"The Voice of Nature" in Gray'sElegy

Abstract

Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" commemorates a problematic sexuality that traditional readings of the poem's "melancholy" usually ignore. By reconsidering the poem in light of theories of abjection, this essay uncovers the powerful poetic expression of a sexuality at odds with mid-century culture and shows how the poet's awareness of his own homosexuality shaped the familiar features of the most popular poem of the eighteenth century.