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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.
Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example: AH0 TH IY1 N AH0 = a-THEE-na (Athena)
The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.
Quick Definition
A formal or lyrical poem that mourns the dead, reflects on mortality, or contemplates loss, often blending sorrow with consolation or praise.
Explore this topic in depth (5)
The Elegy: Poetry of Loss, Memory and Address
— An elegy is a poem shaped by loss: it attends to someone or something absent, and asks what it means to remember. This guide explores its long history, changing forms and sounds, from intimate mourning to public grief.
Death and Mortality in Poetry
— Poetry has long given people ways to face death: with sorrow, prayer, anger, wit, tenderness and attention to the living world. This guide explores mortality as a broad theme, from elegy and remembrance to ageing, doubt and the music of silence.
Memento Mori: Poetry and the Reminder of Death
— Memento mori poetry asks readers to remember that life is finite. This guide explores the tradition’s history, imagery, forms, and emotional range, with practical ways to read poems about death without reducing them to gloom.
Love Poetry
— From the courtly conventions of the troubadours to the plain-spoken intimacy of modern verse, love poetry has never stopped changing shape. This guide traces its history and offers practical ways to read it closely.
Victorian Poetry
— Victorian poetry developed during a period of rapid social, scientific and industrial change. It includes intimate lyrics, public arguments, narrative poems and unsettling dramatic speakers, rather than a single uniform style.
Detailed Definition
Elegy is a meditative poem lamenting the dead or reflecting on mortality, often moving from grief through consolation to affirmation; evolving from classical pastoral conventions (e.g., Theocritus) to modern personal forms (e.g., Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”), it balances sorrow with lyrical dignity.
Example
Example in poetry:
Milton’s “Lycidas” mourns a drowned friend with pastoral conventions and divine consolation; W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” blends public and personal grief in modern elegiac form; Mary Jo Bang’s “Elegy” reimagines the genre through contemporary grief and pop culture; Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Duino Elegies” transform personal sorrow into metaphysical meditation; Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me” functions as an elegy for silenced Black women’s voices; Dylan Thomas’s “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London” subverts traditional elegiac closure.
Additional Notes
Elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically mourning the dead; classical elegies use elegiac couplets (dactylic hexameter + pentameter), while modern elegies (e.g., by Hardy or Heaney) often use free verse and focus on personal grief.