Elegy vs. Dirge

Main Difference

The main difference between Elegy and Dirge is that the Elegy is a literary genre and Dirge is a song that expresses lament or grief.

• Elegy

  In English literature, an elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead. The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy notes:

  For all of its pervasiveness, however, the ‘elegy’ remains remarkably ill-defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead.

• Dirge

  A dirge is a somber song or lament expressing mourning or grief, such as would be appropriate for performance at a funeral. The English word dirge is derived from the Latin Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam (“Direct my way in your sight, O Lord my God”), the first words of the first antiphon in the Matins of the Office for the Dead, created on basis of Psalms 5:8 (5:9 in Vulgate). The original meaning of dirge in English referred to this office.

  A Christian funeral lament from the Cleveland area of north-east Yorkshire is known as the Lyke Wake Dirge. It’s associated with the Lyke Wake Walk, a 40-mile challenge walk across the moorlands of north-east Yorkshire, as the members’ anthem of the Lyke Wake Club, a society whose members are those who have completed the walk within 24 hours.

• Dirge (noun)

  a lament for the dead, especially one forming part of a funeral rite.

• Dirge (noun)

  a mournful song, piece of music, or sound

  “singers chanted dirges”

  “the wind howled dirges around the chimney”

• Dirge (noun)

  a song or piece of music that is considered too slow, miserable, or boring

  “after his ten-minute dirge, the audience booed”