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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In modern English usage, the term elegy bears a distinct connotation of threnody: broadly, it indicates any funeral poem or lament for the dead; more precisely, it describes a lengthened, dignified poem which either mourns reflectively for a deceased person or broods with a more inclusive sorrow over the tragedy men encounter in living. In this narrower sense, the elegy is a reflective lyric, suggested by the fact or fancy of death. The emotion, personal or public, finds utterance in keen lament, to be allayed, however, by tranquil consideration of the mutability of life, the immutability of Something which justifies life and death;
or, in the words of Edmund Gosse, it is a poem of lamentation and regret, called forth by the decease of a beloved or revered person, or by a general sense of the pathos of mortality…. It must be mournful, meditative, and short without being ejaculatory.
1 C. M. Gayley and B. P. Kurtz, Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism, Lyric, Epic, and Allied Forms of Poetry (New York, 1920), p. 28.
2 Encyc. Brit. (11th and 14th edd.), “Elegy.”
3 The Oxford Dictionary, “Elegy,” second definition.
4 See R. M. Alden, Introduction to Poetry (New York, 1909), p. 68; cf. Gayley and Kurtz, op. cit., p. 392.—No comprehensive study of the elegy as a type of English poetry has yet been published. J. W. Draper's Funeral Elegy and the Rise of English Romanticism (New York, 1929) is a thorough investigation of one aspect of the subject, and a storehouse of material. There are brief discussions of the elegy as a whole by Gayley and Kurtz, op. cit., pp. 28 ff. and 392 ff.; by J. C. Bailey, English Elegies (London, 1900), introd.; and by Arthur Quiller-Couch, Studies in Literature (3rd series, Cambridge Univ., 1929), Chaps. i and ii.
5 Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. G. Smith (Oxford, 1904), ii, 51.
6 Ibid., ii, 344.—Cf. Webbe's Discourse (1586), ibid., i, 285.
7 Ibid., ii, 377.
8 Ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1891), i, 112.
9 Reprint, James MacLehose & Sons (Glasgow, 1905), i, 149.
10 Drayton's Minor Poems, ed. Cyril Brett (Oxford, 1907), p. 118.
11 Ibid., pp. 91, 108, 93, 99, respectively. The first mentioned opens:
Friend, if you thinke my Papers may supplie
You, with some strange omitted Noueltie,
and concludes: So (noble Sandis) for this time adue.
12 Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. Sidney Lee (An English Garner series, Westminster and New York, 1904), i, 241, 257, 262; the last two Barnes calls “letters.”
13 Poetical Works (Hunterian Club, 1873), “The Amorose Songes, etc.,” p. 121.
14 See Elegiœ i, iv, vi; cf. Campion's Latin elegies, Works, ed. S. P. Vivian (Oxford, 1909), pp. 315–324.
15 Eliz. Crii. Essays, ed. cit., i, 176.
16 Ibid., ii, 209.
17 Drayton's Minor Poems, ed. cit., pp. 108 and 99, respectively.
18 Some Longer Elizabethan Poems, ed. A. H. Bullen (Westminster and New York, 1903), pp. 41 ff.
19 See especially Elegiœ, i, vi, vii.
20 De Arte Poetica, l. 75.
21 Vida recognized only the plaintive-erotic elegy. See A. S. Cook, The Art of Poetry (Boston, 1892), p. 42.
22 Ronsard's Abrégé de l'Art Poétique, in Œuvres Choisies, par Eugene Voizard (Paris, 1890), p. 303; Sidney's Defense of Poetry, in Eliz. Crit. Essays, ed. cit., i, 176, where he speaks of the “lamenting Elegiack who bewailes … the weakenes of mankind and the wretchednes of the world.”
23 Eclogues, fifth, l. 69.—On the other hand, Harington's reference to the “mourning” elegy, cited above, obviously implies a pseudo-serious erotic plaint.
24 In the dedicatory letter; cf. the title page. Complete Works, ed. J. W. Cunliffe (Cambridge, 1907–1910), ii, 177 and 175, respectively.
25 Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow (London, 1904), ii, 292.
26 Poetical Works (Oxford, 1929), p. 484.
27 In his introduction to the Minor Poems, Brett remarks: “The Elegies comprise a great variety of styles and themes; some are really threnodies, some verse letters, some laments over the evil times, and one a summary of Drayton's literary opinions.” Elsewhere Drayton applies the name to amorous poems.
28 Drayton's Minor Poems, ed. cit., p. 105.
29 Ibid., p. 119.
30 Poetical Works, ed. Alexander Dyce (London, 1843), i, 76; the epitaph in broken elegiacs follows immediately:
Flos folucrum formose, vale! Marmore jam recubas,
Philippe, sub isto Qui mihi carus eras …
See the writer's note in LTLS (Dec. 13, 1934), p. 895.
31 The Oxford Dictionary records the earliest use of the term as in Barclay's fifth eclogue, published in 1514; scholars generally agree in dating Phyllyp Sparowe not later than 1509.
32 Poetry of the English Renaissance, ed. J. W. Hebel and H. H. Hudson (New York, 1929), p. 196.
34 Poetical Works, ed. cit., pp. 527 and 546, respectively.
34 Fugitive Poetical Tracts, 2nd series (Roxburghe Library, n.d.).
35 Poems, ed. H. J. C. Grierson (Oxford, 1929), pp. 221 and 243, respectively; cf. other examples, pp. 254 ff.
36 Minor Poems, ed. cit., pp. 97 and 102, respectively; cf. other examples, pp. 114, 121.
37 Complete Works, ed. A. B. Grosart (Edinburgh, 1881), iii, 5.
38 Part ix of a longer commendatory poem; Works, ed. Cunningham (London, 1875), iii, 350.
39 Poems, ed. cit., pp. 339 ff.
40 Cf. the facsimile reprints of popular funeral elegies published originally as broadsides in A Century of Broadside Elegies, ed. J. W. Draper (London, 1928).
41 Cf. J. C. Bailey, English Elegies (London, 1900), p. xlii.
42 Eliz. Crit. Essays, ed. cit., ii, 58.
43 The Poems of John Donne, ed. cit., p. 346.
44 Cook, The Art of Poetry, p. 42.—Vida wrote (ll. 45–46): “… sive elegis juvenum lachrymas quibus igne medullas urit amor. …”
45 Œuvres Choisies, ed. cit., p. 303.
46 Eliz. Crit. Essays, ed. cit., ii, 26.
47 Ibid., ii, 51.—In the same chapter, Puttenham places funeral songs in a different category.
48 Ibid., ii, 209.
49 Ibid., ii, 345.
50 iii. ii. 340.
51 iii. ii. 68–9, 82–3.
52 Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. cit., ii, 71 ff.
53 Ibid., i, 238 ff.
54 Ibid., ii, 1.—The collection contained only one “Elegie,” which is omitted in this edition.
55 Hunterian Club, 1873.
56 Drayton's Minor Poems, ed. cit., p. 2.—This introductory sonnet did not reappear in the revised versions of Idea.
57 Eliz. Crit. Essays, ii, 320.
58 Shenstone, “A Prefatory Essay on Elegy.”
59 Eliz. Crit. Essays, i, 238.
60 Ibid., i, 285.
61 Ibid., i, 249.
62 Poems, ed. cit., pp. 71–109.
63 Cf. Milton's comment, Elegia vi:
Namque elegia levis multorum cura deorum est …
Liber adest alegis, Eratoque, Ceresque, Venusque,
Et cum purpurea matre tenellus Amor.
64 Works, ed. S. P. Vivian (Oxford, 1909), pp. 48–49; cf. his use of the distich for Latin epigrams, ibid., pp. 235 ff.
