Elegy - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Elegy

Elegy
An is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead.
However, according to , "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy'
remains remarkably ill defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber
or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly
as a sign of a lament for the dead".[1][2]

History

,
illustration by William Blake.

The Greek term ἐλεγείᾱ ( ; from ἔλεγος, , ‘lament’)[3] originally referred to any verse
written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter (death, love, war). The
term also included epitaphs, sad and mournful songs,[4] and commemorative verses.[5] The Latin
elegy of ancient Roman literature was most often erotic or mythological in nature. Because of its
structural potential for rhetorical effects, the elegiac couplet was also used by both Greek and
Roman poets for witty, humorous, and satirical subject matter.[6]

Other than epitaphs, examples of ancient elegy as a poem of mourning include Catullus'
101, on his dead brother, and elegies by Propertius on his dead mistress Cynthia and a matriarch
of the prominent Cornelian family. Ovid wrote elegies bemoaning his exile, which he likened to a
death.[7]

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In English literature, the more modern and restricted meaning, of a lament for a departed beloved
or tragic event, has been current only since the sixteenth century; the broader concept was still
employed by John Donne for his elegies written in the early seventeenth century. That looser
concept is especially evident in the Old English Exeter Book (c. 1000 CE), which contains "serious
meditative" and well-known poems such as "The Wanderer", "The Seafarer", and "The Wife's
Lament".[8] In those elegies, the narrators use the lyrical "I" to describe their own personal and
mournful experiences. They tell the story of the individual rather than the collective lore of his or
her people as epic poetry seeks to tell.[9] By the time of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others, the
term had come to mean "serious meditative poem":[5]

Elegy is a form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It may treat of any
subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself; but always and exclusively with
reference to the poet. As he will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so
sorrow and love became the principal themes of the elegy. Elegy presents every
thing as lost and gone or absent and future.[10]

A famous example of elegy is Thomas Gray's (1750).

In French, perhaps the most famous elegy is (1820) by Alphonse de Lamartine.[11]

In Germany, the most famous example is by Rainer Maria Rilke (1922).

In the Islamic world—namely Shia Islam, the most famous examples are elegies written by
Sachay Bhai on the Battle of Karbala. Elegies written on Husayn ibn Ali and his followers are very
common and produced even today.

In Spain, one of the capital works in Spanish is (Stanzas About

the Death of His Father), written between 1460 and 1470 by Jorge Manrique.[12]

"Elegy" (French: ) may denote a type of musical work, usually of a sad or somber nature. A

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well-known example is the Élégie, Op. 10, by Jules Massenet. This was originally written for
piano, as a student work; then he set it as a song; and finally it appeared as the "Invocation", for
cello and orchestra, a section of his incidental music to Leconte de Lisle's . Other
examples include Gabriel Fauré's Elegy in C minor (op. 24) for cello and piano, the Elegy Op. 58 of
Edward Elgar, the of Benjamin Britten, and the first movement, "Elegy", of Pēteris
Vasks's String Quartet No. 4. Though not specifically designated an elegy, Samuel Barber's
has an elegiac character.[13][14]

See also

• Dirge

• Elegiac

• Funeral march

• Keening

• Kommós

• Lament

• Marsiya

• Noha

• Obituary poetry

• Pastoral elegy history

• Poetry

• Rithā'

• Soaz

• Threnody

References

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1. Weisman, Karen, ed. (2010). (https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/

view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199228133.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199228133) . Oxford handbooks
of literature. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199228133.001.0001 (https://doi.o
rg/10.1093%2Foxfordhb%2F9780199228133.001.0001) . ISBN 9780199228133. "For all of its
pervasiveness, however, the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill-defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to
denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual
monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead."

2. Klinck, Anne L. (1984). "The Old English Elegy as a Genre" (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/694102) .

. (2): 129–140. doi:10.1353/esc.1984.0016 (https://doi.org/10.135
3%2Fesc.1984.0016) . ISSN 1913-4835 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1913-4835) .
S2CID 166884982 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:166884982) .

3. According to R. S. P. Beekes: "The word is probably Pre-Greek" ( , Brill,

2009, p. 404).

4. Nagy G. "Ancient Greek elegy" in , ed. Karen Weisman. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2010, pp 13-45.

5. Cuddon, J. A.; Preston, C. E. (1998). (http

s://archive.org/details/penguindictionar00cudd/page/253) (4 ed.). London: Penguin. pp. 253–55
(https://archive.org/details/penguindictionar00cudd/page/253) . ISBN 9780140513639.

6. "Ancient Greek Elegy" (https://chs.harvard.edu/curated-article/gregory-nagy-ancient-greek-elegy/) .

. Retrieved 2021-10-01.

7. "Elegy Examples and Definition" (https://literarydevices.com/elegy/) . . 2014-08-06.

Retrieved 2021-10-01.

8. Black, Joseph (2011). (Second ed.). Canada: Broadview

Press. p. 51. ISBN 9781554810482.

9. Battles, Paul (Winter 2014). "Toward a Theory of Old English Poetic Genres: Epic, Elegy, Wisdom
Poetry, and the "Traditional Opening" " (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/studies_in_philology/v111/111.
1.battles.html) . . (1): 11. doi:10.1353/sip.2014.0001 (https://doi.org/10.135
3%2Fsip.2014.0001) . S2CID 161613381 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:161613381) .
Retrieved 5 October 2014.

10. S. T. Coleridge, (1835), vol 2, p. 268.

11. Gosse, Edmund (1911). "Elegy" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannic

a/Elegy) . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). . Vol. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University
Press. pp. 252–253.

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12. Marino, Nancy F. (2011).

(https://books.google.com/books?id=NF5qKAbUaPkC) . Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK ;
Rochester, NY: Támesis Monografías. p. 214. ISBN 9781855662315. Retrieved 13 February 2022.

13. "Intro to Genres: Elegy | Creative Writing" (https://creativewriting.uchicago.edu/node/1104) .

. Retrieved 2021-10-01.

14. Decker, Todd (2017). (https://boo

ks.google.com/books?id=8Qa7DQAAQBAJ) . University of California Press. p. 219.
ISBN 9780520282322. LCCN 2016034599 (https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034599) . "Innovation in the
elegiac register has often occurred at the level of orchestration, adding hybrid strains to the register
that depart from the founding example of Barber's strings-only ."

Further reading

• Casey, Brian (2007).

. University Press, Inc.

• Cavitch, Max (2007). .

University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-4893-1.

• Ramazani, Jahan (1994). .

University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-70340-1.

• Sacks, Peter M. (1987). . Johns

Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-3471-6.

External links

• Media related to Elegies at Wikimedia Commons

• The dictionary definition of at Wiktionary

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