The Transitional Poets - Thomas Gray & Robert Burns

 The Transitional Poets - Thomas Gray & Robert Burns

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Transitional Poetry: From Neoclassicism to Romanticism

Introduction

In the history of English literature, the second half of the 18th century is often described as a transitional period. The word “transitional” indicates a bridge a passage from one dominant literary culture to another. During this time, poetry stood between the rational and decorous ideals of the Neoclassical age and the emotional, imaginative outpouring of Romanticism. Poets like Thomas Gray, William Cowper, Oliver Goldsmith, James Thomson, and Robert Burns reveal this intermediate position. They continued to value clarity, order, and morality, yet their works increasingly displayed sympathy for humble life, emotional depth, and a reverence for nature.

This Blog explores:

• The meaning of “transitional” and the aspects of late 18th-century poetry that embody it.
• A discussion of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard as an example of transitional poetry.
• The influence of historical context on Robert Burns’ poetry.
• The theme of anthropomorphism in Burns’ To a Mouse.

What Does “Transitional” Mean?

The term transitional in literature refers to a stage that connects two distinct movements. In English poetry, it describes works written between approximately 1740 and 1798, the year Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads. Neoclassicism, represented by Pope and Dryden, had emphasized reason, wit, order, decorum, and imitation of classical models. Romanticism, in contrast, emphasized emotion, imagination, nature, simplicity, individuality, and the dignity of common life.

Thus, transitional poetry is marked by a blend: it continues some formal and moral tendencies of Neoclassicism, while simultaneously anticipating Romantic sensibility.

Aspects of Late 18th Century Poetry Considered Transitional

1. Meditative and Personal Tone

• Unlike Neoclassical impersonality, transitional poets explored inner feelings, melancholy, and solitude. Themes of mortality, the passage of time, and personal reflection became central.

2. Nature as a Living Presence

• Neoclassical poets often used nature as a decorative backdrop. Transitional poets, however, saw nature as sympathetic, moral, and spiritual, paving the way for Romantic nature-worship.

3. Graveyard School of Poetry

• Poets like Gray, Young, and Blair introduced a reflective melancholy. Their meditations on death and the afterlife reveal both classical moralizing and Romantic emotion.

4. Sympathy for Common Life

• Instead of glorifying aristocrats, transitional poets celebrated peasants, farmers, and rural labourers. This prepared the ground for Wordsworth’s democratic vision of poetry.

5. Experimentation with Language and Form

• While maintaining structured verse, poets began to infuse folk rhythms, conversational diction, and lyrical qualities, especially in the works of Burns.

Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Briefly about Tomas Gray:

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) was a significant English poet, letter-writer, and classical scholar of the 18th century, regarded as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century and a precursor of the Romantic movement.

Biographical Highlights

• Birth and Family: Born in Cornhill, London, on December 26, 1716, his father, Philip Gray, was a scrivener, and his mother, Dorothy Antrobus, was a milliner. He was the only one of twelve children to survive infancy.

• Education and Career: He attended Eton College and later Cambridge University, first at Peterhouse and later moving to Pembroke College, where he was a Fellow. He was known for being a very learned man. In 1768, he was named Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, a position he held until his death, though he never gave any public lectures.

• Friendships and Travel: While at Eton, he formed a close friendship with Richard West and became part of the "Quadruple Alliance" with West, Thomas Ashton, and Horace Walpole. He took an extended Grand Tour of Europe with Horace Walpole from 1739 to 1741, though they quarreled and parted ways for a time.

• Poetic Output and Recognition: Gray was a self-critical and reluctant writer, publishing only 13 poems in his lifetime. Despite this limited output, he was very popular. He famously refused the position of Poet Laureate in 1757.

• Death and Burial: He died on July 30, 1771, in Cambridge, at the age of 54, and was buried next to his mother at St Giles' churchyard in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire.

Major Works and Poetic Style

Gray is best known for his masterpiece:

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (published 1751): This poem is his most famous and widely read work, capturing themes of melancholy, reflection on mortality, and the quiet dignity of the unrecognized. Its themes of death and afterlife are considered to foreshadow the Gothic movement.

Other notable works include:

• "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"
• "Hymn to Adversity"
• "The Progress of Poesy" (which he considered one of his best works)
• "The Bard" (which he also considered one of his best works)
• "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes"

His poetry is characterized by a blend of neo-classical qualities (such as elevated diction and figurative language) and an anticipation of the Romantic movement (with an emphasis on feeling, personal experience, and melancholy). His work is associated with the Graveyard poets and the literary movement known as sensibility.

I. Neoclassical Elements:

• Written in regular quatrains with balanced rhythms.
• Philosophical reflections on the inevitability of death: “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
• A universal moral lesson that fame and power are transient.

II. Romantic Elements:

• Deep sympathy for the humble villagers whose lives went unnoticed by history: “Their homely joys and destiny obscure.”
• Evocative natural imagery the tolling curfew bell, ivy-mantled tower, yew trees create an atmosphere of solitude and melancholy.
• An inward, meditative voice that anticipates Romantic subjectivity.

III. Transitional Value:

Gray elevates the lives of common men, invests nature with moral resonance, and creates a mood of quiet melancholy. While structured like Pope, his spirit belongs more to Wordsworth. Hence, Elegy is neither purely classical nor fully Romantic it is transitional.

Robert Burns 

Briefly about Robert Burns:

Robert Burns, often called "Rabbie Burns" or "The Bard," is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland.

Key Facts about his Life:

• Birth and Background: He was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland, on January 25, 1759, the eldest of seven children of poor tenant farmers, William Burnes and Agnes Broun. Despite their poverty, his father ensured he and his brother received an education.
• Occupation: Burns was a farmer for much of his life and was affectionately known as the "ploughman-poet." He never made a living solely from his poetry. He later held a post as an excise officer (tax collector) from 1789 until his death.
• Personal Life: He married Jean Armour in 1788, who accepted and took responsibility for all of his children. He was the father of 12 children with four different women, including nine with his wife Jean Armour.
• Death: Burns died young, at the age of 37, on July 21, 1796, in Dumfries, Scotland, from a rheumatic heart condition.

Literary Career and Works:

• Language and Style: Burns wrote lyrics and songs primarily in the Scots language, often blended with English, which made his work accessible to a wide audience. His unique voice combined lyricism, cynicism, satire, comedy, and political comment.
• First Success: His first collection of poetry, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect (known as the 'Kilmarnock edition'), was published in 1786 and was an immediate success, leading to his lionization by Edinburgh society.
• Folk Song Collector: He also spent his later years writing, collecting, and adapting hundreds of traditional folk songs for anthologies like The Scots Musical Museum and A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, which were essential in preserving Scottish cultural heritage.

Notable Works: His most famous poems and songs include:

• "Auld Lang Syne"
• "Tam o' Shanter"
• "A Red, Red Rose"
• "To a Mouse"
• "Address to a Haggis"
• "Scots Wha Hae"
• "A Man's a Man for A' That"

Legacy:

• International Recognition: Although he never left Scotland in his short lifetime, his poetry has been translated into over 25 languages, and his influence is felt worldwide. He is a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora.
• Burns Night: His life and work are celebrated annually on his birthday, January 25th, in an event known as Burns Night, which often features recitations of his poems and the addressing of the haggis.
• Influence: He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement and was an inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism. His work is noted for its sympathy for the less-privileged and its hopes for social equality.

A. Scottish National Identity:

• After the Act of Union (1707), Scottish culture was under pressure to assimilate into English norms. Burns, however, revitalized Scottish identity by writing in Scots dialect, preserving folklore and song. His poems like Auld Lang Syne remain cultural treasures.

B. Rural Agrarian Life:

• Born into a poor farming family, Burns experienced the struggles of agriculture. Poems like The Cotter’s Saturday Night and To a Mouse depict the dignity, hardships, and joys of rural labourers. This emphasis on rustic life made him a precursor to Wordsworth.

C. The Enlightenment and Revolutionary Spirit:

• Burns lived during the Age of Enlightenment, when ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity were gaining strength. He sympathized with the French and American revolutions, reflecting democratic ideals in poems like A Man’s a Man for A’ That.

D.Fusion of Folk Tradition and Literary Art:

• Burns collected and revitalized Scottish songs, combining oral traditions with literary craft. This merging of the popular and the literary situates him at the threshold of Romanticism.

Thus, Burns’ poetry is not only artistic but also historical shaped by Scotland’s cultural identity, rural struggles, and revolutionary fervour.

Anthropomorphism in Burns’ To a Mouse

Burns’ poem To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough (1785) is a remarkable example of his sympathetic imagination. Here, he addresses a small mouse whose nest he accidentally destroys while ploughing.

1. Anthropomorphic Voice:

• Burns speaks directly to the mouse, attributing to it feelings of fear, anxiety, and loss. The mouse becomes a moral companion, capable of sharing human experiences.

2. Shared Fragility:

• The anthropomorphism creates an emotional bond between man and animal. Burns recognizes that both human beings and animals are subject to the uncertainties of fate. The famous lines -“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley”- equate human and animal destiny.

3. Moral Reflection:

• The mouse is not trivialized; instead, its suffering becomes a mirror for human vulnerability. The poem urges compassion and humility in the face of life’s unpredictability.

4. Romantic Sensibility:

• By dignifying a small, fragile creature, Burns anticipates Romantic ideals of universal brotherhood, compassion, and reverence for all forms of life.

Thus, anthropomorphism in To a Mouse is not decorative it is profoundly ethical, making a field mouse a symbol of shared existence and the precariousness of human life.

Conclusion

The late 18th century was a literary crossroads. Transitional poetry reflects both the rational polish of Neoclassicism and the emotional intensity of Romanticism. Thomas Gray’s Elegy captures this duality by moralizing like a classicist while sympathizing like a romantic. Robert Burns, rooted in Scottish culture and revolutionary ideals, expanded poetry to include rustic life, common dialect, and even a humble mouse.

Together, Gray and Burns show that transitional poetry is not a passive bridge but an active space of creativity, where poets questioned old traditions and prepared the ground for Romanticism. If Pope had closed the Neoclassical age with order and wit, then Gray and Burns opened the door for Wordsworth and Coleridge by giving voice to melancholy, nature, the common man, and even the smallest creatures of the earth.

Words : 1905

Photo : 3

Links : 1

Presentation: 1

Refrences:

• Ellis, Frank H. “Gray’s Elegy: The Biographical Problem in Literary Criticism.” PMLA, vol. 66, no. 6, 1951, pp. 971–1008. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/460152. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.       
•  Perkins, David. “Human Mouseness: Burns and Compassion for Animals.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 42, no. 1, 2000, pp. 1–15. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40755295. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.     

• Ram, Kevin. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray.” Poem Analysis, 23 July 2025, poemanalysis.com/thomas-gray/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard/. 

• Reinking, Brian. “Robert Burns’s Mouse In Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ And Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman.’” The Arthur Miller Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, 2013, pp. 15–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42909101. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.