to produce an aesthetic which captures feelings of loss appears at different levels of self-consciousness in these writings which all outline, often competing, artistic positions that the elegiac poet might occupy.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Acknowledgements viii
- Introduction 1
- 1 Touched by the dead 11
- 2 Mourning, memory and melancholy 44
- 3 From writing to reading 75
- 4 Gothic death and Dickens 106
- 5 Loving the undead 138
- 6 Decoding the dying 164
- Conclusion 193
- Bibliography 197
- Index 207
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Acknowledgements viii
- Introduction 1
- 1 Touched by the dead 11
- 2 Mourning, memory and melancholy 44
- 3 From writing to reading 75
- 4 Gothic death and Dickens 106
- 5 Loving the undead 138
- 6 Decoding the dying 164
- Conclusion 193
- Bibliography 197
- Index 207
