Basic introduction Chinese name: mbth, thomas gray: thomas gray nationality: British nationality: British date of birth: 17 16 date of death: 177 1 occupation: poet graduate school: Peter College, Cambridge University, life introduction, creative experience in thomas gray (1. He had 1 1 brothers and sisters, but they all died. His mother has been dealing in millinery for a long time for him to study. He is a fragile, thoughtful and studious child. He entered Eton College at the age of eight from 65438 to 0725, where he formed a four-person alliance with three people who like classical literature but don't like sports. They are Horace walpole, the son of the Prime Minister, Richard West and Thomas Ashton, precocious poets. 1734 entered Peter House College of Cambridge University and began to write Latin poems. 1739, Premier robert walpole and his classmate horace Walpole paid for a trip to China. Everything went well at first, but they quarreled at 174 1, and then Gray returned to England. 1742, settled in Cambridge, engaged in writing. In the same year, West died, which meant a lot to him. Horace proposed reconciliation between the two sides in 1745, but they only maintained indifferent friendship until their later years. Gray wrote only a dozen poems in his life. The earliest Ode to Spring (1742) described the nature in spring, expressing the idea that life is short and people, rich or poor, are bound to die. Overlooking Eton (1742) not only describes the scenery, but also laments the misfortune that children who go to school will experience in the future. Roughness (1742) is also a bad luck theme, regardless of good and evil. One of Gray's most famous poems is Elegy in the Cemetery (1750), whose theme is "All people, regardless of rank, must enter the grave". Although it is a cliche, he mourned not only the rude ancestors in the village, but also everyone including himself, which made this poem universal. The whole poem 128 lines took 6 years to write. The poem highlights the sympathy for the nameless peasants, regretting that they have no chance to display their talents and criticizing the arrogance and extravagance of the big shots. The description of nature in the twilight, sympathy for the lower classes and sentimental mood make this poem a pioneer of romantic poetry and reach the perfect realm of classical poetry in artistic skills. 1756, he was angered by the students' practical jokes in Peterhouse College and transferred to pembroke College. 1757, he was nominated as the poet laureate, but he didn't accept it. Later, he wrote The Progress of Poetry (1759) and The Singer (1757) in the ode style of the ancient Greek poet Ping Darus. The former traces the development of poetry from Greece to England and praises Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden. The latter wrote the curse of the last singer in ancient Wales on Edward I of England of England, who annexed the king of England in the 3rd century/kloc-and was criticized for being unknown. Gray actually stopped writing poetry because of disappointment, and went to London from 1759 to 176 1 to study the ancient poems of Iceland and Wales in the newly-built British Museum. 1768 Professor of History and Modern Languages, Cambridge University. Besides writing poems, Gray also studied law and was interested in archaeology, botany and entomology. His Lake Jiyou in England (1775) and Letters Collection (1775) are both famous for their beautiful words. Gray also translated some Nordic poems, Sisters of Destiny (176 1) and Odin's bloodline (176 1), and started a romantic party interested in Nordic literature. "177 1 year, he died at the age of 55 because he stayed indoors and became increasingly depressed. Creative experience: the bell rings at night to mourn for a day. Cattle circled the grassland and roared up and down. Tired, the cultivators stumbled home, leaving the whole world to dusk and me. Thus began the greatest English poetry, which was full of faint melancholy and marked the beginning of early English romantic poetry. Elegy in the Cemetery (1750) is not only his time, but also the most perfect poem today. John milton's The Thinker initiated a generation of melancholy literature in England, while thomas gray's Elegy of the Graveyard pushed this literary form to its peak, which was perfectly expressed in this poem and ruled the poetry world for more than a century. These artistic poets often describe some specific natural phenomena and integrate melancholy into the scenery. We can see these scenes in every poem of this poem. We can hear the buzzing of bees, the sleepy jingle of curfew bells in the distance, and the sigh of eagles perched on ivy-covered steps. The author either directly describes a natural phenomenon or reflects the author's specific psychological feelings through comparison. Nature has become the background of expressing people's emotional changes. Many later poets began to describe nature according to its beauty, but that era was not close at that time. The author of the masterpiece Elegy in the Cemetery is a versatile poet with the most profound academic hours at that time. He was an early romantic poet. When he was young, he was very weak, and he was the only child in the family 12 who survived. His childhood was unfortunate, and his father was very bumpy. It was not long before his father separated from his beloved mother. He spent his life in melancholy, and this sentimental style can be seen in all his poems. He first studied at the famous Eton College and then went to Cambridge, but he was born with a strong academic atmosphere and was not interested in courses. During his college years, he also established a deep friendship with Horace walpole, who led Gray to travel in the European continent for three years. After returning to England, Gray first lived in Stockduggis, Buckinghamshire, where Song of Eden was written. This work is a bit like the prototype of his Elegy in the Cemetery, but it took eight years to write this work, that is to say, it was not until 1750 that his work was finally completed. I don't like to associate with people in my later years and concentrate on academic research. In the meantime, he was hired by Cambridge University as a professor of modern history and modern linguistics in Cambridge. Here he handed himself over to academic and poetry research, and began to study the manuscripts of the New British Museum, traveling back and forth between England and Scotland for a long time. Thomas gray died in the apartment of pembroke University in 177 1 and was buried in a chapel in Buckinghamshire. Gray wrote only a dozen poems in his life. Besides the elegy of the cemetery, the famous ones are Death of a Cat, Development of Poetry, Bard, Decline of Odin and so on. Gray's poems are uniform and rhythmic, and the form is not beyond the scope of classicism. But the content is quite distinctive, and the poem is full of sympathy for ordinary people. The poet's strange imagination and sad description blended with each other, creating a romantic artistic conception, which laid a weighty cornerstone for the later development of romanticism. Because of the success of Elegy in the Cemetery, Gray was nominated as Poet Laureate in 1757, but was not accepted. 1759 to 176 1, Gray went to London to study the ancient poems of Iceland and Wales in the newly-built British Museum. 1768 Professor of History and Modern Languages, Cambridge University. The main work, Gray, wrote few poems in his life, and only a dozen poems have been handed down from generation to generation, among which Elegy in the Cemetery is the most famous. This poem was written for eight years, originally in memory of his good friend Richard West when he was studying at Eton College. At least the epitaph at the end of the poem was written for him. However, looking at the whole poem, it is obvious that its content has gone beyond the mourning for a specific figure, but through the description of a cemetery in the countryside, it expresses deep sympathy for the unknown people at the lower level. Praise their simplicity and kindness, but unfortunately they have no chance to display their talents and talents. At the same time, it also shows contempt and ridicule for the world's dignitaries and vanity, and condemns the extravagant life of big people. This poem fully embodies Gray's democratic thought. Because of poverty, farmers can't give full play to their talents and become writers like Milton and politicians like Cromwell. But on the other hand, they have no ambition, arrogance, arrogance, extravagance and flattery. Although they are "barren" and have no knowledge, they have "virtue" and "goodness" They are nature itself. This kind of thought and sentimental emotion runs through the whole poem, making Elegy in the Cemetery a model of sentimental poetry in the late18th century. The reason why elegies in cemeteries are favored by critics in past dynasties. Because "first, it embodies a certain social emotion in a period; "Secondly, it has a relatively complete form of expressing this emotion, which solves the problem of how to innovate the old tradition to a certain extent and has a high artistic achievement." (Yang) From the poem Elegy in the Cemetery, we can see the transition of English poets from neoclassicism to romanticism. On the one hand, Gray's poetic language is elaborately crafted and meets the requirements of neoclassicism. On the other hand, his poems show the romantic yearning for nature and the harmonious relationship between people. The combination of the two is used to express deep sadness, which makes the description of eternal truth pursued by classicists become such a beautiful sigh throughout the ages, framed by exquisite poetic forms and more touching.