Elegy : Definition, Characteristics,Types, History, Examples, and Importance in Literature

Definition of Elegy

An elegy is typically a poem of lament which expresses gloomy thoughts of a person who is no more. It is commonly written in praise of the deceased and has an air of melancholiness around it.

The word elegy originated from the Greek word ‘elegeia,’ which means to lament or to be sorrowful. In Greek and Roman literature, any poem which was written in elegiac meter, meant irregular hexameter and pentameter lines was denoted by the term ‘elegy’. However, it was also referred to as the subject matter of conversion and loss regularly articulated in the elegiac stanza form, particularly in themes of love. With this concept in mind, there are certain poems which are referred to as ‘elegies such as The Wanderer and The Seafarer.

An elegy usually brings comprises of three stages of grief which are as follows:

• Grief

• Praise of the dead

• Consolation towards the loss

In countries such as Europe and England, the term ‘elegy’ continued to have altering meanings throughout the period of Renaissance. The elegies written by John Donne, in the later part of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth century, are poems which are based on the themes of love. Even though they are related to the essence of elegy as sorrow, many of them stress upon variability and forfeiture.

In the 17th century, the term ‘elegy’ meant a formal and sustained laments in verse on the demise of a specific individual which generally concluded with a consolation. The medieval poem, The Pearl and Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess (elegies in the mode of dream allegory); Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850), and WH Auden’s In Memory of W. B. Yeats (1940) are some examples of this form of elegy

There are some instances where the word ‘elegy’ is also used to represent the gloomy musings on transience for example, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1757) and the Duino Elegies (1912–22) of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke on the impermanence of poets as well as of the worldly things which form the subject matter of their poems.

Originally published in https://www.eng-literature.com/2020/08/elegy-definition-characteristics-examples.html