epithalamium

epithalamium, song or poem to the bride and bridegroom at their wedding. In ancient Greece, the singing of such songs was a traditional way of invoking good fortune on the marriage and often of indulging in ribaldry. By derivation, the epithalamium should be sung at the marriage chamber; but the word is also used for the song sung during the wedding procession, containing repeated invocations to Hymen (Hymenaeus), the Greek god of marriage. No special metre has been associated with the epithalamium either in antiquity or in modern times.

The earliest evidence for literary epithalamiums are the fragments from Sappho’s seventh book (c. 600 bc). The earliest surviving Latin epithalamiums are three by Catullus (c. 84–c. 54 bc). In the most original, Catullus tried to fuse the native Fescennine verse (a jocular, often obscene form of sung dialogue sometimes used at wedding feasts) with the Greek form of marriage song.

Epithalamiums based on classical models were written during the Renaissance by Torquato Tasso in Italy and Pierre de Ronsard in France. Among English poets of the same period, Richard Crashaw, John Donne, Sir Philip Sidney, and Ben Jonson used the form. Edmund Spenser’s Epithalamion, written for his second marriage in 1595, is considered by some critics to be the finest example of the form in English.

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Anonymous 17th-century epithalamiums are extant. In the 19th century, epithalamiums were written by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edmund Gosse; and in the 20th century, by Witter Bynner, A.E. Housman, and Dannie Abse. See also Fescennine verse.