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Biography
other usesWiktionary|elegy: Not to be confused with eulogy .
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive Poetry#Elegy|poem , especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.
History
The ancient Greek literature|Greek term elegeia (??e?e?a) originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplet s and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaph s for tombs. The Latin elegy of Latin literature|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 satiric subject matter.
Other than epitaphs, examples of ancient elegy as a poem of mourning include Catullus ' Catullus 101| Carmen 101 , on his dead brother, and elegies by Propertius on his dead mistress Cynthia and a matriarch of the prominent Cornelia (gens)|Cornelian family . Ovid wrote elegies bemoaning his exile, which he likened to a death. A notable example that established the genre in English literature is Thomas Gray 's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750).
"Elegy" (sometimes spelled elégie ) may denote a type of musical work, usually of a sad or somber nature.
| last = Casey | first = Brian | title = "Genres and Styles," in Funeral Music Genres: With a Stylistic/Topical Lexicon and Transcriptions for a Variety of Instrumental Ensembles | publisher = University Press, Inc. | year = 2007
cite book
| last = Cavitch | first = Max | title = American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman | publisher = University of Minnesota Press | year = 2007 | isbn = 0-8166-4893-X
cite book
| last = Ramazani | first = Jahan | title = Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney | publisher = University of Chicago Press | year = 1994 | isbn = 0-226-70340-1
cite book
| last = Sacks | middle = M. | first = Peter | title = The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats | publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press | year = 1987 | isbn = 0-8018-3471-6 Category:Genres of poetry Category:Poetic form
