Questions and answers about "elegy" - Corrections

[sumon.]

Hi everyone.

One of our teachers asked this question(to all) : What is the full title of "elegy"? And the answer was: The full tittle of the poem is "Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard". My question is that whether the question and answer are asked and given accurately? I think the question was asked wrongly. Is there a definite article(the) needed before 'elegy'?
I have got another question in the same topic. The question is : What is an elegy? My answer was : Elegy is a poem of mourning............................. . I gave the answer without 'an' . I think though 'elegy' is a countable noun I gave the definition so I can omit the article. Would it be considered wrong?

Thanks a lot.

 

[5jj]

A better question would have been: What is the full title of 'Gray's Elegy'?

You have made your answer in the form of a full sentence, so the article is needed.

 

[emsr2d2]

If the question is just "What is the full title of Elegy?", that assumes that the listener knows what Elegy actually is. I would use "What is the full title of the poem Elegy?" or "What is the full title of Gray's poem Elegy?"

 

[Walt Whitman]

English teacher

Hi, sumon.
A more complete definition of "elegy" may help you.
Greek elegèia; èlegos, i.e. “mournful poem”. Until the 17[SUP]th[/SUP] century the term “elegy” was used to refer to any poem whose theme was solemn meditation. Since then, it has been applied to poems in which the speaker laments the death of a person or the loss of something he valued. Usually gently melancholic in tone rather than an expression of violent grief. It may also be a lament over the passing of life and beauty or a meditation on the nature of death.One of the greatest elegies in English is Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam. The elegiac (or heroic) quatrain (a four-line stanza) in English verse is iambic pentameter rhyming alternately, as in Gray’s Elegy.
WW