Home › Glossary › Letter V

Visionary elegy

Genre
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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

An elegy that transcends personal mourning to offer prophetic visions, spiritual revelations, or metaphysical insights on death.

Detailed Definition
A visionary elegy transcends personal mourning to offer prophetic insight, spiritual revelation, or cosmic perspective; it transforms grief into transcendent vision, often invoking myth, mysticism, or apocalyptic imagery to reimagine loss as revelation.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “Lycidas,” Milton’s elegy blends mourning with visionary hope for resurrection; In “Adonais,” Shelley transforms Keats’ death into cosmic vision; In “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman envisions death as part of nature’s cycle; In “Elegy for My Father,” Li-Young Lee merges grief with spiritual vision; Contemporary poet Ocean Vuong’s “Telemachus” turns mourning into mythic vision.
Additional Notes
Visionary elegy: An elegy that transcends mourning to offer spiritual insight or prophetic vision; blends grief with revelation; seen in works by Shelley or Rilke.
Also Known As
Prophetic elegy Apocalyptic lament Revelation dirge Mystical mourning
Skip to main content