l'envoi

English

Etymology

From Middle French l'envoy.

Noun

l'envoi (plural l'envois)

1. Alternative form of envoi.
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), W. Shakespere [i.e., William Shakespeare], A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues Labors Lost. […] (First Quarto), London: […] W[illiam] W[hite] for Cut[h]bert Burby, published 1598, →OCLC; republished as Shakspere’s Loves Labours Lost (Shakspere-Quarto Facsimiles; no. 5), London: W[illiam] Griggs, […], [1880], →OCLC, [Act III, scene i], line 72:

     Some enigma, ſome riddle, come, thy Lenuoy begin.

   • 1609 December (first performance), Beniamin Ionson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Epicoene, or The Silent Woman. A Comœdie. […]”, in The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, →OCLC, Act V, scene iii, page 590:

     And then the women (as I haue giuen the bride her inſtructions) to breake in vpon him, i’ the l’enuoy.

   • 1636 (first performance), Philip Massenger, “The Bashful Lover”, in Three New Playes; viz. The Bashful Lover, The Guardian, The Very Woman. […], London: […] Humphrey Moseley, […], published 1655, pages 57 and 76; republished in Early English Books Online‎^[1], Ann Arbor, Mich.: Text Creation Partnership, p. 2011:

     I kept that for the Lenvoy; 'tis the daughter / Of your enemy, Duke Gonzaga. […] Long since I look'd for this Lenvoy.

   • 1774, Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry, from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century. […], volume the first, London: […] J. Dodsley, […]; J. Walter, […]; T. Becket, […], page 464:

     His Complaint of Venus, Cuckow and Nightigale, and La belle Dame ſans Mercy, Have all a l’Envoy, and belong to this ſpecies of French verſe. His l’Envoy to the Complaint of Venus, or Mars and Venus, ends with theſe lines, v. 79. / And eke to me it is a grete penaunce, / Sith rime in Engliſh hath ſoche ſcarcite, / To follow word by word the curioſite / Of granſonflour of them that make in Fraunce.

   • 1816 October, “Art[icle] IX.—1. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III. 8vo. 2. The Prisoner of Chillon, a Dream; and other Poems. By Lord Byron. 8vo. John Murray: London.”, in The Quarterly Review, volume XVI, number XXXI, London: John Murray:

     Other poets have given us their literary productions as the subject of criticism, impersonally as it were, and generally speaking, abstracted from their ordinary habits and feelings; and all, or almost all, might apply to their poetical effusions, though in somewhat a different sense, the l’envoy of Ovid. / Sine me, Liber, ibis in urbem.

   • 1880 August 28, “A New Study of Tennyson”, in Littell’s Living Age, volume CXLVI; fifth series, volume XXXI, number 1889, Boston, Mass.: Littell and Co., page 551, column 2:

     The couplet in the l’envoi of “The Day-Dream,”— / For we are Ancients of the Earth, / And in the morning of the times, / is obviously merely a version of Bacon’s famous paradox, “Antiquitas sæculi, juventus mundi.”

   • 1901, Horace Elisha Scudder, James Russell Lowell: A Biography, volume I, Cambridge, Mass.: […] The Riverside Press, page 126:

     In “A Year’s Life” the l’envoi of the volume is a timid poem, “Goe, little booke!” in which the poet, sending his venture out among strangers and most likely among apathetic readers, comforts himself with the reflection:— / […]

   • 1910, Lumber Manufacturer and Dealer, volume 46, page 104:

     The L’Envoi of Mary’s Lamb. / Mary had a little lamb, / She had it on a string.

   • 1911, Franklin P[ierce] Adams, “Ballade of the Average Reader”, in Toboganning on Parnassus, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, page 82:

     l’envoi / Most read of readers, if you’ve read / The works of any old succeeder, / You know that he, too, must have said: / “I’ve never seen an Average Reader.”

   • 1919, Quarterly Review of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, volume 68, page 444:

     Equally possible would it be described in the temporal staging of the tragedy of sin; or in its l’envoi, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.”

   • 1951 October, Howard Zahniser, “Nature in Print”, in Nature Magazine, volume 44, number 8, American Nature Association, page 395, column 1:

     Only in its introductory presentation of the life community concept and in its l’envoi are these deeper meanings made literal.

   • 1982, Ioanna Tsatsou, translated by Jean Demos, My Brother George Seferis, North Central Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 104:

     This is its l’envoi: My lady, my soul withers like an exotic flower in a cold wind.

   • 2005, Philippa Berry, “‘Salving the mail’: perjury, grace and the disorder of things in Love’s Labour’s Lost”, in Ewan Fernie, editor, Spiritual Shakespeares (Accents on Shakespeare), Abingdon, Oxon, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 102:

     Mistakenly identified by Costard with a ‘l’envoi’ – part of a literary text that comes not before but after – his ‘salve’ initiates a meditation upon endings that concludes by alluding to concepts of ‘purgation’, ‘enfreedoming’ and ‘remuneration’ which have an obvious spiritual as well as a bodily and sexual implication.

   • 2016, David Bruce, William Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labor’s Lost”: A Retelling in Prose, Lulu, →ISBN, page 57:

     Armado said, “Here is some enigma, some riddle. Come, thy l’envoi; begin.” He was asking for a l’envoi, which was the conclusion of a piece of writing and which often explained the writing’s moral.

   • 2023, Cody Marrs, Melville, Beauty, and American Literary Studies: An Aesthetics in All Things, Oxford, Oxon: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 75:

     In Melville’s era, the “L’Envoi” was considered a distinct poetic subgenre. Derived from the Old French word envei, or “to send one on one’s way,” a “L’Envoi” poem was where a poet was supposed to say a final word and reflect on his or her muse. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “L’Envoi” in Voices of the Night (1839) addresses the voices “that arose / After the Evening’s close, / And whispered to my restless heart repose!,” while James Russell Lowell’s “L’Envoi” (subtitled “To the Muse”) asks, “Whither? Albeit I follow fast, / In all life’s circuit I but find, / Not where thou art, but where thou wast.” Melville’s “L’Envoi” similarly addresses his afflatus: “Time, amigo, does not masque us.” […] This “L’Envoi,” which concludes Weeds and Wildings, echoes the poem under the same title that concludes Timoleon.