Concept

Elegiac couplet

Summary
The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic couplet, each pair of lines usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work. Each couplet consists of a dactylic hexameter verse followed by a dactylic pentameter verse. The following is a graphic representation of its scansion: – uu | – uu | – uu | – uu | – uu | – x – uu | – uu | – || – uu | – uu | – – is one long syllable, u one short syllable, uu is one long or two short syllables, and x is one long or one short syllable (anceps). The form was felt by the ancients to contrast the rising action of the first verse with a falling quality in the second. The sentiment is summarized in a line from Ovid's Amores I.1.27 Sex mihi surgat opus numeris, in quinque residat—"Let my work rise in six steps, fall back in five." The effect is illustrated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as: In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column, In the pentameter aye falling in melody back. translating Friedrich Schiller, Im Hexameter steigt des Springquells silberne Säule, Im Pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch herab. The elegiac couplet is presumed to be the oldest Greek form of epodic poetry (a form where a later verse is sung in response or comment to a previous one). Scholars, who even in the past did not know who created it, theorize the form was originally used in Ionian dirges, with the name "elegy" derived from the Greek ε, λεγε ε, λεγε—"Woe, cry woe, cry!" Hence, the form was used initially for funeral songs, typically accompanied by an aulos, a double-reed wind instrument. Archilochus expanded use of the form to treat other themes, such as war, travel, and homespun philosophy. Between Archilochus and other imitators, the verse form became a common poetic vehicle for conveying any strong emotion.
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Related concepts (16)
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso (ˈpuːbliʊs ɔˈwɪdiʊs ˈnaːso; 21 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid (ˈɒvɪd ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life.
Elegy
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".
Metre (poetry)
In poetry, metre (Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody. (Within linguistics, "prosody" is used in a more general sense that includes not only poetic metre but also the rhythmic aspects of prose, whether formal or informal, that vary from language to language, and sometimes between poetic traditions.
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