Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Alexander Pope
- First Published: 1717
- Type of Work: Elegy
- Genres: Poetry, Elegy
- Subjects: Love or romance, Suicide, Ghosts or apparitions, England or English people, Eighteenth century, Women, Death or dying, Life and death
The Poem
“Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady” is a melancholy, emotion-charged poem of eighty-two lines, involving a poet’s celebration of his lady, who committed suicide because her guardian thwarted their love. As an elegy, the poem follows the conventions of the genre in its effusive praise of a young, prematurely deceased person whose foreshortened life serves as an inspiration to present and future generations.
The elegy opens with a male poet who beholds his beloved’s ghost with a sword piercing her bleeding heart. He addresses her, until line 74,...
[The entire page is 1455 words long]
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