ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Lycidas, poem by John Milton, written in 1637 for inclusion in a volume of elegies published in 1638 to commemorate the death of Edward King, Milton’s contemporary at the University of Cambridge who had drowned in a shipwreck in August 1637.

Detailed explanation-2: -Written by John Milton, “Lycidas” is a pastoral elegy that first appeared in a 1638 collection of elegies in English and Latin entitled Justa Edouardo King Naufrago. Lycidas serves as Milton’s commemoration of his Cambridge college mate, Edward King, who drowned when his ship sank off the coast of Wales in August 1637.

Detailed explanation-3: -Genre. Lycidas is a pastoral elegy, a genre initiated by Theocritus, also put to famous use by Virgil and Spenser.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Lycidas of Theocritus and Virgil bears some strong similarities to Milton’s schoolmate King. By calling him Lycidas, Milton is drawing attention to the fact that King was himself a budding poet, and a good one at that. But Milton also draws attention to himself as a poet.

Detailed explanation-5: -Lycidas is a pastoral elegy written on the death of Milton’s classmate Edward King who drowned in a shipwreck in the Iris Sea in which he has expressed his tribute to his friend using the elegiac form popularised by the Greek poet Theocritus and Virgil.