Panegyric

(Gk 'pertaining to public assembly') Poem or speech of public praise, usually for a person of renown (e.g., the king, a minister of state, a war hero). Originally panegyric was a branch of rhetoric whose rules were laid down in the rhetorical works of Menander and Hermogenes. Scaliger also provides its rules in Poetics Libri Septem(1561).

Examples from Classical times

- the festival oration delivered by Isocrates (436-338 BC)on the occasion of the Olympian games in 380

- Pliny the Younger's (AD 61-c.113) euology on Trajan

- Mark Antony's funeral oration in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599)

Examples from Restoration times

- John Dryden, Astraea Redux. A Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred Majesty Charles the Second (1660)

- Nahum Tate, Come Ye Sons of Art (1694)

Sources

Cuddon, J.A., ed. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin Reference: London, 1999.

Powerpoint presentation by Anette Pankratz