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.