Robert Blair’s Poems: Unfolding Perceptions of Funereal Occurrence, Vicissitude, and Human Resolution

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper aims to investigate how Robert Blair’s poems unravels the problems of human mortality set in elegiac occurrence, vicissitude of worldly occasion, and man’s volition bound up with virtue, dignity, and social accountability. Few scholars in literary fields have scrutinized the poetical works of Blair who has been considered as one of the leading figures during the era of sensibility, along with Edward Young and Thomas Parnell. This paper examines Blair’s The Grave, “A Poem Dedicated to the Memory of the Learned and Eminent Mr. William Law,” and an ode translated from a Latin text in light of the entwined relationship among the irresolvable occasion of human mortality, mutability of man’s affairs, and his aspiration related to personal honor within social territory. Blair’s works resonate the issues of innovation and improvement not only in external institutions but also the internal aspect of the human mind. Blair’s primary texts evince his contemplations on the initial nurturing of the human mind and actions before the occurrence of social reformation of his age. Blair embodies man’s meditation on death and also his spiritual awakening into making human life better not only in outward machinery but also the inward facet of the human spirit.

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