Pietoso stile: Italian Translations of Gray's Elegy to 1900

The popularity of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard in Italy is evident in the Italian translations of the poem that appeared between 1772 and 1889. From Melchiorre Cesarotti and Giuseppe Torelli in the 1770's to Giacomo Zanella and Emilio Teza in the 1880's, translators stake a claim for Gray as a poet of Italy by placing the Elegy in dialogue with Italian literature. At once influenced by classic Italian authors and in turn influencing the Italian Romantics, Gray's poem owes its appeal in Italy to its historical position between tradition and innovation in Italian poetry.