Elegy

In its modern form, the elegy is a genre of poetry in which the speaker of a poem meditates on death and loss. The word “elegy” comes from the Greek word elegeia, meaning “poem/song of lament.” Elegies often memorialize specific people who have died or disastrous events that have occurred. Initially characterized by mourning, an elegiac poem typically shifts within its narrative to reflect a feeling of appreciation for the subject and, ultimately, solace. A genre of lyric poetry known for its emotional intimacy, the elegy has exerted a significant influence on poetic forms and modes throughout literary history.

Overview

The form of the elegy has changed throughout time and across different languages and cultures. Originating around the seventh and sixth centuries BCE in ancient Greece, the elegy was defined by its metrical composition, which consisted of couplets written in alternating dactylic hexameter and pentameter lines. The earliest elegiac poets, such as Archilochus (fl. ca. 650 BCE), Callinus (fl. seventh century BCE), and Theognis (fl. sixth century BCE), wrote about a range of human and philosophical concerns, including ethics, love, war, and death. Their poems were ritually performed as songs at competitions, banquets, and funerals, often accompanied by a flute.

The elegiac form was later adopted by ancient Roman poets, becoming popular beginning in the first century BCE. The widely influential Roman poet Catullus (ca. 84–ca. 54 BCE) wrote many elegies of love and complaint during this time. One of his most famous couplets can be translated from Latin as, “I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask. / I know not, but I feel it happening and I am in torment.” Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE) wrote pastoral elegiac couplets and sometimes altered the traditional couplet form. Roman poets transformed the elegy genre, writing more subjectively, and made it distinct from that of their Greek predecessors. The application of this form was also expanded beyond traditional themes of love and death to address concerns of everyday life.

Classical development of the elegy greatly influenced English literature. By the sixteenth century, the elegy was no longer identified by its metrical form; the term referred instead to a genre of poems rooted in reflection on loss. Renaissance poets composed pastoral elegies, where rural life became the setting for a range of personal and political issues. In a pastoral elegy, the speaker often symbolically replaces the person he or she is mourning with images from the natural world. One of the most famous of these poems is “Lycidas” (1638), by John Milton (1608–74). Later, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) composed the renowned elegy Adonaïs (1821), in which he mourned the early death of fellow poet John Keats (1795–1821).

Elegies in modern poetry have continued the tradition of lamenting the loss of a beloved, including “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” (1939) by W. H. Auden (1907–73) and “my father moved through dooms of love” (1940) by E. E. Cummings (1894–1962). They can also reflect a more general, existential consideration of loss; the elegiac poem “What the Living Do” (1998), written by Marie Howe (b. 1950) in response to her brother’s death, explores the human capacity to move past loss and appreciate life. Contemporary poets compose elegies about social as well as personal crises, including war, cancer, and climate change. Juliana Spahr’s (b. 1969) poem “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache” (2011), for example, is an elegy grieving the extinction of species.

Bibliography

Cavitch, Max. American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2007. Print.

Drinkwater, Megan O. “The Woman’s Part: The Speaking Beloved in Roman Elegy.” Classical Quarterly 63.1 (2013): 329–38. Print.

Faraone, Christopher A. The Stanzaic Architecture of Early Greek Elegy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Fuss, Diana. Dying Modern: A Meditation on Elegy. Durham: Duke UP, 2013. Print.

Garner, R. Scott. Traditional Elegy: The Interplay of Meter, Tradition, and Context in Early Greek Poetry. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Lambert, Ellen Zetzel. Placing Sorrow: A Study of the Pastoral Elegy Convention from Theocritus to Milton. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1976. Print.

Ramazani, Jahan. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994. Print.

Thorsen, Thea S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy. New York: Cambridge UP, 2013. Print.

Twiddy, Iain. Pastoral Elegy in Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. New York: Continuum, 2012. Print.

Weisman, Karen, ed. The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.