“A Global Web of Elegies”

Abstract Is the elegy global? To wrestle with this impossibly large question, can we approach it intrinsically by searching within for traces of genre’s worldwide reach? A contemporary that serve as a portal to globality is Edward Hirsch’s book-length Gabriel (2014), lament poet’s son weaves global web elegies, citing more than dozen mourning poets from classical and Edo Japan, medieval, Renaissance, Romantic Britain, Renaissance Poland, nineteenth-century Germany France, twentieth-century Italy, Russia, India. Though not comprehensive, gathering makes visible elegy’s resonances, divergences, scope.