English Literature / Unit 1 ENL 0032 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Elegy and Pastoral Elegy
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The idea
An elegy is a poem of mourning or serious reflection, usually for a death. The pastoral elegy mourns through shepherds and rural landscape: it invokes the Muse, shows nature grieving, questions death, and ends in consolation. Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais" and Arnold's "Thyrsis" belong to it.
In practice
Mourning, then consolation.
Where people slip
The shepherds are poets in disguise.
Your place on the trail
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