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ELEGY
Online EncyclopediaOriginally appearing in Volume
V09,
Page 253
of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ELEGY , a See also: short poem of lamentation or regret, called forth by the decease of a beloved or revered See also:person, or by a See also:general sense of the pathos of mortality. The See also:Greek word EXeye(a is of doubtful signification; it is usually interpreted as meaning a mournful or funeral See also:song. But there seems to be no See also:proof that this See also:idea of regret for See also:death entered into the See also:original meaning of EXeyela. The earliest Greek elegies which have come down to us are not funereal, although it is possible that the See also:primitive iXeyfia may have been a set of words liturgically used, with See also:music, at a See also:burial. When the elegy appears in surviving Greek literature, we find it dedicated, not to death, but to See also:war and love. See also:Callinus of See also:Ephesus, who flourished in the 7th See also:century, is the earliest elegist of whom we possess fragments. A little later See also:Tyrtaeus was composing his famous elegies in See also:Sparta. Both of these writers were, so far as we know, exclusively war-like and patriotic. On the other See also:hand, the See also:passion of love inspires See also:Mimnermus, whose elegies are the prototypes not only of the later Greek pieces, and of the Latin poems of the school of See also:Tibullus and See also:Propertius, but of a See also:great See also:deal of the formal eroticpoetry of See also:modern See also:Europe. In the 6th century B.C., the elegies of See also:Solon were admired; they are mainly lost. But we possess more of the See also:work of Theognis of See also:Megara than of any other archaic elegist, and in it we can observe the characteristics of Greek elegy best. Here the Dorian spirit of See also:chivalry reaches its highest expression, and war is combined with manly love.The elegy, in its See also: calm See also:movement, seems to have begun to lose currency when the See also:ecstasy of emotion was more successfully interpreted by the various rhythmic and dithyrambic inventions of the Aeolic lyrists. The elegy, however, See also:rose again to the highest level of merit in Alexandrian times. It was reintroduced by See also:Philetas in the 3rd cent. B.C., and was carried to extreme perfection by See also:Callimachus. Other later Greek elegists of high reputation were See also:Asclepiades and See also:Euphorion. But it is curious to See also:notice that all the elegies of these poets were of an amatory nature, and that antiquity styled the funeral dirges of See also:Theocritus, See also:Bion and Moschus—which are to us the types of elegy—not elegies at all, but idylls. When the poets of See also:Rome began'their imitative study of Alexandrian See also:models, it was natural that the elegies of writers such as Callimachus should tempt them to immediate See also:imitation. See also:Gallus, whose See also:works are unhappily lost, is known to have produced a great sensation in Rome by See also:publishing his See also:translation of the poems of Euphorion; and he passed on to the See also:composition of erotic elegies of his own, which were the earliest in the Latin See also:language. If we possessed his once-famous Cytheris, we should be able to decide the question of how much Propertius, who is now the leading figure among See also:Roman elegists, owed to the example of Gallus. His brilliantly emotional Cynthia, with its See also:rich and unexampled employment of that See also:alternation of See also:hexameter and See also:pentameter which had now come to be known as the elegiac measure, seems, however, to have settled the type of Latin elegy. Tibullus is always named in conjunctionwithPropertius, who was his contemporary, although in their See also:style they were violently contrasted. The sweetness of Tibullus was the See also:object of admiration and See also:constant imitation by the Latin poets of the See also:Renaissance, although Propertius has more austerely pleased a later See also:taste.Finally, See also: Ovid wrote elegies of great variety in subject, but all in the same See also:form, and his dexterous easy See also:metre closed the tradition of elegiac See also:poetry among the ancients. What remains in the decline of Latin literature is all founded on a study of those masters of the See also:Golden See also:Age. When the Renaissance found its way to See also:England, the word " elegy " was introduced by readers of Ovid and Propertius. But from the beginning of the 16th century, it was used in See also:English, as it has been ever since, to describe a funeral song or lament. One of the earliest poems in English which bears the See also:title of elegy is The Complaint of Philomene, which See also:George See also:Gascoigne began in 1562, and printed in 1576. The Daphnaida of See also:Spenser (1591) is an elegy in the strict modern sense, namely a poem of regret pronounced at the See also:obsequies of a particular person. In 1579 See also:Puttenham had defined an elegy as being a song " of See also:long lamentation." With the opening of the 17th century the composition of elegies became universal on every occasion of public or private grief. Dr See also:
This, however, belongs to a class apart, as it is not addressed to the memory of any particular person. A writer of small merit, See also:
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