e 1.7 english literature( elegies)

This quiz is contributed by Smt Suneela Jyotsna, MA, M.Ed, NET

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Notes for reference:

1. What is the elegy written by Ben Jonson?
   On My First sonne.
   FB: On my First Sonne’ is one of the short elegies in the English Language, written by Ben Jonson for his son Benjamin, who died aged seven. Ben Jonson is the contemporary of Shakespeare. He was well known for his satirical plays. He popularised the comedy of humours. His famous works are ‘The Alchemist, Volpone, or the Fox, Every man in his humour’.
2. W. H.Auden’s ‘Stop all the clocks’ is also known as
   Funeral Blues
   FB: ‘Stop all the clocks‘ is one of Auden’s ‘Twelve Songs’ originally published in 1936. It was recited in the funeral in the film ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, 1994.
3. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’, the most celebrated Elegy is written in memory of __
   A. Arthur Henry Hallam
   FB: Arthur Henry Hallam was Tennyson’s friend and also a poet. He died at the age of 22. Tennyson dedicated the most popular poems to Hallam ( In memoriam) and stated that the dramatic monologue Ulysses was “ more written with the feeling of Hallam’s loss. Tennyson also named his elder son after his late friend.
4. Who wrote the famous Elegy “O Captain, My Captain” on the death of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln?
   Walt Whitman
5. ‘Elegy Written in the Country Churchyard’ is written by _
   Thomas Gray
   FB: Elegy Written in the Country Churchyard was originally titled as ‘ Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-Yard’. The poem is an elegy in name but not in form; it employs a style similar to that of contemporary odes, but it embodies a meditation on death. The poem is believed to be written about the poet Richard West(died on 1742), though the poem was written in 1950. The narrator finds comfort in pondering the lives of the obscure rustics buried in the churchyard.
6. What is the first elegy written in English Literature written in the late fourteenth Century?
   Pearl.
   FB: Pearl is a late 14th-Century Middle English Poem that is considered one of the most important surviving Middle English works.It is dream vision genre. A father, mourning the loss of his “perle”(pearl), falls asleep inn a garden; in his dream he encounters the ‘Pearl-maiden’.
7. What is an Elegy?
   Lament for a departed beloved or tragic event.
   The word Elegy is borrowed from Middle French ‘elegie, from Latin ‘elegia’, from Greek elegeia, which means ‘a mournful poem or song’. It can be a lyric with poetic machinery.
8. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Adonais’ is written on the death of the Romantic poet,_
   B. John Keats
9. Who is the author of the poem given below.
   “This dog and man at first were friends;
   But when a pique began,
   The dog, to gain some private ends,
   Went mad and bit the man.”
   Ans. Oliver Goldsmith
   FB: An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog’ is written by Irish poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith, is about a rabid dog that bites a man, and the effect that this act of violence has on the people of London. Oliver Goldsmith is the writer of the famous play ‘She Stoops to Conquer’, ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’, ‘The Deserted Village’, ‘The Good-Natur’d Man’.
10. The famous Elegy written by Mathew Arnold is____
    Thrysis
    FB: Thrysis is a poem witten by Mathew Arnold to commemorate his friend, the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, who died at the age of 42. We are often confused with Arthur Hugh Clough, Arthur Henry Hallam and W.H.Auden.
    Poem Poet In memory of
    Thrysis — Mathew Arnold — Arthur Hugh Clough
    In memorium — Alfred Lord Tennyson —Arthur Henry Hallam
    ‘In Memory of W.B.Yeats’ —W.H.Auden — William Butler Yeats
11. ‘A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a late Famous General’ written by Jonathan Swift is also the writer of the famous work.
    Gulliver’s Travels
    FB: Jonathan Swift is regarded as the foremost prose satirist in the English language by Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was an Anglo-Irish satirist. In this Elegy Swift ironically describes the life and death of a dishonourable, recently deceased, duke.
12. The famous metaphysical poet John Milton penned an elegy on _. Identify the elegy from the given list.
    Lycidas
    FB: Lycidas is a pastoral elegy written in the memory of Edward Kind, Milton’s friend at Cambridge who drowned when his ship sank in the Irish Sea off the coast of Wales in August 1637.
13. ‘When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, is an elegy written by Walt Whitman. Who’s death is celebrated in this poem?
    Abraham Lincoln.
    FB: Walt Whitman is an American poet, who is the father of the free verse. His profound love for national unity made him love Lincoln. Whitman was moved at the death of the great leader Abraham Lincoln and wrote the famous poems ‘O Captain, My Captain’ and ‘When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’.
14. An imaginary Elegy which celebrates the death of the poet, herself is_____
    Emily Dickenson — ‘Because I Could not stop for Death’
    FB: Emily Dickenson is an American poet, not much was known during her life. All her poems brought to light posthumously.
15. ‘In Memory of W.B.Yeats’ is a famous elegy written by __
    W.H.Auden
    FB: W.H.Auden’s powerful elegy written in the wake of Yeat’s death in 1939 is his finest commemoration of another poet. The closing lines of Auden’s poem is inscribed on his own memorial stone in Westminster Abbey:
    “In the prison of his days,
    Teach the free man how to praise.”