In addition to lamenting the dead, the main purpose of the pastoral
elegies in question, amely John Milton's Lycidas, Percy Bysshe Shelley's
Adonais, and Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam, is to present the poets'
reflections on death and immprtality. The pastoral elegiac poets,
however, do not believe death is a situation of complete destruction.
After a period of meditation, they find that death is the door leading to
immortality. This thesis explores the process of death and rebirth; in
other words, itdeals with the reactions of the poets confronting with
death, their reluctant acceptance of it, and finally, their assertions of
the immortality of the soul.
Chapter I introduces two elements of the pastoral elegy: its poetic beauty
and serious topics. Among the serious topics, the horror of death, the
spiritual immprtality abd the consolation of heaven are the poers' main
concerns.
Chapter II offers A) a sketch about the development of the pastoral elegy
and B) an over-all evaluation of the achievements of the three pastoral
elegies within that tradition.
Chapter III introduces briefly the lives of the prematurely dead poets and
the theme of the premature dead poets and its poetic response.
Chapter IV explores how Miltion, Shelley, and Tennyson use muths to
express their viewpoints about death and rebirth.
Chapter V discusses how Milton, Shelley, and Tennyson escape from the
pressure of death and assert the final triumph of immprtality over death.