Editing Envoi (section)

==Origins in medieval France==
The envoi first appears in medieval French, in the songs of the [[trouvère]]s and [[troubadour]]s.<ref name=":0" /> It developed as an address to the poet's beloved or to a friend or patron, and typically expresses the poet's hope that the poem may bring them some benefit (the beloved's favours, increased patronage, and so on).

In the 14th century, the two main forms used in the new literary [[French poetry]] were the [[ballade (forme fixe)|ballade]], which employed a [[refrain]] at first but evolved to include an envoi, and the ''chant royal'', which used an envoi from the beginning.<ref name=":0" /> The main exponents of these forms were [[Christine de Pizan]] and [[Charles, duc d'Orléans|Charles d'Orléans]]. In the work of these poets, the nature of the envoi changed significantly. They occasionally retained the invocation of the Prince or abstract entities such as Hope or Love as a [[cryptonym]] for an authority figure the [[protagonist]]s(s) of the poem could appeal to, or, in the some poems by d'Orléans, to address actual royalty. However, more frequently in the works of these poets the envoi served as a commentary on the preceding stanzas, either reinforcing or ironically undercutting the message of the poem. [[Jean Froissart]], in his adaptation of the troubadour ''[[pastourelle]]'' [[genre]] to the ''chant royal'' form, also employed the envoi. His use, however, is less innovative than that of de Pizan or d'Orléans. Froissart's envois are invariably addressed to the Prince and are used to summarise the content of the preceding stanzas. Since the 14th century, the envoi has been seen as an integral part of a number of traditional poetic forms, including, in addition to the ballade and ''chant royal'', the ''[[virelai nouveau]]'' and the [[sestina]].