Glossary

(Latin, ‘where are they?’)

A medieval commonplace that reveals the mutability of all things, the loss of all through death, by posing a series of questions that ask where the strong, the beautiful, and the good have gone. Examples are Thomas Nashe's "Beauty is but a flower" and D. G. Rossetti's translation of François Villon's "The Ballad of Dead Ladies."

See Litotes