The Elegy

Elegy

-typically thought of as a poem about the death of someone

            -ancient Greek=elegiac distich used for “laments”

            -Renaissance revived the classical definition

-Elegy is any poem written in elegiacs

            -always printed with the second line indented

            -dactylic hexameter

            -truncated hexameter (missing two syllables)

            -tight couplets with generally closed forms

-Ovidian elegy: poetry in elegiac meter with erotic themes. Sexualized love

            -Donne did imitations of these, which might have been a problem for Donne, who lived in a Catholic country, which disapproved of sex except in the case of procreation within marriage. These are not the same social conditions as that of ancient Rome. Donne’s wit is different conceptually and intellectually from Ovid’s linguistic patterns: dense and patterned wit. Donne’s are imbued with his own idiosyncrasies and are characterized by flights of the imagination, unlike Ovid who wants to concentrate on the sexual, physical reality of the lovers’ situation.

            -In other words, the theme of love and sexuality in the elegy remains constant but gets transmuted. The elegy form is no longer persistent: the poems become songs / lyric. Donne’s elegies: closed couplets, elegiac distich, dramatic speaker: passionate central speaker addressing a lady.

-Unlike English couplets, the elegiac couplet must end with the final line

The standard definition of the elegy, the one that immediately comes to mind for any poet, is a poem of lament that deals with the death of its subject. But from the very birth of the form in ancient Greece, the elegy had twin definitions. The word itself is thought to derive from the Greek phrase “Woe, cry woe, cry!” which gives the term its association with grief. However, what truly defined the ancient elegy was its form: an elegy was any poem written in elegiac couplets (also called an elegiac distich), or a hexameter line followed by a (usually indented) pentameter line. But the other side of the elegiac tradition is the erotic elegy, poems written in elegiac couplets, but that dealt with sexual subject matter. Ovid is undoubtedly the most well-known ancient practitioner of these (“How smoothe a belly under her wast saw I, / How large a legge, and what a lustie thigh?” [Elegy V]), but with the Renaissance’s revival of all things classical, the elegy—in both its guises—was revived, and thus we have such great grief-elegies as Milton’s “Lycidas” and Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard” as well as erotic elegies, like Donne’s “To My Mistress Going to Bed.” Despite the revival of both types of elegies, it was around this time that the association of elegy with death became the primary one.

I would argue, however, that the erotic element did not entirely disappear, but was fused with the loss-tinged elegy that has become the standard manifestation of its mode.