The poetry elegy was defined as a formal composition, as a poem painful expression of regret, everything that represents pain for losses or actions unexpected life as illusions, the time, lost love or loved ones lost in the death, the feeling itself of loss and pain.
The elegy comes from the Greek "ἐλεγεία", passing into Latin as "elegeia" that defines a quality in the term élegos that gives a meaning of sad song. Being a combination of two varieties of verses, a pentameter that is composed of a long syllable lasting twice as long as the two short syllables that follow it and the hexameter that is formed with a dactyl and a spondeus.
In the Middle Ages, writers only wrote to death and it was known as a dirge or planto the funeral elegy and was used as a public poem for the death of a person of public power. This lyrical composition is recognized for its melancholic tone, because not only human losses such as love also took center stage in wars, defeats and catastrophes.
It has been a subgenre of lyrical poetry which they also used, although on few occasions to show joy, which was the case that some Greek and Latin poets did, but its central idea is pain, which being a synonym for complaint, the elegy was It has been transforming through time but continues to maintain its essence in modern literature, using more current words or verses but still demonstrating the tragic life of a person. Remembering that the Greek elegies are very sad giving more strength to a time with too much melancholic power, extolling an era mired in pain and loss.
At that time writers such as Solón, Theogonías, Mimnermo, Calino and Semònides stood out. As Latin are Propercio, Tibulo and Ovidio, the latter was a poet of the Roman time, he adapted Greek mythological stories to Latin culture, being famous for his letters from lovers and for his poem "Tristia" that speaks of his exile from ancient Rome.
