Elegy in English Literature

In Greek and Roman literature “elegy” denoted any poem written in elegiac metre. The term was also used to referring to the subjects and moods frequently expressed in the elegiac verse form, especially complaints about love. In Europe and England, the term continued to have a variable application through the Renaissance. For example, John Donne’s Elegies are love poems. In the course of the seventeenth century, however, the term began to be limited to its present usage: a lament lyric of mourning or an utterance of personal bereavement and sorrow and therefore it should be characterized by absolute sincerity of emotion and expression. In the evolution of literature, the elegy has achieved a great elaboration and has expanded in many directions. It has grown into a memorial poem which contains the poet’s tribute to some great men and often a study of his life and character, as in Spenser’s Astrophel, Milton’s Lycidas. Often the philosophic and speculative elements become predominant in it. Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” is one of the most frankly personal of elegies a large tribute to the dead friend, a spiritual autobiography extending over some three years of intellectual struggle, and a poem of philosophy.

The elegy in modern literature has often been used as a vehicle for literary criticism. One particular type of elegy is the pastoral elegy, in which the poet expresses his sorrow under the mask of a shepherd mourning for a company. This type of elegy is originated among the Sicilian Greeks. It passes into modern European literatures during the Renaissance. It has often been employed by English poets from Spencer to Matthew Arnold. Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is one of the most famous pastoral elegies.

Renaissance Period in English Literature

Mohamad II, the Sultan of the Ottoman Turks and a crusader, defeated the Christians in 1453 and occupied Constantinople, the then capital of the Byzantine Empire and the centre of classical learning. After the defeat the Christian scholars fled to different parts of Europe where they spread their knowledge. Thus ancient learning started reviving. This revival of the classical knowledge is called Renaissance.

So Renaissance means rebirth or regeneration or revival. This Renaissance was meant for a revival of ancient classical mythology, literature, and culture as well as reawakening of the human mind. After the long sleep of the dark middle ages, the conception of Renaissance comes forth as a wonder. It was the glory and the beauty of the human body and the world of nature. It was, as if mankind, it were the human revival from a long sleep and looking at the glory of nature with astonishment. During this period the beauty of humanity, of women, of nature, of art and of literature was being perceived newly.

Actually Renaissance began in Italy as early as the fourteenth century with the words of Petrarch and others’. Its influence reached England with its vast importance as the last years of the fifteenth century and the opening years of the sixteenth. After this influence Father of English literature Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Ben Jonson, and many other poets, writers, and scientists started to create their vast type of creation.