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Since Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard" (1751) was central to the emergence of an English vernacular literary canon, it is easy to forget that Gray was also fascinated by oral cultures. 1 Whether lodged in his rooms at Cambridge, researching in London at the British Museum, or traveling through Scotland and the Lake District, Gray collected notes and composed numerous essays about oral poetry and ancient and medieval bards in his three folio commonplace books. 2 His interest in oral culture was more than scholarly; nearly all of his published poetry after the "Elegy" engaged with this research. "The Bard. A Pindaric Ode" (1757), for example, brims with intricate images of bards and revels in their prophetic voices, and the only new poems included in his final published volume, Poems of Mr. Gray (1768), were "imitations," as he called them, of Welsh and Scandinavian folk songs. 3 Gray's focus on the figure of the bard and on oral cultures in general was not unusual; other mid-eighteenth-century authors were also studying oral culture, gradually re-characterizing it as impassioned and heroic rather than vulgar and corrupted. 4 The bard figure took on a new seriousness as a result, and came to represent the proximity between oral performer and listener and the immediacy of face-to-face contact, particularly when set against the virtual, distanced relationship between author and reader increasingly engendered by print circulation. The bard was at the center of the separation and the subsequent imaginative reassessment of oral culture and print culture that occurred in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. Adopting (and adapting) the bard thus allowed Gray to reflect on the status of poetry and the changing significance of printed authorship. 5 Recent critics have argued that Gray's interest in bards and oral cultures stemmed from his uneasiness about the literary marketplace and the public acclaim that accompanied the success of the "Elegy." Linda Zionkowski states, for instance, that by embracing older models of authorship Gray attempted to "recreate a pre-commercial past" as an alternative to the print marketplace, thereby rejecting the market's 'Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! 'Confusion on thy banners wait, 'Tho' fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing 'They mock the air with idle state. 'Helm, nor Hauberk's twisted mail, 'Nor even thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail 'To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, 'From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!' Such were the sounds, that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array. ("B," 1-12) 'A Voice, as of the Cherub-Choir, 'Gales from blooming Eden bear; 'And distant warblings lessen on my ear, 'That lost in long futurity expire.
Since Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard" (1751) was central to the emergence of an English vernacular literary canon, it is easy to forget that Gray was also fascinated by oral cultures. 1 Whether lodged in his rooms at Cambridge, researching in London at the British Museum, or traveling through Scotland and the Lake District, Gray collected notes and composed numerous essays about oral poetry and ancient and medieval bards in his three folio commonplace books. 2 His interest in oral culture was more than scholarly; nearly all of his published poetry after the "Elegy" engaged with this research. "The Bard. A Pindaric Ode" (1757), for example, brims with intricate images of bards and revels in their prophetic voices, and the only new poems included in his final published volume, Poems of Mr. Gray (1768), were "imitations," as he called them, of Welsh and Scandinavian folk songs. 3 Gray's focus on the figure of the bard and on oral cultures in general was not unusual; other mid-eighteenth-century authors were also studying oral culture, gradually re-characterizing it as impassioned and heroic rather than vulgar and corrupted. 4 The bard figure took on a new seriousness as a result, and came to represent the proximity between oral performer and listener and the immediacy of face-to-face contact, particularly when set against the virtual, distanced relationship between author and reader increasingly engendered by print circulation. The bard was at the center of the separation and the subsequent imaginative reassessment of oral culture and print culture that occurred in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. Adopting (and adapting) the bard thus allowed Gray to reflect on the status of poetry and the changing significance of printed authorship. 5 Recent critics have argued that Gray's interest in bards and oral cultures stemmed from his uneasiness about the literary marketplace and the public acclaim that accompanied the success of the "Elegy." Linda Zionkowski states, for instance, that by embracing older models of authorship Gray attempted to "recreate a pre-commercial past" as an alternative to the print marketplace, thereby rejecting the market's 'Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! 'Confusion on thy banners wait, 'Tho' fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing 'They mock the air with idle state. 'Helm, nor Hauberk's twisted mail, 'Nor even thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail 'To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, 'From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!' Such were the sounds, that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array. ("B," 1-12) 'A Voice, as of the Cherub-Choir, 'Gales from blooming Eden bear; 'And distant warblings lessen on my ear, 'That lost in long futurity expire.
Relying on Thomas Gray’s commonplace book, this article reconstructs the theoretical underpinnings of Gray’s unfinished History of English Poetry , a project to which the poet devoted nearly a decade of research, in order to shed light on Gray’s last published poems, a peculiar set of imitations of ancient Norse and Welsh verse originally composed as part of this historiographical project. In particular, it explores this History ’s preoccupation with prosody as a stratum of literary historical evidence. It argues that Gray was inspired by Richard Grey’s Memoria Technica (1730), a contemporary art of memory, to conceive of prosodic phenomena not simply as stylistic markers of the literary past but as figures for the process and challenge of fashioning historical knowledge as such. It contends that Gray’s imitations of “uncouth” ancient verse forms continue this historiographical project at a poetic register, adumbrating a novel theory of literary form that accords poetic measure a constitutive role in the conception of literary history.
the gorsedd, a public gathering for Welsh poets 79 James Macpherson, the opening two pages of his Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760) 102 James Macpherson, title page of Fingal, An Ancient Epic Poem . . . (1762), engraved by Isaac Taylor 112 James Macpherson, detail of the title page of Fingal 113 Alexander Runciman, sketch for The Blind Ossian Singing and Accompanying Himself on the Harp (1772) 114 Mary Potter, "Vinvela and Shilric," italicized reprinting of James Macpherson's fi rst poem from Fragments 116 Thomas Rowlandson, The Burning System Illustrated (1815) 138 Engraving of "Abba Thulle" by Henry Kingsbury (1788) 159 Illustrations This page intentionally left blankOnce, in response to a request for advice about how to revise a dissertation, I replied, almost without thinking, "Don't write lonely." I certainly never have, at any stage in this project. I remember being told as an undergraduate that studying En glish literature could be a solitary occupation, but luckily for me that has proven untrue. This project began as a course paper for Michael McKeon when I was a graduate student at Rutgers University, and I thank him both for encouraging my initial insights and for generously guiding me since then. Aspiring to the rigor of his thinking and the generosity of his spirit has always improved me as a scholar and a teacher. My committee members at Rutgers University-
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