Genre Studies Unit-II The Graveyard Poets

 The Graveyard Poets

• Also called Churchyard poets or Boneyard Poets.

• Graveyard poets who were known as the Precursor to Romantic poets.

• Not a formal school.

• A common term for 18th century poets ( especially in the 1740s-50s) who found inspiration in graveyards and contemplated on mortality.

• Gloomy meditation in verse was fashionable at this time.

• Poems set in graveyards with yew trees.

• Focus on the lives of ordinary, undignified characters.

• Contributed to the melancholy side of Romanticism.

• These poets were also influenced by the works of John Milton especially, Il Pensoroso which is a sort of melancholy.

Authors and works

1. Thomas Parnell’s “Night-Piece on Death”(1721)

2. Robert Blair’s “The Grave” (1743)

3. Edward Young’s The Complaint, or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality.(1742-46)

4. William Cullen Bryant, an American graveyard poet, “Thanatopsis”.(1817)

5. James Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs.(1746-47; prose work)

The emotional states depicted in Graveyard poetry are later found in poem like 

Coleridge's "Dejection: An ode"

Keats's "Ode on melancholy"