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What does elegy mean?
What is an Elegy poem?
What is a modern elegy?
What is a classical elegy?
Elegy (which may be traced to the Greek word elegos, “song of mourning”) commonly refers to a song or poem lamenting one who is dead; the word may also refer somewhat figuratively to a nostalgic poem, or to a kind of musical composition.
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What is an elegy? Here’s a quick and simple definition: Some additional key details about elegies: 1. Because elegies focus on the emotional experience of the poet, they are generally written in the first person. 2. Typically, elegies end on a somewhat hopeful note, with the poet reconciling him- or herself to the death, and ultimately discovering ...
Elegy: "The Wanderer"
This is an Old English poem by an unknown author, translated here into modern English. The poem, written in the voice of a wanderer who was once a nobleman but was forced out of his homeland by war, is an elegy in the broader sense of a "serious, meditative poem" rather than a lament for the dead. It is about brokenness, loss, and the passage of time, rather than about any one person's death in particular.
Tennyson's "In Memoriam"
The following oft-quoted stanza is from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam," perhaps the most famous elegy of all time. This excerpt is yet another demonstration of the tendency in elegy to seek, through the writing of the poem, a sense of consolation in grief.
Wordsworth's "Elegiac Stanzas"
The full title of this poem by the Romantic poet William Wordsworth is "Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont." The poem was supposedly written in the wake of Wordsworth's brother's death. In keeping with the poem's form of elegiac stanzas, the rhyme scheme is ABAB and the meter is iambic pentameter.
Unlike the classical traditions of epic poetry or medieval ballads, both of which use the third person to focus on figures from popular mythology and folklore, elegies are a deeply personal form of poetry that typically make use of the first person to emphasize the private emotional experiences of individuals. Elegies are a wonderful example of the...
The 19th century Swiss composer Louis Niedermeyer set Lamartine's elegy Le Lacto music, capturing the doleful spirit of the form.Elegy, meditative lyric poem lamenting the death of a public personage or of a friend or loved one; by extension, any reflective lyric on the broader theme of human mortality. In classical literature an elegy was simply any poem written in the elegiac metre (alternating lines of dactylic hexameter.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Definition of Elegy. An elegy is a form of poetry that typically reflects on death or loss. Traditionally, an elegiacal poem addresses themes of mourning, sorrow, and lamentation; however, such poems can also address redemption and solace.
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead.
The elegy is a form of poetry in which the poet or speaker expresses grief, sadness, or loss. History of the Elegy Form. The elegy began as an ancient Greek metrical form and is traditionally written in response to the death of a person or group.
Elegy. In traditional English poetry, it is often a melancholy poem that laments its subject’s death but ends in consolation. Examples include John Milton’s “Lycidas”; Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”; and Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.”
