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Elegy For Strings
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead". History The Greek term ἐλεγείᾱ (''elegeíā''; from , , ‘lament’) originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter (death, love, war). The term also included epitaphs, sad and mournful songs, and commemorative verses. 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 satirical subject matter. Other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Blake - The Poems Of Thomas Gray, Design 107, "Elegy Written In A Country Church-Yard
William is a masculine given name of Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is sometimes abbreviated "Wm." Shortened familiar versions in English include Will or Wil, Wills, Willy, Willie, Bill, Billie, and Billy. A common Irish form is Liam. Scottish diminutives include Wull, Willie or Wullie (as in Oor Wullie). Female forms include Willa, Willemina, Wilma and Wilhelmina. Etymology William is related to the German given name ''Wilhelm''. Both ultimately descend from Proto-Germanic ''*Wiljahelmaz'', with a direct cognate also in the Old Norse name ''Vilhjalmr'' and a West Germanic borrowing into Medieval Latin ''Willelmus''. The Proto-Germanic name is a compound (linguistics), compound of *''wiljô'' "will, wish, desire" and *''helmaz'' "helm, Close helmet, helmet".Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dict ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Donne
John Donne ( ; 1571 or 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under Royal Patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London (1621–1631). He is considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs and satires. He is also known for his sermons. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an Idiosyncrasy, idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language.Biography: Rainer Maria Rilke 1875–1926 Poetry Foundation website. Retrieved 2 February 2013. His work is viewed by critics and scholars as possessing undertones of mysticism, exploring themes of Subjectivity, subjective experience and disbelief. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, several volumes of correspondence and a few early novellas. Rilke traveled extensively throughout Europe, finally settling in Switzerland, which provided the inspiration for many of his poems. While Rilke is best ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duino Elegies
The ''Duino Elegies'' () are a collection of ten elegy, elegies written by the Bohemian-Austrians, Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He was then "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", and began the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Czech Branch of the House of Thurn und Taxis#Alexander and Marie von Thurn und Taxis, Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis at Duino Castle on the Adriatic Sea. The poems were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923. During this ten-year period, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke had frequent bouts with severe Major depressive disorder, depression—some of which were related to the events of World War I and being conscription, conscripted into military service. Aside from brief periods of writing in 1913 and 1915, he did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed burst of frantic writing which he described as a "boundl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alphonse De Lamartine
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (; 21 October 179028 February 1869) was a French author, poet, and statesman. Initially a moderate royalist, he became one of the leading critics of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe, aligning more with the Republican Left and Social Catholicism. Lamartine was a leading figure in the 1848 French Revolution and was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic along with the preservation of the tricolor as the flag of France. During the revolutionary year of 1848 he served as Foreign Minister and frequently worked to ease tensions between the government and the working class. He was a candidate in the 1848 French presidential election but lost to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. After the election, he retired from political life. Biography Early years Born in Mâcon, Burgundy, on 21 October 1790, into a family of the French provincial nobility, Lamartine spent his youth at the family estate. In his youth he read Fénelon, Vol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Le Lac (poem)
''Le Lac'' (English: ''The Lake'') is a poem by French poet Alphonse de Lamartine. The poem was published in 1820. The poem consists of sixteen quatrains. It was met with great acclaim and propelled its author to the forefront of famous romantic poets. The poem is often compared to the ''Tristesse d'Olympio'' of Victor Hugo and the ''Souvenir'' of Alfred de Musset. It was set to music by Niedermeyer and more recently by British composer David Matthews, which was premiered by the Orchestra of the Swan and soprano April Fredrick under the baton of Kenneth Woods in 2019. Background Lamartine admired Julie Charles, the wife of the famous physicist Jacques Charles. The two planned to meet at Lac du Bourget in August 1817, but she died of tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lung ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard
''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'' is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. The poem's origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742. Originally titled ''Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-Yard'', the poem was completed when Gray was living near the Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges. It was sent to his friend Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, Horace Walpole, who popularised the poem among London literary circles. Gray was eventually forced to publish the work on 15 February 1751 in order to preempt a magazine publisher from printing an unlicensed copy of the poem. The poem is an elegy in name but not in elegiac couplets, form; it employs a style similar to that of contemporary odes, but it embodies a meditation on death, and remembrance after death. The poem argues that the remembrance can be good and bad, and the narrator finds comfort in pondering the lives of the obs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, and classics, classical scholar at Cambridge University, being a fellow first of Peterhouse then of Pembroke College, Cambridge, Pembroke College. He is widely known for his ''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,'' published in 1751. Gray was a Self-criticism, self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet laureate, Poet Laureate in 1757 after the death of Colley Cibber, though he declined. Early life and education Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London. His father, Philip Gray, was a scrivener and his mother, Dorothy Antrobus, was a milliner. He was the fifth of twelve children, and the only one to survive infancy.John D. Baird, 'Gray, Thomas (1716–1771)', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford University Press, 2004Accessed 21 February 2012/ref> An 1803 newspaper article including a biog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd (poet), Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' and "Kubla Khan", as well as the major prose work ''Biographia Literaria''. His critical works were highly influential, especially in relation to William Shakespeare, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking cultures. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including "suspension of disbelief". He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life, Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Poetry
In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to oral tradition, epic poems consist of formal speech and are usually learnt word for word, and are contrasted with narratives that consist of everyday speech where the performer has the license to recontextualize the story to a particular audience, often to a younger generation. Influential epics that have shaped Western literature and culture include Homer's ''Iliad'' and '' Odyssey''; Virgil's '' Aeneid''; and the anonymous '' Beowulf'' and '' Epic of Gilgamesh''. The genre has inspired the adjective '' epic'' as well as derivative works in other mediums (such as epic films) that evoke or emulate the characteristics of epics. Etymology The English word ''epic'' comes from Latin , which itself comes from the Ancient Greek adject ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wife's Lament
"The Wife's Lament" or "The Wife's Complaint" is an Old English poem of 53 lines found on folio 115 of the Exeter Book and generally treated as an elegy in the manner of the German '' frauenlied'', or "women's song". The poem has been relatively well preserved and requires few if any emendations to enable an initial reading. Thematically, the poem is primarily concerned with the evocation of the grief of the female speaker and with the representation of her state of despair. The tribulations she suffers leading to her state of lamentation, however, are cryptically described and have been subject to many interpretations. Indeed, Professor Stephen Ramsay has said, "the 'correct' interpretation of "The Wife's Lament" is one of the more hotly debated subjects in medieval studies." Genre Though the description of the text as a woman's song or ''frauenlied''—lamenting for a lost or absent lover—is the dominant understanding of the poem, the text has nevertheless been subject to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Seafarer (poem)
''The Seafarer'' is an Old English poem giving a first-person account of a man alone on the sea. The poem consists of 124 lines, followed by the single word "Amen". It is recorded only at folios 81 verso – 83 recto of the tenth-century Exeter Book, one of the four surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry. It has most often, though not always, been categorised as an elegy, a poetic genre commonly assigned to a particular group of Old English poems that reflect on spiritual and earthly melancholy. Summary Much scholarship suggests that the poem is told from the point of view of an old seafarer who is reminiscing and evaluating his life as he has lived it. The seafarer describes the desolate hardships of life on the wintry sea. He describes the anxious feelings, cold-wetness, and solitude of the sea voyage in contrast to life on land where men are surrounded by kinsmen, free from dangers, and full on food and wine. The climate on land then begins to resemble that of the wint ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
