The Poetic Life-Form: An Analysis on the Role of Elegy and Form in In Memoriam

Abstract

What is the role of elegy? Can literary works preserve the memory of a person, moment, or time that has been lost? Or, is this simply a feeble attempt to console those suffering from grief and loss? Alfred Lord Tennyson explores these questions in his work In Memoriam A.H.H. The heart of the work, as in any elegy, is mourning a loss and preserving the memory of that loss. Jesse Oak Taylor works specifically with the idea of elegy and what it does for our ecologically conscious society through the Anthropocene. He argues that we cannot actually experience the concept of species; we only ever experience impressions of it. Thus in order to cope, society uses elegy as a form of expression to process extinction and preserve an image (228). In a similar fashion, cantos fifty-four to fifty-seven of In Memoriam exemplify Tennyson’s use of elegy and evolutionary concepts, but instead of mourning a “species” the poet mourns the loss of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. More than that, these cantos represent Tennyson’s desperate attempt to move beyond preservation of Hallam’s memory. Through In Memoriam, Tennyson attempts to recreate and clone the memory of Hallam, using the elegiac form to perpetuate his friend’s life and existence. His resulting work is not a sterile clone, but an act of cultural reproduction and the birth of a new life-form through literature.