Thomas Gray among the Disciplines

Ruth Abbott, Ephraim Levinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032231570
• eBook ISBN: 9781040264133
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface: The Organisation of Knowledge in Thomas Gray’s Manuscripts, 1716–1771
• Introduction: Literature, Scholarship, and the Disciplines in the Reception of Thomas Gray, 1771–2021
• 1 Thomas Gray, Menippean Satire, and the Antiquarian Method
• 2 New Manuscript Material from Thomas Gray’s Grand Tour
• 3 Thomas Gray as Music Collector
• 4 Lucretius, Locke, and Latinitas in Thomas Gray’s De Principiis Cogitandi
• 5 Thomas Gray’s Oriental Scholarship
• 6 Thomas Gray’s Geographic Imagination
• 7 Thomas Gray among the Medievalists
• 8 Queering Thomas Gray’s Celticism
• 9 Thomas Gray’s Understanding and Reviving of Historical Architecture
• 10 Thomas Gray, Authorship, and A Catalogue of the Antiquities, Houses, Parks, Plantations, Scenes, and Situations in England and Wales
• 11 Thomas Gray and Meteorology
• 12 Thomas Gray and the Art of Transcribing Historical Manuscripts
• 13 Thomas Gray as Reader and Writer of the Natural World
• Index