1st Edition
Thomas Gray Among the Disciplines
Throughout the 250 years that have passed since Thomas Gray’s death, he has primarily been celebrated as a poet. This makes sense because, although he published relatively little verse, he published less – indeed, precisely nothing – of his abundant polymathic writing in other fields. His place within the history of scholarship has therefore been obscured. Like many eighteenth-century antiquaries, however, he shared his learning through correspondence and manuscript circulation, and thereby influenced intellectual as well as literary life. This book explores Gray’s scholarship within the changing norms of eighteenth-century disciplines, at once locating him within histories of specialisation and examining the ways in which he challenges their narratives. Scholars from across the humanities reveal his methods and global interests, and analyse many newly uncovered manuscripts. Offering fresh understanding of broader fields through focused investigation of Gray’s multidisciplinary writings, the book will appeal to scholars of eighteenth-century literary, intellectual, and scientific history.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Preface. The Organisation of Knowledge in Thomas Gray’s Manuscripts, 1716-1771
Ruth Abbott
Introduction. Literature, Scholarship, and the Disciplines in the Reception of Thomas Gray, 1771-2021
Ephraim Levinson
Chapter 1. Thomas Gray, Menippean Satire, and the Antiquarian Method
Charlotte Roberts
Chapter 2. New Manuscript Material from Thomas Gray’s Grand Tour
Stephen Clarke
Chapter 3. Thomas Gray as Music Collector
Nathalie Dupuis-Désormeaux
Chapter 4. Lucretius, Locke, and Latinitas in Thomas Gray’s De Principiis Cogitandi
Estelle Haan
Chapter 5. Thomas Gray’s Oriental Scholarship
Kelsey Jackson Williams
Chapter 6. Thomas Gray’s Geographic Imagination
Joshua Swidzinski
Chapter 7. Thomas Gray among the Medievalists
Lotte Reinbold
Chapter 8. Queering Thomas Gray’s Celticism
Rhys Kaminski-Jones
Chapter 9. Thomas Gray’s Understanding and Reviving of Historical Architecture
Peter N. Lindfield
Chapter 10. Thomas Gray, Authorship, and A Catalogue of the Antiquities, Houses, Parks, Plantations, Scenes, and Situations in England and Wales
Ephraim Levinson
Chapter 11. Thomas Gray and Meteorology
Tess Somervell
Chapter 12. Thomas Gray and the Art of Transcribing Historical Manuscripts
Ruth Abbott
Chapter 13. Thomas Gray as Reader and Writer of the Natural World
Scott Mandelbrote and Edwin Rose
Index
Biography
Ruth Abbott is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Ephraim Levinson is a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, UK.
‘At last a book that examines the full range of Thomas Gray’s extraordinary scholarly achievement, revealing, for the first time, his central place in the world of eighteenth-century learning.’
--Peter Sabor, Distinguished James McGill Professor, McGill University, Canada
‘This book brings together a range of cultural, intellectual and literary historians to explore the full range of Gray’s intellectual interests and their relation to his poetry. In a patient series of readings, the book allows a range of different relationships between Gray’s scholarship and his poetry to emerge. The closely integrated studies collected here offer the only modern consideration of Gray as a multidisciplinary researcher, thinker and writer. By bringing new intellectual historical contexts to bear and demonstrating their relevance to particular poems, these essays will reinvigorate study of Gray as a poet.’
--Tom Jones, Professor, University of St Andrews, UK
