Poetic Reflections in a Cemetery: A Comparative Study of English and Persian Graveyard School of Poetry

Abstract. The literature of eighteenth century is imbued with the combination of melancholy and religious didacticism. The Graveyard Poets, known as the founders of the Graveyard School, were a number of pre-Romantic English poets of eighteenth century who emphasized the subjects of death, temporality of life, and sorrow in their poetry. As their group name suggests, they reveled in writing while in cemeteries, and their works portray death’s physical manifestations, and consider phenomena related with death such as darkness, the tomb, death’s odors, and ghosts. While relishing in the images of death and the grave, the poets in the graveyard school sought to depict the trappings of death in a way that the reader would gain an appreciation of death as a transitional phase. The present study scrutinizes the poetic and thematic impacts of English graveyard poetry on Persian poetry, especially in the poetry of Nader Naderpour and Nosrat Rahmani. It likewise demonstrates that these two renowned Iranian poets were under the influence of the English graveyard school of poetry.

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