Talk:Lament

Latest comment: 5 months ago by RMCD bot in topic Move discussion in progress

Odyssey edit

I can't think of a lament in the Odyssey. Is there one? Several in the Iliad, I know. Andrew Dalby 19:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

In Book 8, where Odysseus is in Antinuous' castle and the blind bard, Demodocus, is singing Odysseus' story and of the Trojan war. The tale is captivating but also sad, causing Odysseus to cry. That would probably be the most evident lament in The Odyssey. --GParan (talk) 19:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'd say that the whole freakin thing is a lament, I mean look at it: his life sucks. That seems pretty lamentable to me. Not to mention, isn't Odysseus the speaker?--Agreatguy6 21:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, two possible answers. A "lament" (as a literary genre) is a poem composed and performed to mourn someone who has just died; that's how I understand it, anyway, and that's why I said there are some laments incorporated in the Iliad (for example, Andromache's lament for Hector) but none in the Odyssey.
But the article is just a stub as yet; whoever develops it may have a different view of what laments can be, so I'll leave it as it is. Thanks! Andrew Dalby 20:26, 23 March 2008 (UTC)Reply

Popular laments in history edit

There ought to be a section including popular laments, in English but also sampling other cultures which used laments (if any). I find encyclopedic value in this, as I'm told by English scholars that the English language is one of the very few that actually attempt to rhyme in song and lyric. Laments are, in my opinion, the epitome of rhyme and I don't suspect many other cultures created them.

Example: Here I sit, broken hearted. Tried to shit, but only farted.

This one is wildly popular across all English speaking cultures, and due to its use of vulgarity has over a dozen derivatives.

This article may also be linked with There once was a man from Nantucket, and the article on limericks. Perhaps this particular lament above should also earn its own article Here I sit, broken hearted.

Discuss? ~ Agvulpine (talk) 05:59, 24 July 2008 (UTC)Reply


Absolutely not. In order to justify the addition of such a section, a clearly written, coherent fact-referencing written outline describing its merit in detail would have had to have been submitted to Wikipedia. The paragraph fragment above that was presented to Wiki does not fulfill the necessary criteria. Also, notwithstanding, is the fact that "'x' subject in popular culture" is meta and does not, in any way, add to the encyclopaedic value of the entry.

As for the request's validity, I will make note of the following: Who are these mysterious "English Scholars" and what institution(s) do they belong to? What does "I am going to sample other cultures" mean - is that the writer's vague personal slang for "scientific method"? A limerick must be 5 lines, or it is not a limerick. Opinion is not fact. Suspicion is not fact, either. Lamentations, by nature do not contain humor, or vulgarities.

Lines 2 and 5 ("...sampling other cultures which used laments (if any).", "...and I don't suspect many other cultures created them.") are ambiguous statements in that I cannot tell if he is referring to the Lament in its contemporary sense, or its use in the supremacist culture known as "Popular".

In referring to the contemporary, there is obvious evidence of Lamentation in cultures other than English: The Vedas of India, The Talmud of the Semitic peoples, and even in the Drum music of of the American Aboriginal peoples.

The comment made about English being elite in its use of rhyme is false and supremacist. Oxford dictionary describes rhyme as:

noun 1 correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when used in poetry. 2 a short poem with rhyming lines. 3 rhyming poetry or verse. 4 a word with the same sound as another.

verb 1 (of a word, syllable, or line) have or end with a sound that corresponds to another. 2 (rhyme with) put (a word) together with (another word with a corresponding sound). 3 literary compose verse or poetry.

Therefore a matching suffix is not the only property of a rhyme. The best factual examples of a contemporary non-English rhyme in music would be the song "Funiculì, Funiculà" as written by Italian journalist Peppino Turco and set to music by Italian composer Luigi Denza in 1880, Zydeco music as made popular by the French-Speaking Creole of the United States ("Les Haricots Sont Pas Salés") and not to forget the magnitude of Gaelic and Celtic folklore (which employs quite a variety of developed poetic styles called: Ae freslighe, Deibhidhe, Rannaicheacht Mhor) - to name only but a few.

This request for a popular culture section is clearly a fail.

Nuuswam Ceijobweed (talk) 17:46, 24 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

External links modified edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Lament. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:16, 14 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

Move discussion in progress edit

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Lamento (Gian Marco song) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:18, 16 November 2023 (UTC)Reply