Literary Devices-Elegy-Figures of Speech-Poetic Devices

4. Elegy:

 An elegy is a poem of having serious thought, especially, written in memory or lamentation (weeping/expression of grief) at the death of someone very close to the person. It is written in elegiac meter.

In the elegiac couplet, each couplet consists of a hexameter verse followed by a pentameter verse.   It has its origin in classical Greek and Latin literature, in which it addressed various subjects including love, sorrow, and politics characterized by their metric forms.

It is derived from the Greek word ‘elegus’, which means to lament.

Elegy is composed to honour the life of a single individual of high importance to the poet, society, or the nation.

 The elegies were written in ancient time in Greece in elegiac couplets, alternative hexameter with pentameter lines.  

But in English literature, particularly since the sixteenth century, an elegy has come to acquire the status of a poem of lamentation on the death of someone. The poet chooses the meter according to his requirement.

Pastoral Elegy: In this form of elegy, the subject is represented following the traditional convention. There is an idealised shepherd in idealised pastoral background. It follows a formal pattern.

It begins expressing grief and the Muse is also invoked to help the poet express his grief appropriately.  

In Greek mythology, there are nine muses who are called the goddesses of various arts such as music, dance, poetry, etc.

The poet describes the funeral procession, mourning through various objects of nature, and some lines on the unkind death, and finally, the poem ends with the acceptance of the inevitable. 

 John Milton’s “Lycidas” (1638) is a superb example of pastoral elegy, which was written on the death of King Edward, his college friend. A few more examples of pastoral elegies are:  

 1. Adonais (1821) written by P. B. Shelley (Percy Bysshe Shelley) on the death of John Keats

2. Thyrsis (1867) written by Mathew Arnold on the death of the poet Arthur Hugh Clough

3. An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) by Thomas Gray. It is a tribute paid by the poet to the generation of the humble and unknown villagers buried in the cemetery (graveyard) of the village churchyard.

In literature dirge, threnody, monody, and lament are variations of almost the same theme. They are generally shorter versions of the elegy".

 To conclude, it may be said that the genre of elegy has not remained static, rather it went through the process of evolution.  It has broadened its range.