Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

39 results found

elegy

(Encyclopedia)elegy, in Greek and Roman poetry, a poem written in elegiac verse (i.e., couplets consisting of a hexameter line followed by a pentameter line). The form dates back to 7th cent. b.c. in Greece and poe...

Watson, Sir William

(Encyclopedia)Watson, Sir William, 1858–1935, English poet. His first great success was Wordsworth's Grave (1890), followed by a meditative elegy on Tennyson, Lachrymae Musarum (1892). He is also remembered for s...

Tickell, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Tickell, Thomas tĭkˈəl [key], 1686–1740, English poet and translator. A contributor of verse to the Spectator, he was a friend of Addison, for whom he wrote a fine elegy (1721). His translation o...

graveyard school

(Encyclopedia)graveyard school, 18th-century school of English poets who wrote primarily about human mortality. Often set in a graveyard, their poems mused on the vicissitudes of life, the solitude of death and the...

Tibullus

(Encyclopedia)Tibullus (Albius Tibullus) tĭbŭlˈəs [key], c.55? b.c.–19 b.c., Roman elegiac poet, b. Pedum, near Praeneste. Probably of the equestrian order, he was a friend of Messala, whom he accompanied on ...

Propertius, Sextus

(Encyclopedia)Propertius, Sextus sĕkˈstəs prōpûrˈshəs [key], c.50 b.c.–c.16 b.c., Roman elegiac poet, b. Umbria. He was a member of the circle of Maecenas. A master of the Latin elegy, he wrote with vigor,...

Drake, Joseph Rodman

(Encyclopedia)Drake, Joseph Rodman, 1795–1820, American poet and satirist, b. New York City. Under the name “The Croakers,” he and his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote a series of light satirical verses for t...

Halleck, Fitz-Greene

(Encyclopedia)Halleck, Fitz-Greene hălˈĭk [key], 1790–1867, American poet, b. Guilford, Conn. He was joint author, with Joseph Rodman Drake, of the humorous lampoons “Croaker Papers,” most of which were pr...

Hofmann, Hans

(Encyclopedia)Hofmann, Hans, 1880–1966, American painter, b. Germany. After earning a considerable reputation as a teacher in Munich, Hofmann moved permanently to the United States in 1930. He opened his own scho...

poetry

(Encyclopedia)poetry. For lyric poetry, see ballad; elegy; hymn; lyric; ode; pastoral; sonnet. For narrative poetry, see chansons de geste; epic; idyl; romance. Dramatic poetry is incidentally treated in the articl...

Browse by Subject