described her, he hoped that she found his depiction of
her pleasant enough that she might give him money or a
court appointment from which the writer and his family
might enjoy additional income. Most of this literary out-
put did not achieve the hoped-for results. Instead, many
writers found that Elizabeth accepted these poems and
made grateful noises, but money or preferment did not
follow. Noblemen and women in her court, however,
offered patronage to writers, including William Shake-
speare, Ben Jonson, and others. Many texts, directly or
indirectly, address social concerns, although some works
simply show the writer’s various talents. Writers who
dared to depict Elizabeth in less positive language were
treated as traitors, and their work was destroyed. Despite
strict controls of printed or performed texts, Elizabethan
writers produced a large body of work, much of which
revolves around Elizabeth and her court.
See also COURT CULTURE; “DOUBT OF FUTURE FOES,
THE”; “WHEN I WAS FAIR AND YOUNG”; “WRITTEN ON A
WINDOW FRAME [OR WALL] AT WOODSTOCK” AND “WRIT-
TEN WITH A DIAMOND.”
FURTHER READING
Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth. Chicago: Academy Chicago
Publishers, 1992.
Plowden, Alison. Danger to Elizabeth: The Catholics under
Elizabeth I. Phoenix Mill/Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton
Publishing Ltd., 1999.
———. Elizabeth Regina: The Age of Triumph, 1558–1603.
Phoenix Mill, Thrupp, and Stroud, Gloucestershire, U.K.:
Sutton Publishing Ltd., 2000.
———. Marriage with My Kingdom: The Courtships of Eliza-
beth I. Phoenix Mill and Stroud, Gloucestershire, U.K.:
Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1999.
———. The Young Elizabeth: The First Twenty-Five Years of
Elizabeth I. Rev. Ed. Phoenix Mill and Stroud, Gloucester-
shire, U.K.: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1999.
Ridley, Jasper. Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue. New
York: Fromm International Publishing Company, 1989.
Weir, Alison. The Life of Elizabeth I. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1998.
Martha Kalnin Diede
ELIZABETHAN SONNET See ENGLISH SONNET.
EMBLEM The Renaissance emblem was a genre
where the text and image were melded into “speaking
pictures” or “silent parables.” An emblem poem is
dependent on its image as much as its words. The Ital-
ian writer Andrea Alciati (1492–1550) is credited with
producing the fi rst emblem book, as well as with creat-
ing the term emblem.
Each emblem has three parts: the inscriptio (motto
printed above the picture), the pictura (the [allegori-
cal] picture), and the subscriptio (prose or verse below
the image which explains the moral application). All
three parts had to be included in order for the emblem
to be complete. As a whole, the emblem becomes a
function of “wit,” as it was termed in the early modern
era, whereby the mind imposed connections on signi-
fi ers, or understood the inherent meanings revealed
through art.
Pure word emblems are verbal structures in which
words convey both picture and meaning, especially as a
unifying element in poetry. These poems tend to be SON-
NETs and EPIGRAMs, the former because the common
OCTAVE/SESTET division encourages a natural division into
“pictorial” and “interpretation” sections, the latter because
the form lends itself to wittiness and moralizing.
See also ALLEGORY, EKPHRASIS.
FURTHER READING
Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and
Renaissance Culture. London: Longman, 1994.
Daly, Peter M. Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural
Parallels between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1979.ENCOMIUM Derived from the Greek enkö-
mion—a speech celebrating a victor—an encomium is
a formal tribute expressing praise and warm affection,
if addressed to a person, and enthusiastic approval if
directed toward an object or event. The term is often
used interchangeably with PANEGYRIC.
See also PAEAN.ENGLISH CHAUCERIANS This is the name
given to a group of 15th-century English writers and
associated texts written after GEOFFREY CHAUCER’s death.
These writings refl ect Chaucerian form, content, tone,
vocabulary, and style. A number of them even cite
Chaucer directly, as both source and inspiration. This162 ELIZABETHAN SONNET