Penetrating Pensive Melancholy

Although Thomas Gray produced "the best known poem in the English language", he is not studied thoroughly enough and his poetry is almost neglected by modern readers, since his poems are tinged with an atmosphere of melancholy. In this paper, then, I focus only on Gray's poetry, penetrating into his pensive melancholy and comprehending a little about the aesthetic psychology of melancholy sentiment, to reestimate his sentimental emotions and his poetry as a whole.The literariness of Gray's poetry is studied first, showing how his melancholy emotions are visualized in imagination. The poet chooses copious natural and social images tinged with his aesthetic taste, using ornate and elegant phraseology and other textual means as well, to present us a visual imaginary realm of pensive melancholy and to provoke profuse imagination in readers'minds.Then, I discuss the musicality of Gray's poetry, which kindles the subjective emotions a lot. He inherits pentameter and tetrameter, and develops them into a variety of rhythmic patterns, which are quite appropriate for expressing pensive melancholy. The rhythms properly exercised in the poetry kindle and enhance a lot the subjective emotions of both the poet and the readers.The socio-historicity of Gray's poetry is discussed finally for better understanding of the pensive melancholy. Knowing the sociological and psychophysical aesthetic tastes of pensive melancholy, and with our readers'involvement in this aesthetic experience, we can understand that such an aesthetic activity represents a direction towards perfection of human nature and a direction towards resuming human beings'spiritual homeland.Gray's pensive melancholy is rather different from the abused sentiment highlighted in later period of the Sentimentalism, especially in Sentimentalist novels. Gray's poetry should be distinguished from general Sentimentalism literature and apprehended as excellent art works on universal pensive melancholy.