This study focuses on the poetic temperament of Thomas Gray and considers his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard as representative of a change in sensibility which took place roughly in the last half of the eighteenth century. The first chapter considers the literary and biographical influences on the author's changing aesthetic sensibility. The second chapter concerns the early life and education of Gray and his friendship with Walpole and West. The third chapter is a study of the Elegy itself and how it represents the poetic and aesthetic ideas of the author and the age in which he lived. In the concluding chapter Gray is considered as a transitional figure whose work embodies unresolved tensions between the Neoclassic and the Romantic.

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Cette thèse porte sur la renaissance de l’élégie latine à l’ère humaniste, au début du XVe siècle, à Sienne. Giovanni Marrasio compose alors le premier recueil d’élégies en langue latine de la Renaissance, l’Angelinetum, d’inspiration amoureuse, auxquels s’ajoutent de nombreux poèmes variés, ses carmina varia. Avant lui, ce genre n’avait pas retrouvé d’expression depuis plusieurs siècles. L’œuvre du poète, très variée dans ses thèmes et dans ses sujets, trouve son unité dans l’utilisation exclusive du distique élégiaque. Cela conduit à s’interroger sur la conception de l’élégie latine que Marrasio illustre : s’il se réapproprie de nombreux thèmes et de nombreuses topiques caractéristiques des élégies antiques, il intègre dans sa poésie plusieurs héritages littéraires d’époques ultérieures. Tous ces emprunts sont savamment fondus dans une poésie originale au gré d’une imitation habilement pensée. Les modalités de cette imitation sont analysées dans toute leur variété : la réminiscence littéraire s’exprime ainsi par l’allusion, la citation et la traduction. L’analyse de l’imitation marrasienne permet également d’évaluer les nouveaux apports du poète au genre élégiaque, notamment par l’intégration de thèmes pétrarquistes et par le rapprochement de l’élégie et de l’épigramme. Marrasio participe, en tant que lettré, à certains débats littéraires de son temps, tels l’inspiration ou la valeur de la poésie, qui trouvent dans ses poèmes, des illustrations inédites, repérables grâce à une pratique métapoétique de l’écriture. Marrasio se révèle à la fois un passeur et un novateur dans la renaissance du genre élégiaque. / This thesis deals with the renaissance of the Latin elegy in the humanist era, at the beginning of the 15th century, in Siena, when Giovanni Marrasio composed the first collection of elegies in Renaissance Latin, Angelinetum, with love as its inspiration, in addition to numerous diverse poems, his carmina varia. This style of expression had not been in use for several centuries prior to this. The exclusive use of the elegiac distich lends unity to the wide range of themes and subjects in the poet's work. This leads one to ponder the conception of the Latin elegy as illustrated by Marrasio : if he reappropriates many themes and topics characteristic of ancient elegies, he integrates several literary legacies from various earlier periods in his poetry. All these borrowings are skillfully combined into original poetry by means of clever purposeful imitation. The methods of this imitation are analysed in full: literary influence is thus expressed by allusion, quotation and translation. The analysis of Marrasian imitation also allows the poet's new contributions to the elegiac genre to be evaluated, in particular his use of Petrarchist themes and combination of the elegy and the epigram. As a man of letters, Marrasio took part, in certain literary debates of his time, on topics such as inspiration or the value of poetry, which find novel expression in his poems, identifiable thanks to a metapoetic writing style. Marrasio turns out to be both an imitator and an innovator in the renaissance of the elegiac genre.

Notre thèse se penche sur les tragédies créées entre la retraite professionnelle de Racine (1677) et l’amorce d’un renouvellement de la poétique tragique vers les années 1730, marquées par une interruption des carrières de Crébillon et de La Motte, la publication, notamment, des Discours de ce dernier et du Théâtre des Grecs du Père Brumoy, et le retour d’Angleterre du jeune Voltaire. Nous y interrogeons dans un premier temps la sclérose qui gagne la scène et la poétique tragiques en rapport avec les premiers essais de définition de l’élégie, qui mettent en évidence la porosité des deux genres, et un retour en force de l’esthétique de l’horreur occasionnée par la concurrence directe entre la Comédie-Française et le succès des tragédies lyriques du Palais-Royal. Nous étendons ensuite nos conclusions à l’étude des composantes poétiques et dramaturgiques des tragédies de l’époque, où nous analysons les inflexions élégiaques et horrifiques qui se dégagent des effets de structure dus à des interprétations opposées de la notion de simplicité ; dans la même perspective, nous examinons les inflexions qui gagnent la typologie des personnages et les rapports entre les intrigues amoureuse et politique. Enfin, nous abordons le rôle des motifs élégiaques et horrifiques dans la recherche de l’effet tragique, plus particulièrement en ce qui concerne les larmes et l’effroi, ainsi que la transposition sur la scène française du modèle antique des Héroïdes, où ces deux tendances sont réunies. / This thesis investigates tragedies written between Racine’s retirement (1677) and the beginnings of a renewal of the poetics of tragedy in the 1730s, a period marked by the interruption of the careers of Crébillon and La Motte, the publication of La Motte’s Discours and Père Brumoy’s Le Théâtre des Grecs as well as young Voltaire’s return from England. First, it examines the ossification of the theatre and the poetics of tragedy in connection with early attempts to define the genre of elegy that highlight the porosity of the two genres, along with a revival of the aesthetics of horror arising from direct competition between the Comédie-Française and the successful lyrical tragedies of the Palais-Royal. Conclusions are subsequently applied to a study of the poetic and dramaturgical components of the era’s tragedies, based on an analysis of the modulations of elegy and horror that emerge from structural effects created by conflicting interpretations of the concept of simplicity. The modulations that permeate the character typology and the relationships between political plots and love plots are then analyzed from the same angle. Lastly, the thesis concludes with an exploration of the role of the motifs of horror and elegy in the pursuit of tragic effect, more specifically with regard to tears and fright, and the adaptation of the ancient model of the Heroïdes for French theatre, in which these two trends are combined.

I argue for the significance of the spatial and geographic in the criticism of elegy. Space and geography are important in elegy, I demonstrate, both as a strategy for ordering the emotion of grief into the practice of mourning, but also in terms of mapping the flexible, shifting distance between the dead and the elegist, inscribing memory, navigating a changed world of loss and absence, and providing a site for funeral rites. Elegy is often critically considered in socio-historical terms; by examining post-war elegy and grounding this analysis within the theories and methodology of the “spatial turn” of the second half of the twentieth century, I challenge critical narratives of shift and break within the tradition by illustrating a shared heritage of geographic tropes in Western elegy, as well as emphasise the particular inflections of place in individual narratives of mourning. I focus on two elegists in each chapter, examining how their geographic imaginations inflect sites of mourning with their specific encounters with death and grief. Each chapter is informed by human and cultural geography. My first chapter maps grounds of burial and recovery marked with the interplay of silence and voice in Tony Harrison’s V. and Seamus Heaney’s “Bog Queen” and “Station Island,” using J. B. Harley’s idea of “cartographies of silence.” I then use Nigel Thrift’s theories of modern mobility to navigate the inscriptive funereal mobilities in Amy Clampitt’s “A Procession at Candlemas” and Anne Carson’s Nox, emphasising the movement of the mourner in response to the stillness of death. My following chapter employs Doreen Massey’s ideas of space as simultaneous narratives to investigate architectural spaces in Douglas Dunn’s Elegies and Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters, and illustrates the transformation of everyday buildings into monuments to loss and grief. Finally, I apply Yi-Fu Tuan’s formulation of place and mythic space to the border between life and death in the littoral topographies of Elizabeth Bishop’s “North Haven” and Sylvia Plath’s “Berck-Plage,” and the distinctive perspectives on death they embody. Each chapter emphasises precursors and continuities within the elegiac tradition as well as post-war engagements with history, memory, events of death, practices of mourning and commemoration, and the possibility of consolation evoked and ordered by the geographic imagination.

This collection of poetry explores the intersection of elegy and ekphrasis. The poems contemplate and take inspiration from a range of painters and artists, often as a way of thinking about themes of invention, technology, and both father/son and teacher/student relationships.

In the preface, I discuss my poetry and poetics such as the free verse form and the narrative mode. I also discuss my influences such as Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, and Sheri L. Wright. The poems in this manuscript attempt to explore the role of trauma, feminism, and memory in poetry.

This dissertation examines the place of Catullus' poetry in the iambic tradition and its innovation within that tradition. By the Classical period, the genre iambos had been distilled down to invective content in iambic meters, despite the much greater variety of features found in the canonical Archaic iambographers (particularly Archilochus and Hipponax, 7th-6th C BCE). Catullus, familiar with these poets not only in their own right but also through the lens of Hellenistic authors such as Callimachus, partakes in and expands this tradition in novel ways. Catullus affirms the connection between invective and iambic meters in some of his poems (25, 29, 37, 39, 52, 59, 60). In others, he subverts his readers' expectations, creating mismatches between meter and content. He employs iambic meters without invective content once in iambic trimeters (4) and in half of his choliambic poems (8, 22, 31, 44). Conversely, he uses unaccustomed meters for invective, including hendecasyllables and elegiac couplets. Scholarly efforts to explain the mismatch of meter and content in Catullus' invective-free iambic poems and in his invective poems in other meters have largely been piecemeal; this study represents a more sustained approach to the problem. I argue in Chapter One that the speed of the skiff in poem 4 enables it to outpace obstacles representing iambos' traditionally dominant feature, invective; against generic expectations, Catullus introduces speed as a pointed alternative to abusive content. Chapter Two demonstrates that Catullus employs his non-abusive choliambic poems in the diagnosis of literary-critical and medical problems, tapping into a strain of aesthetic criticism and complaint found in Callimachus' Iamboi and in Hipponax himself. Chapter Three presents Catullus' hendecasyllables as a flexible meter without a strong ethos, allowing Catullus to link it to both the iambic tradition and love poetry. Finally, Chapter Four explores Catullus' use of elegiac epigram as an open form primarily for invective, matching the longstanding but uneasy coupling of hexameter and pentameter to vignettes of unbalanced relationships. With carefully considered mismatches of form and content, Catullus extends iambos beyond tradition.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / A presente dissertaÃÃo investiga a elocuÃÃo de onze poemas da obra atribuÃda ao poeta latino Ãlbio Tibulo (c. 55-19 a.C.): os poemas 1.1-6, 1.8-9, 2.3-4 e 2.6. A delimitaÃÃo desse corpus de anÃlise baseia-se na temÃtica erÃtica e nos personagens aos quais os poemas sÃo direcionados, DÃlia, MÃrato e NÃmesis; a investigaÃÃo formal da elocuÃÃo ampara a discussÃo de aspectos dessa temÃtica; em funÃÃo disso, dividimos em trÃs ciclos os poemas a serem analisados; a elocuÃÃo de cada ciclo serà examinada em separado e depois comparada com a dos demais. Para desenvolver esta pesquisa, utilizamos como fundamentaÃÃo teÃrica estudos e comentÃrios da obra de Tibulo, textos de retÃrica da Antiguidade greco-latina e estudos de retÃrica, especialmente os que abordam a elocuÃÃo. A anÃlise dos poemas foi fundamentada principalmente na RetÃrica a HerÃnio e no Manual de RetÃrica LiterÃria, de Lausberg. Uma discussÃo mais aprofundada de poesia latina requer um exame da elocuÃÃo, pois os poetas latinos tinham o estudo da retÃrica como formaÃÃo bÃsica. Na obra de Tibulo, à perceptÃvel que a seleÃÃo e a disposiÃÃo de palavras nos versos servem-se de figuras de linguagem em consonÃncia com o conteÃdo e ainda sublevam o teor erÃtico dos poemas. / This dissertation investigates the elocution of eleven poems from Albius Tibullus (c. 55-19 BC) work: poems 1.1-6, 1.8-9, 2.3-4 and 2.6. The demilitation of this corpus of analysis is based on the erotic subject and it is also based on the characters to which the poems are addressed: Delia, Marathus and Nemesis; the formal investigation of the elocution sustains the discussion about some aspects from this subject; therefore, we divided the poems analyzed in three cycles; the elocution of those cycles is going to be analyzed separately and compared to each other. In order to develop this research, as theoretical foundation we use research and commentaries on the work of Tibullus, rhetorical texts from Greco-Roman Antiquity, and researches about rhetoric, especially those woks that develop the elocution. The analysis is based mainly on Ad Herennium and also on Manual de RetÃrica LiterÃria, from Lausberg. A further discussion of Latin poetry requires an examination of the elocution, since the Latin poets had rhetoric as their foundation. It is noticeable, that Tibullus selection and arrangement of the words in his verses utilizes figures of speech in order to mimic their content; moreover the disposition rise up the erotic content of the poems.

Taken In is a collection of poems about coming to terms with death, love, and the social responsibilities people owe to each other.