Lycidas

This paper focuses on the role of the narratee in the funeral elegy. To start, the concept of the narratee has been most deeply explored by Gerald Prince from a narratological perspective. Narratology is primary concerned with narrative patterns in fiction. In this regard, any attempt to apply the terminology commonly used in reference to fiction (and prose) to poetry seems problematic. One has to account for the differences or the similarities between the genres …

…the previous life of a dead poet also pleads for himself, seeks visibility through public discourse. In the context of the scarcity of patronage for poets in the seventeenth-century, a poet like Milton had reason to make such a plea by appealing to the puritanical instincts of an audience that would identify with a chaste genius who died in his integrity. The convoluted metaphor of purity is indeed a "wish-fulfilling dream" as Sacks points out (100).