Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1768

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context

Thomas Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” is one of many diverse poems from the 1700s. The poem’s theme links to works by 18th-century poets like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. Gray’s contempt for adults relates to Pope’s “An Essay on Man” (1732-34), where Pope describes humans as “so weak, so little, and so blind.” Like Gray’s adults, Pope’s humanity is neither great nor pure. Swift, too, often mocked the adult world. In “A Description of a City Shower" (1710), Swift describes a world as treacherous and terrible as Gray’s adults, with “dung, guts, and blood.” In terms of diction, Gray’s poem reflects the 18th-century’s commitment to refined, poetic words, like “ye,” “thou,” and “alas.”

Unlike works by Pope, Swift, Charles Churchill, and other 18th-century poets, “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” is neither satirical nor explicitly political. Gray does not mock adults the way Churchill does in "Night" (1761), and he does not describe the atrocities of adults through a discussion of politics. Rather, Gray's poem is earnest and personal; it expresses his beliefs on the joys of childhood and his impressions of the difficult processes involved in growing up. The poem represents Gray's subjective thoughts and feelings, so it links Gray to a literary movement known as Romanticism, and sometimes, scholars label Gray a pre-Romantic. Near the end of the 1700s, English poets like William Blake began to write poetry based on emotions and feelings instead of reasoning and logic. In the final two lines of his poem, Gray puts down wisdom and fawns over ignorance, anticipating the Romantics of the 1800s and their belief that knowledge is not always and necessarily positive.

Historical Context

As Thomas Gray attended Eton College and made three close friends there, it’s possible to read “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” in the context of Gray’s personal history. Gray projects his happy moments at Eton College onto the children whose activities comprise many of the early stanzas in the poem. Gray uses his experiences to create a formula where childhood equals innocence and joy, and adulthood is synonymous with difficult knowledge and feelings.

David Fairer and Christine Gerrard, the editors of Eighteenth-Century Poetry, label Gray a “learned and shy man who spent much of his life in academic circles.” Gray’s commitment to scholarship might be why he extolled the playful children, whose concerns are more lively and energetic than perhaps his own. Robert L. Mack, the author of Thomas Gray: A Life, depicts Gray as a frustrated person who was either unwilling or unable to express or act on his true desires. If Gray tended to repress his authentic feelings, it’s no wonder why he might have felt ambushed and preyed upon as an adult.

At the same time, Gray’s history invites questions around his rosy, idealized view of childhood. None of Gray’s siblings made it to adulthood, and Gray’s father was abusive towards his mother. Thus, the biographical information about Gray’s life complicate the sweet and innocent picture of childhood present in this poem. Gray’s childhood was not without strife and death, yet his speaker presents children as untroubled and unworried.

Personal context aside, the poem fits into the wider historical context in which children are innocent and adults are problematic. Near the end of the 18th-century, William Blake tackled this subject with his book Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789-1794). As in Gray’s poem, Blake depicts children as pure and innocent and adults as predatory, violent, and generally harmful. Throughout literary history, many authors tackle this theme. Emily Brontë's poem "Tell me, tell me, smiling child" (c. 1836) also portrays children as happy and optimistic. Almost a century later, A. A. Milne addressed anxieties about growing up in his novel for young readers, The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Much later, in his novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), J. D. Salinger presents children as wholesome and adults and teens as untrustworthy. As these examples show, Gray’s perspective on childhood and adulthood transcends historical eras.