Elegy: Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard

 An elegy is a poem of sorrow or mourning for the dead; also, a reflective poem in a solemn or sorrowful mood.  The adjective ‘elegiac’ is used to describe poetry that exhibits the characteristics of an elegy.

Well-known elegies lamenting the death of a particular person include John Milton's Lycidas (Edward King), P.B. Shelley's Adonais (John Keats), Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam (Arthur H. Hallam), and Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (Abraham Lincoln). Perhaps the most famous elegy, Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, is a solemn, meditative poem mourning not the death of a person, but the passing of a way of life. Closely related terms of elegy are monody, threnody, and dirge.

The main characteristics of the

Latin and Foreign Abbreviation and Meaning

 An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, used to represent the full form. It is a broad term that encompasses acronyms (e.g., NASA, SCUBA) and initialisms (e.g., FBI, CIA), although common usage often uses "abbreviation" to encompass all forms of shortening.

An Introduction to the Sonnets of Shakespeare

 Shakespeare wrote a long sonnet-sequence consisting of 154 pieces. These sonnets were written over a number of years and, though there are several strands to impart to them a unity of sorts, they do not have the kind of continuity which one might expect from a collection which has been called a sequence. These sonnets were written during thé years 1592 and 1597 or 1598; but they were not published until 1609, only seven years before Shakespeare's death. They were not published by Shakespeare himself. The publisher was a man called Thomas Thorpe, a literary-minded man who had previously published a number of famous plays, particularly those written by Ben Jonson and Chapman, and who had also published Marlowe's translation of Lucan. Now, this Thomas Thorpe had obtained the manuscripts of the sonnets from one Mr. W.H. but nobody really knows who this Mr. W.H. was.

From Petrarch to Shakespeare: The Evolution of the Sonnet

 The literary form of 'sonnet' is a foreign importation in English literature. The sonnet, as a literary form, in fact, appeared in England as one of the distinct and immediate effects of the Renaissance. A sonnet is a fixed poetic form that originated in Italy in the 13th century. The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto, meaning “a little song.” Traditionally, a sonnet consists of 14 lines written in iambic pentameter and follows a strict rhyme scheme. Despite its brevity, the sonnet is capable of expressing deep emotions, complex ideas, and philosophical reflections.

The Poetic Version of Emily Dickinson

 Emily Dickinson is one of the most original poets in American literature; her genius contribution was recognized only after her death. Though she lived a quiet and secluded life, her poetry shows a powerful and intense imagination. She wrote nearly 1,800 poems, most of which were published after her death. Her work broke away from traditional poetic rules and helped shape modern poetry. When she died in 1886 at Amherst, she left behind more than a thousand unpublished poems. Very few people were aware that she had written them. Some of these poems were mere drafts or ideas written on scraps of paper, while others had been carefully revised. Dickinson had instructed that her poems be destroyed after her death. Although her sister initially began destroying her papers, she soon realized their exceptional value and preserved them. These poems were later given to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and within a few years they were published in several volumes, announcing the arrival of a unique and original American poet.