Table of ContentsSummaryIntroductionWorks CitedSummaryThis article will explore the role of narrative in the funeral elegy, particularly in John Milton's Lycidas and argue that the elegy is intended to be an address public; it is a mourning which must be distinguished from mourning. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe author uses the following point to support the idea: The Lycidas elegy is a case of poetic genre in which the speech public intersects with a private monologue based on the concept of narrator by Gerald Prince. This concept is also a formation of dissonance created from the distance between the speaker and the audience. The traditional level, Lycidas is called a monody, or a dirge sung by one, is misleading and should be reconsidered because there is a narrator who addresses multiple audiences and the narrator-to-narrator forms indicate that the poem does not It is not a monological discourse that Bakhtin's theory of writing presumes. Multiple addresses complicate any effort to identify a single narrator. In Lycidas, the narrator is, to a large extent, the “ungrateful muse,” the infanticidal mother of Orpheus who kills her son while ignoring him because he is the unrecognized prodigal son. Because of the role reversal, the speech is both a lament and a threat. Thus, the article concludes that the relationship between the narrator and the narrator gives us a political and ideological dimension of the elegy, a public discourse that deals with more than a community issue. contemplation of death.IntroductionThis article focuses on the role of narrative in the funeral elegy. To begin with, the concept of narrator has been explored in depth by Gerald Prince from a narratological perspective. Narratology is primarily concerned with narrative patterns in fiction. In this regard, any attempt to apply to poetry the terminology commonly used in reference to fiction (and prose) seems problematic. Differences or similarities between genres must be taken into account in order to place the discussion of the narrator in the elegy in its proper perspective. The current trend relies heavily on Bakhtin's study of the structure of the novel. In the Dialogical Imagination, Bakhtin created a kind of dichotomy between the monological (poetry) and the dialogical. The novel becomes the place of dialogic discourse par excellence. But how valid is a healthy distinction between genres within which there is so much diversity? Isn't Bakhtin creating a dichotomy that places little importance on the possibility of polyphony in specific texts, regardless of their formal classification? Perhaps it is time to view a literary work not as a predetermined product cast in a deterministic mold, but as a dynamic system that transcends the dominant assumptions meant to define its identity. Formal definitions may simply be external to the composition of the text since we cannot expect the reader to know exactly what the author intended to write without falling into the trap of intentional error. Certainly, readers from different backgrounds can “hear” different voices in a text. Readers introduced to a particular literary environment may find the prosodic features that they have been trained to recognize and detect. In this regard, how do Bakhtin-influenced readers (in today's academia) relate to the diversity of voices in a poem, having somehow accepted that it is monological in nature? Can we really persuade them that there is more than one voice in a poem? Certainly, a discussionon the Bakhtinian theory of narrative is not the real objective of this article. In fact, I'm referring to Bakhtin here more as a reference point for the dichotomy between fiction and poetry – so he can be a sort of excuse to enter into the debate about genre boundaries. The aim is not to make the difference in form absolutely relative but to challenge the idea that narrative is essentially a characteristic of fiction, that the dialogic and the imaginary are in some way correlated. The real task is to show that the elegy is a case of poetic genre in which public discourse intersects with private monologue. In fact, by its nature, the elegy is meant to be a public address. This is mourning, which must be distinguished from mourning. Milton’s “Lycidas” is a good example. As part of civic protocol, it expresses a deep philosophical attitude toward death: humans share a common bond in the face of the possibility of death. Yet as a personal statement of sincere grief, it is unconvincing. The distance between the speaker and the audience is such that it creates a form of dissonance. The implied audience seems peripheral to the discourse that runs through the text. Perhaps the flowery (pastoral) nature of the poem masks an anxiety rooted in the disconnect between speaker and audience. So who is the speaker addressing? The time has come to place the traditional notions of speaker and audience in a different perspective. What do these concepts imply for the discussion of narrative elements? This question is quite important considering New Criticism's extensive use of speaker-audience phraseology in reference to poetic analysis. At this level it is useful to introduce the study of Gerald Prince's concept of narrator in order to examine to what extent it is applicable. is in the elegy. Prince begins with the relationship between author and reader. It refers to three common categories of drives: the real drive, the virtual (implicit) drive, and the ideal drive. The intriguing idea is the distinction between the virtual drive and the ideal drive. As Prince says, the ideal reader is a reflection of the writer: “one who would perfectly understand and fully approve of the smallest of his words, the most subtle of his intentions”. So there would be no risk of intentional error if we could communicate with the reader of the idea. On the other hand, the virtual reader resides outside the writer's narcissistic impulse. The writer conceptualizes this reader as the other who has the skills to read the text, a presence there, a potential reader and critic. This distinction is far from clear, and Prince adds to the ambiguity: "the virtual reader and the narratee may look alike, but again this would be an exception." This narrator is an even more striking concept. Prince himself acknowledges that "few critics have examined the narrator and none to date have undertaken an in-depth study." He goes on to say that the “advanced” stage of narrative consciousness now makes it necessary to go beyond the basic concept of authorship. Readers generally know that the author of a novel is not the narrator. However, the receptive dimension of the novel is rarely mentioned. Prince attributes this lack of curiosity about the “person” addressed to the subtle or ambiguous nature of the narrator. The narrator is unlikely to be a hero, "unless we include narrators who constitute their own narrators." In a word, the action belongs to the narrator, the discursive line too. So what is the role of the narrator? Does it determine the structure or content of the story in any way? As stated previously, the narrator appears to bemore receptive; its movements often result from the narrator's actions or words. The narrator generally does what he wants, at least from what we hear. But this relationship does not always mean unilateral determinism. Prince points out that "after all, the individual who tells a story and the person to whom the story is told are more or less interdependent in any narrative." In some interesting cases, the narrator can determine the outcome of the story by imposing his or her expectations on the narrator. The story of Scheherazade highlights this aspect: “Scheherazade must exercise her talent as a storyteller or die; as long as she is able to keep the Caliph's attention with her stories, she will not be executed. But is this apparent role reversal typical? How is it relevant to the elegy? Returning to “Lycidas,” the poem is called a monody, or a “dirge sung by a bachelor.” This traditional label is misleading and should be reconsidered. There is a narrator who addresses several audiences. The shift from narrator to narratee indicates that the poem is not the linear, monological discourse that Bakhtinian theory of writing presumes. This alternation of audiences brings a multitude of characters to observe the occasion. In a way, the poem is no longer a funeral song, but a social and political event which concerns not only the human condition, a philosophical debate but also the state of human affairs. As Sacks notes, "conventional questioning is to a large extent designed not only to avoid potential self-accusation, but also to create fictitious addresses, substituting the pretense of temporary absence for suspicion of permanent nonexistence or neglect." ". This fictionalization can help us define elegy within a narratological framework without forcing the relativist formula according to which all genres function in the same way. Sacks argues that Milton is essentially weaving a dream that will come true at the end of the poem. The journey through the various picaresque scenes frames mourning in a chimerical quest that amounts to a “wish-fulfilling dream.” The end of the poem clearly illustrates this point: And now the sun has spread all the hills, And now it has fallen into the western bay. At last he rose and twisted his cloak into blue: Tomorrow to fresh woods and new pastures. the anaphora in the first lines indicates the public setting of the delivery of this funeral oration. But, like the shepherd's layman, this passage is supposed to be an insert in the narrator's speech. It nevertheless has a fictional air: without being the resurrection of Lycidas in itself, it implies the possibility of such an event. Sacks refers to this conclusion as the way in which the romance concludes the "larger narrative." The poem is populated by shepherds, mythological places, satyrs and fauns, a scene “illuminated by the light of unreality”. For Sacks, this fictionalization is a way “of both indulging in one’s memories of the past and of death and of distancing them.” Thus, the multiple addresses complicate any effort to identify a single narrator, that is, a person to whom the story is constantly being told. This difficulty persists as long as we continue to consider the poem as an autonomous text, practically autonomous, whatever the ambitions and designs of the author. This (essentially) new critical approach limits the analysis to the speaker and the audience. Where is the person being spoken to in these lines? Once again, O you laurels, and once more, you brown myrtles, with ivy never sere, I come to gather your hard and coarse berries. And with crude forced fingers Break your leaves before the yeargentle. Is it enough to call this trope a personalization by which nature receives human qualities? Is there anyone who is supposed to hear this complaint? Would this person be supernatural or human? Struggling with the receiver of this address begins the narrator's quest, which can take us beyond the autonomous nature of the poem. In this regard, Prince observes that narrators have characteristics like everyone else in terms of physical, moral and intellectual profile. In the case of Scheherazade discussed above, the narrator is a capricious and autocratic overlord who exercises infinite control over the narrator's life. In “Lycidas,” the narrator is, to a large extent, the “ungrateful Muse,” the infanticidal mother of Orpheus who kills her son by ignoring him. Lycidas is the little-known prodigal son. Sacks interprets Milton's conceptualization of the person (subject) thus: "The poem must mourn the loss of Lycidas and its own loss of belief in the protection of the Muses, particularly that of Lycidas.Calliope, the mother of Orpheus. The tragedy of Orpheus results in part from Calliope's lack of interest. With the narrator being the negligent protector, the narrator identifies with Lycidas because he seems to be risking the same fate. Sacks points out that "the cruel interruption of a career prompts the poet to question his own defense against mortality and to redefine the possible consideration, if any, of his own ascetic pursuits." As a result, Milton reconsiders his asceticism by reflecting on the sublimated eroticism of his lifestyle. This issue of (im)mortality is a correlate of the “pleasure principle” (as Eagleton puts it), the postponement of self-indulgence. Waiting eroticizes the source of pleasure, which becomes an essential point of reference (in daydreams and recursive fantasies). Milton’s drawing in writing “Lycidas” was almost a “carpe diem” gesture. In his letter to Diodata (apparently a frequent reference), he reflects on his purpose in writing this elegy: “You ask me what I'm thinking about? So can Divinity help me, immortality?'. This secret openness to personal ambition, narcissism and opportunism makes the notion of a narrator even more intriguing. Can we look beyond the mythical muse to find a more likely narrator to whom Milton addresses the narrator's lament? The phrase “Such, Lycidas, thy loss to the shepherd's ear” clearly places Lycidas' death in terms of his loss to the listener. Or the one who speaks, for that matter: the shepherd is the solitary man who broods over the news of the day, the desolation of nature. In light of Milton's own expectations of what the poem would mean for his career. If the shepherd is the listener, then the narrator makes him understand the implications of the poet's death for the mood of the community. The narrator would lose the privilege of having access to the manifestation of poetic genius. The shepherd will live a private life of art in the absence of the son of the muse. The careless shepherd will contemplate this greater loss at his own expense, without the comfort of tears (as Richard Wright said of the bankers' daughters who would read his native son): Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more; you are the genie of the shore, in your great reward, and you will be good to all who wander in this perilous flood. The roles are therefore reversed. Even though the shepherds have the power to ignore and neglect Lycidas, they are the ones who stand to lose the most after his death. The speech is therefore both a lament and a threat. Thus, the relationship between narrator and narratee gives us insight into the political and ideological dimensions of the elegy, a public discourse that deals with more than a communal contemplation of death. In "Lycidas", the narrator controls the present with the ».