Eulogy - Definition and Overview

An eulogy is a funeral oration given in tribute to a person or people who have recently died.

Eulogies should not be confused with elegies, which are poems written in tribute to the dead; nor with obituaries, which are published biographies recounting the lives of those who have recently died; nor with obsequies, which refer generally to the rituals surrounding funerals.

Some historically notable eulogies include:

• Eulogy for St Basil of Cæsarea, by St Gregory of Nyssa
• Fictional eulogy for Julius Cæsar by Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar
• Jacques-Benigne Bossuet's eulogy for Henrietta-Maria Stuart
• Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
• Abraham Lincoln's eulogy for Henry Clay
• Ralph Waldo Emerson's eulogy for Henry David Thoreau
• Martin Luther King, Jr.'s eulogy for the martyred children of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
• Ossie Davis's eulogy for Malcolm X
• The Earl Spencer's eulogy for Diana, Princess of Wales
• John Cleese's eulogy for fellow Monty Python member Graham Chapman.