Thomas Gray's monumental poem 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' famously shifted the genre's focus away from what traditional subject matter?

Correct answer: It mourned not kings or public figures but the obscure lives of ordinary rustic laborers

Published in 1751, Gray's *Elegy* marked a democratic turning point in the history of the genre. Instead of utilizing elaborate pastoral machinery to celebrate a prominent aristocrat or intellectual, Gray meditates in a village cemetery on the lives of anonymous, poor peasants. He highlights that human ambition and grandeur all lead to the same inevitable end: the grave.