Mourning and Remembrance: The Art of Elegy

In Memoriam A.H.H. is a long elegiac poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written in memory of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly at the age of 22.

Lycidas is an elegy written by John Milton to commemorate the death of Edward King, a fellow poet who drowned at sea in 1637.

Adonais is an elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley to commemorate the death of his friend John Keats, who died of tuberculosis in 1821.

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be is an elegiac sonnet written by John Keats, expressing his fear of his own mortality.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night is an elegy written by Dylan Thomas to his dying father.

The traditional meter of an elegy is iambic pentameter, a meter consisting of five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables.

Apostrophe is a poetic device in which the speaker directly addresses a person, object, or abstract concept that is not present or cannot respond.

The purpose of an elegy is to express grief and loss, to celebrate a life, and to offer comfort and solace to the bereaved.

While mortality, nature, and love are common themes in elegies, hope is not typically a prominent theme.

While Shakespeare, Milton, and Shelley are all known for writing elegies, Wordsworth is not typically associated with this genre.

All the Bright Places is a contemporary young adult novel that deals with themes of grief, loss, and suicide.

Lacrimosa is a movement from Mozart's Requiem Mass that is often performed at funerals and memorial services.

The Pieta is a sculpture by Michelangelo that depicts the Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.

Giselle is a ballet that tells the story of a young woman who dies of a broken heart and returns as a ghost to haunt her lover.

Schindler's List is a film that tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of over a thousand Jews during the Holocaust.