Gray Agonistes

the long version

Gray Agonistes is the first book to examine in detail the intersection in Thomas Gray's life and poetry of Milton's career and achievement and Gray's intense sexual relationship with Richard West (and, to a lesser extent, with Horace Walpole and Thomas Ashton, all of whom banded together at Eton as the Quadruple Alliance). In all of Gray's poetry, Robert F. Gleckner discovers sites of intense and heroic struggle, both with Milton's ghost and with Gray's need to articulate his passionate attachment to West. After West's early death in 1742, Gray's foreboding became anguish and he became the poet of Elegy in a Country Courtyard.