Panegyric

A panegyric (Gk 'pertaining to public assembly' [PDLTLT 632]) is a 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)." (ibid.)

Examples from Classical times

- festival oration by Isocrates (436-338 BC) at the Olympic 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) (ibid.)

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