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Information about Elegiac

Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. The Classical elegiac meter has two lines, making it a couplet: a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter. Because the hexameter line is in the same meter as epic poetry, and because the elegiac form was always considered lower style than epic, elegists frequently wrote with epic in mind and positioned themselves in relation to epic.

Classical Poets

The first examples of elegiac poetry in writing come from classical Greece. The form dates back nearly as early as epic, with such authors as Archilocus and Simonides of Ceos from early in the history of Greece. One of the most influential elegiac writers, however, was Callimachus from the Hellenistic period, who had an enormous impact on Roman poets, both elegists and non-elegists alike. He promulgated the idea that elegy, shorter and more compact than epic, could be even more beautiful and worthy of appreciation.

The foremost elegiac writers of the Roman era were Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid. Catullus, a generation earlier than the other three, influenced his younger counterparts greatly. They all, particularly Propertius, drew influence from Callimachus, and they also clearly read each other and responded to each other's works. Notably, Catullus and Ovid wrote in non-elegiac meters as well, but Propertius and Tibullus did not.

English Poets

The "elegy" was originally a classical form with few English examples. However, in 1751, Thomas Gray wrote [1]. That poem inspired numerous imitators, and soon both the revived Pindaric ode and "elegy" were commonplace. Gray used the term "elegy" for a poem of solitude and mourning, and not just for funereal (eulogy) verse. He also freed the elegy from the Classical elegiac meter.

Afterward, Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that the elegiac is the form "most natural to the reflective mind," and it may be upon any subject, so long as it reflects on the poet himself. Coleridge was quite aware of the fact that his definition conflated the elegiac with the lyric, but he was emphasizing the recollected and reflective nature of the lyric he favored and referring to the sort of elegy that had been popularized by Gray. Similarly, William Wordsworth had said that poetry should come from "emotions recollected in tranquility" (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, emphasis added). After the Romantics, "elegiac" slowly returned to its narrower meaning of verse composed in memory of the dead.

See Also

Elegy was originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), but is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally - which is a form of lyric poetry.
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1 metre =
SI units
1000 mm 0 cm
US customary / Imperial units
0 ft 0 in
The metre or meter[1](symbol: m) is the fundamental unit of length in the International System of Units (SI).
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Dactylic hexameter (also known as "heroic hexameter") is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin.
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Dactylic pentameter is a form of meter in poetry. It is normally found the second line of the classical Latin or Greek elegiac couplet, following the first line of dactylic hexameter.
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For other meanings of epic, see .
The epic is long, exalted narrative poetry, generally concerning a serious subject and details the heroic deeds and events important to a culture or nation.
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For other meanings of epic, see .
The epic is long, exalted narrative poetry, generally concerning a serious subject and details the heroic deeds and events important to a culture or nation.
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Archilochus (Greek: Ἀρχίλοχος) (c. 680 BC-c. 645 BC) was a Greek poet and mercenary.

Life and poetry


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Simonides of Ceos (c. 556 BC-468 BC), Greek lyric poet, was born at Ioulis on Kea. He was included, along with Sappho and Pindar, in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.
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Callimachus (Greek: ο Καλλίμαχος, 310 BC/305 BC-240 BC) was a native of Cyrene, Libya.
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The term Hellenistic (derived from Ἕλλην Héllēn, the Greeks' traditional self-described ethnic name) was established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen to refer to the spreading of
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Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC) was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His work remains widely studied, and continues to influence poetry and other art.

Biography

Little is known about Catullus's life.
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Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet born sometime around about 50-45 BCE in or near Assisi, and died a short time after 15 BCE. His surviving work consists of four books of Elegies.
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Albius Tibullus (ca. 54-19 BC) was a Latin poet and writer of elegies. Little is known about his life. Besides the first and second books of poetry, there are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority.
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Ovid

Ovid as imagined in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493.
Born: March 20, 43 BC
Sulmo
Died: 17 AD
Tomis
Occupation: Poet
Influences: Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, William Shakespeare

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-1751- 1752 1753 1754  1755 .  1756 .  1757 .  1758  . 1759  . 1760  . 1761 

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Thomas Gray

Born: November 26 1716(1716--)
Cornhill, London, England
Died: July 30 1771
Cambridge, England
Occupation: Poet, historian

Thomas Gray
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For the PINDAR military bunker in London, please see the PINDAR section of Military citadels under London


Pindar (or Pindarus, Greek: Πίνδαρος
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A eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing. The word is derived from two Greek words - ευ (pronounced "you") meaning good or well and λογος (pronounced "logos") meaning word, phrase, speech, etc.
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Born: September 21 1772(1772--)
Ottery St Mary, England
Died: July 25 1834
Highgate, England
Occupation: Poet, critic, philosopher
Literary movement: Romanticism


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William Wordsworth

Born: March 7 1770(1770--)
Cockermouth, England
Died: March 23 1850 (aged 80)
Ambleside, England
Occupation: Poet
Literary movement: Romanticism
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Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798; it is typically considered to have marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in literature.
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Elegiac couplets are a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than those of epic poetry. The ancient Romans frequently used elegiac couplets in love poetry, as in Ovid's Amores.
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