group includes JOHN LYDGATE, THOMAS HOCCLEVE, Bene-
dict Burgh (d. ca. 1483), George Ashby (d. 1537),
Henry Bradshaw (d. 1513), George Ripley (15th cen-
tury), Thomas Norton (1532–1584), and Osbern Boke-
nam (1393–ca. 1447). The texts (and thus their
anonymous authors) include the so-called Chaucerian
Apocrypha: The TALE OF GAMELYN, The Tale of Beryn
(The Second Merchant’s Tale), La Belle Dame sans Merci,
The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, The Assembly of Ladies,
The Flower and Leaf, and The Court of Love. These last
group of texts include a number of DREAM VISIONs. Some
scholars also consider several texts within the PIERS
PLOWMAN TRADITION to be the work of English Chauceri-
ans, and originally a number of those works were erro-
neously attributed to Chaucer. There is also some debate
as to whether or not JOHN GOWER should be included in
this group, since he was Chaucer’s direct contemporary,
not a follower, and a well-known author in his own
right. The northern writers infl uenced by Chaucer are
generally referred to as the SCOTTISH CHAUCERIANS. Dif-
ferences can be found between the two groups, particu-
larly in political stance and language usage.
The infl uence of Chaucer on English poetry of all
dialects, especially immediately after his demise, is
unprecedented and clearly demonstrates his impor-
tance within the VERNACULAR tradition, in addition to
solidifying his place within the English literary canon.
FURTHER READING
Brewer, D. S., ed. Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in
Middle English Literature. London: Nelson, 1966.
Forni, Kathleen. The Chaucerian Apocrypha: A Counterfeit
Canon. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.
ENGLISH SONNET (SH AK ESPEAREAN
SONNET, ELIZABETHAN SONNET) A
variation of the SONNET (14-line poem) found in the
English literary tradition, the English sonnet was devel-
oped by SIR THOMAS WYATT and HENRY HOWARD, EARL
OF SURREY. Because of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s popular-
ity, this form is sometimes called the Shakespearean
sonnet; it has also been called the Elizabethan sonnet
after Queen ELIZABETH I.
The English sonnet exhibits four divisions of verse
instead of the two sections commonly found in ITALIAN
(PETRARCHAN) SONNETs: three quatrains and a conclud-
ing rhyming COUPLET. The quatrains may have differing
rhyme schemes, but the most common one is abab,
cdcd, efef, gg. Typically in this form, the narrative back-
ground begins in the fi rst quatrain and is explained in
the second. The third quatrain usually begins with a
VOLTA, or turn, in which the story shifts, with the cou-
plet providing a “summing up” at the end. Scholars
suggest that this form was easily adapted to drama, a
development found in early modern theatre.ENJAMBMENT Enjambment is a term describing
the prosody (rhythm) of poetry, in which the meaning
and the structure of a line runs into the following line.
Often used in poetry composed of COUPLETs, it also
became an important device used in SONNETs. For
instance, in Sonnet 104 from ASTROPHIL AND STELLA, SIR
PHILIP SIDNEY creates a sense of distance from his beloved
through enjambment. In Sonnet 45 from DELIA, SAMUEL
DANIEL links the fi rst two quatrains through enjamb-
ment, extending the pun on mourn and morn, and
drawing the reader into the poet’s dream.ENVOI (ENVOY) From the Middle French word
envoy, “to send,” an envoi is the fi nal part of a poem
wherein the poet addresses the person to whom the
poem is directed; it often contains a moral interpreta-
tion. Originally part of the French troubadour tradition,
English poetry increasingly used the envoi after the 14th
century. GEOFFREY CHAUCER’s Troilus and Criseyde con-
tains an envoi at the end in which he directs his “litel
boke” to be subject to Poetry and kiss the footprints of
VIRGIL, OVID, Homer, Lucan, and Statius. Two of Chau-
cer’s shorter lyrics—“ENVOY TO SCOGAN” and “ENVOY TO
BUKTON”—apparently use envoy in the sense of “mes-
sage,” but they also incorporate the taut moral aspect of
traditional envois. JOHN LYDGATE and THOMAS HOCCLEVE
also used envois in a number of their poems, such as at
the end of Lydgate’s Troy Book and in Hoccleve’s Regi-
ment of Princes. Another example of the envoi can be
found at the close of The KINGIS QUAIR by JAMES I, king of
Scotland. During the Renaissance, envois became a part
of the SONNET tradition, and many individual poems as
well as SONNET SEQUENCEs feature elegant envois.
See also FALL OF PRINCES, THE; SESTINA.
K. P. ClarkeENVOI 163