Not to be confused with eulogy.

In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.

History

The Greek term elegeia (ἐλεγεία) originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs. The Latin elegy of ancient Roman literature was most often erotic or mythological in nature. Because of its structural potential for rhetorical effects, the elegiac couplet was also used by both Greek and Roman poets for witty, humorous, and satiric subject matter.

Other than epitaphs, examples of ancient elegy as a poem of mourning include Catullus' Carmen 101, on his dead brother, and elegies by Propertius on his dead mistress Cynthia and a matriarch of the prominent Cornelian family. Ovid wrote elegies bemoaning his exile, which he likened to a death. A notable example that established the genre in English literature is Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750).

"Elegy" (sometimes spelled elégie) may denote a type of musical work, usually of a sad or somber nature.

Literature

• Theocritus' Idyls (3rd Century BCE)
• Propertius (ca. 50 – ca. 15 BCE), Elegies
• Ovid (43 BCE – 18 CE), Amores, Ars Amatoria, Heroides, Fasti, Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto
• Jorge Manrique's Stanzas about the Death of His Father (1476)
• Jan Kochanowski's Laments (1580)
• Chidiock Tichborne's Elegy (1586)
• Edmund Spenser's Astrophel (1595)
• Ben Jonson's On My First Sonne (1616)
• John Milton's "Lycidas" (1637)
• Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1750)
• William Roscoe's Elegies (c. 1772)
• Charlotte Turner Smith's Elegiac Sonnets (1784)
• Franciszek Karpiński's "Żale Sarmaty nad grobem Zygmunta Augusta" ("Laments of a Sarmatian over the Tomb of [King] Zygmunt August" — a patriotic elegy)
• William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" (1817)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Adonaïs" (1821)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Marienbad Elegy" (1823)
• Alexander Pushkin (author lived 1799–1837)
• Evgeny Baratynsky's Autumn (1837)
• Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." (1849)
• Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (1865)
• Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" (1865)
• Louis Gallet's Elégie (author lived 1835–98)
• William Butler Yeats's "Easter 1916" (1916)
• Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies (1922)
• Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927)
• W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” (1940)
• Wallace Stevens's "A Postcard from the Volcano”, “Puella Parvula”, and “Madame la Fleurie” (author lived 1879–1955)
• Władysław Broniewski (author lived 1897–1962)
• Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński's "Elegia... o [chłopcu polskim]" ("Elegy... about [a Polish Boy]") (1944)
• Kamau Brathwaite's Kumina (author born 1930)
• Galway Kinnell’s “Freedom, New Hampshire" (1960)
• W.S. Merwin’s “For the Anniversary of My Death” (1967)
• Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire (1968)
• Theodore Roethke's "Elegy For Jane" (1970)
• Stanley Kunitz’ “Halley's Comet” (1986)
• Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It” (1988)
• Mark Doty’s “Tiara” (1991)
• Marie Howe's What the Living Do (1998)
• Mary Jo Bang’s Elegy (2007)
• Grace Schulman’s “Apples” (2007)

Music

• Elegia by New Order
• A Perfect Day by Carrie Jacobs-Bond
• Aika (Elegy), Ken Hirai
• Coltrane Sündia, an elegy for John Coltrane by French band Magma
• Death Hath Deprived Me, Thomas Weelkes on the death of Thomas Morley
• December Elegy, Tristania
• Elegia from the Adiemus Project, Karl Jenkins
• Élégie, in memory of Dennis Brain, Poulenc
• Elegy in memory of Franz Liszt, Op. 11, No. 12, Sergei Lyapunov
• Élégie, Gabriel Fauré
• Élégie, Op. 3, No. 1, Sergei Rachmaninoff
• Elégie, Op. 36 (1922) by Othmar Schoeck
• Élégie, ballet by George Balanchine to Igor Stravinsky's eponymous solo for viola
• Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens
• Elegies for piano by Ferruccio Busoni
• Elegies for mezzo-soprano, baritone & orchestra by Richard Danielpour
• Lacrimosa, Regina Spektor
• Mort tu as navré de ton dart, Johannes Ockeghem on the death of Gilles Binchois
• Nymphes des bois, Josquin des Prez on the death of Johannes Ockeghem
• Elegy, The Nice (post-breakup album)
• Elegy, Jethro Tull
• Tol'ko On Ne Vernulsya iz Boya (But He Didn't Return from Battle), Vladimir Vysotsky
• Two Choral Elegies Op.2, Lowell Liebermann
• Ye Sacred Muses, William Byrd on the death of Thomas Tallis
• An American Elegy, Frank Ticheli
• Elegy Suite, Chicago
• Elegi, Lars Winnerbäck
• Elégie, Jules Massenet, based on the text by Louis Gallet
• Élégie, Movement 3, Serenade, Tchaikovsky
• Elegy, Op. 58, for string orchestra, Sir Edward Elgar
• Elegy, Frail Words Collapse, As I Lay Dying
• Elegy, Inspection 12
• Elegy, Terminate Damnation, Becoming the Archetype
• Even Braver, Even Stronger (An American Elegy), Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band
• Red (Elegy), Dave Carter
• Dance (from God's Son), Nas
• Elegy in D, (for Contrabass), Giovanni Bottesini
• Is an Elegy, Youngblood Brass Band
• Summer Elegy, Richard Wright
• Elegie, Patti Smith, Horses
• Elegy, Bear McCreary, Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Soundtrack
• Heros' Elegy, Blue States
• Sissy's Song, Alan Jackson
• Elegy, Balmorhea
• Elegy from Downland Suite, John Ireland
• Elegy, Leaves' Eyes
• Elegy, Machine Head
• Elegy for Symphonic Band, John Barnes Chance
• Elegy in honor of Ivan Samarin, Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky
• Assassin's Creed, Meditation Begins
• Elegy and Dance, Richard Meyer
• An Oxford Elegy (1949) by Ralph Vaughan Williams
• An Elegy for Baby Blue, by The Wonder Years (band)
• Elegy, by the Filipino Band Hale
• Elegy, John Zorn
• Elegy: The Great Peconic by Billy Joel appears on Disc 5 of his My Lives compilation plus a shortened version on the "Movin' Out Soundtrack."

Painting

• Elegy to the Spanish Republic, Robert Motherwell
• Elegía, William Adolphe Bouguereau
• Sommerelegi (Summer Elegy), Poul Anker Bech

Film, TV

• Elegy is a 2008 film by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, based on a Phillip Roth novel, The Dying Animal.
• Elegy (Hungarian: Elégia) is a 1965 film by Hungarian director Zoltán Huszárik.
• "Elegy" is an episode of The Twilight Zone (the original series).
• "Elegy for a Pig" is a third season episode of the TV series Adam-12.
• "Elegy for Fallen Wellies" is an episode from series 21 of Last of the Summer Wine.

See also

• Dirge
• Elegiac
• Kommós
• Lament
• Poetry
• Threnody
• Obituary poetry

References

• Casey, Brian (2007). "Genres and Styles," in Funeral Music Genres: With a Stylistic/Topical Lexicon and Transcriptions for a Variety of Instrumental Ensembles. University Press, Inc.. 
• Cavitch, Max (2007). American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 081664893X. 
• Ramazani, Jahan (1994). Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226703401. 
• Sacks, Peter (1987). The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801834716.