ENGL200A Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Elegy
23 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
Titles connoting aspects of the human condition make the experience of reading the. Narrator speaks of a man and his journey through his share of winters in the world and the reader joins the wanderer as he endures loss, isolation and weariness to the ultimate pursuit of healing. Just as the narrator cannot explicitly say healing is possible", nor can the presence of healing in this poem be fully or formally explained. Chiaroscuro - the use of opposing emotions in poetry and prose - supports the themes of endurance and healing, and, true to its name, brings forth light from darkness. The poem itself takes the form of a lament or elegy in that the overwhelming majority of the poem is devoted to mourning the experience of living. Themes of endurance and healing present themselves ultimately in the reference of heaven as the safe home that awaits us all (115).
