What is an ELEGY

The poetry It is a literary genre characterized mainly by manifestation of feelings, emotions and reflections in a very pure and unfiltered way. The main themes are love, beauty, life or death and the author tries to express them through the beauty of words. There are many types of poetry and each author, throughout history, has used the one that best suited his desire for expression.

In this lesson from a TEACHER, we want to explain in detail what is an elegy and examples, the poetic composition that focuses on expressing the lament and sadness of a character due to a tragedy. Keep reading to learn more about this literary genre!

The elegy is a poetic composition designed for express sadness over the death of a loved one, the loss of a dream or illusion or due to any other misfortune that the character suffers.

The word ELEGY comes from Greek elegos, and it was used to name the mourning songs that were sung at funerals.

This subgenre of poetry has as objective to express that life is very short

, through words. In this way everything that has been lost due to misfortune is remembered and given a new form through the narrator's memory. The authors of the elegies believed that existence goes beyond disappearance, since it remains real in people's minds.

Let's put a pair on you examples of elegies by renowned authors in very different times, so that you can see the way in which they express themselves, through this poetic genre.

Fragment of Elegy, by Catullus (87-57 BC). C.)

(…) Oh, my brother, lost to me, unfortunate; Oh, happy light taken from his unfortunate brother: with you our whole house collapsed, with you all my joy died, which your sweet love nourished in life. To him, now so far away buried not among known graves, nor near the ashes of relatives, but buried in a sinister Troy, in an unfortunate Troy, a strange land at the ends of the world retains. Towards this, it is said, young Greeks chosen from all sides hastily abandoned their homes and their penates, so that Paris, rejoicing at the kidnapping of the adulteress, would not enjoy his leisure freely in a bedchamber in peace. By this chance, then, you, most beautiful Laodamia, that marriage was destroyed, dearer than your life and your soul. (…)

Fragment of Elegy II, by Garcilaso de la Vega (1491-1536)

(…) Here, Boscán, where the good Trojan

Anchises with eternal name and life

Mantüano preserves the ashes,

beneath the clarified sign

of African Caesar we find ourselves

the victorious people collected:

diverse in study, some of us go

dying from fatigue

the fruit that we sow with sweat;

others (who make virtue friend

and reward for their works and so they want

let people think about it and say it)

others in the public differ,

and in secret God knows how much

They contradict each other in what they say.

I go in the middle, because never so much

I wanted to force myself to find a property,

that a little more than those I rise;

nor am I going down the narrow path

of which I know for certain that to the other way

They return, at night when walking, the rein.

But where did my pen take me?

that I am going to satire step by step,

and what I write to you is an elegy. (…)

We hope this lesson from a TEACHER has helped you understand a little better. what is an elegy and what are the topics it deals with. If you want to continue learning more about the different genres that exist in literature, you can consult our literary concepts section.