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is fragile, and that the loss of a lock of hair touches Belinda deeply. As his introductory letter makes clear, women in that period were essentially supposed to be decorative rather than rational, and the loss of beauty was a serious matter.
The humor of the poem comes from the tempest in a teapot of vanity being couched within the elaborate, formal verbal structure of an epic poem. When the Baron, for example, goes to snip the lock of hair, Pope says,
 
The Peer now spreads the glittering Forfex wide,
T' inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.
Ev'n then, before the fatal Engine clos'd,

A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd;
Fate urged the Sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,
(But Airy Substance soon unites again)
The meeting Points the sacred Hair dissever
From the fair Head, for ever and for ever!
— Canto III
Using epic battle imagery to describe a small pair of ladies' scissors satirizes the ridiculous nature of the whole situation.
2.     Sentimentalism: Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In the second half of the 18th century, Sentimentalism began to appear and play an important role in the English literature. Here we will analyze Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771), was an English poet, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University. He began seriously writing poems in 1742, mainly after his close friend Richard West died. He moved to Cambridge and began a self-imposed program of literary study, becoming one of the most learned men of his time, though he claimed to be lazy by inclination. He became a Fellow first of Peterhouse, and later of Pembroke College, Cambridge. It is said that the change of college was the result of a practical joke. Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin travelling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets (his collected works published during his lifetime amount to less than 1,000 lines), he is regarded as the predominant poetic figure of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused. In 1768, he succeeded Lawrence Brockett as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, a sinecure.
Gray was so self critical and fearful of failure that he only published 13 poems during his lifetime, and once wrote that he feared his collected works would be mistaken for the works of a flea. Walpole said that "He never wrote anything easily but things of Humor."
It is believed that Gray wrote his masterpiece, the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, in the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1750. The poem was a literary sensation when published by Robert Dodsley in February 1751 and has made a lasting contribution to English literature. Its reflective, calm and stoic tone was greatly admired, and it was pirated, imitated, quoted and translated into Latin and Greek. It is still one of the most popular and most frequently quoted poems in the English language. Before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, British General James Wolfe is said to have recited it to his officers, adding, "Gentlemen, I would rather have written that poem than take Quebec tomorrow". The poem's famous depiction of an "ivy-mantled tow'r" could be a Reference to本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。