ABSTRACT
The two extant Chaucerian verse epistles to Scogan and Bukton tell a great deal about the poet’s less public rhetorical voice. With the remains of the Ovidian heroic epistle embodied in the Legend of Good Women and with the two letters incorporated in book V of Troilus and Criseyde. Less obviously, one might begin with the Envoi a Scogan or a Bukton. The fragments of the Heroides in the Legend tell little or nothing about Geoffrey Chaucer’s feeling for the Ovidian heroic epistle. In the letters in Troilus V, some trouble has been taken to create an epistolary impression. Chaucer’s polite, graceful and conventional style in these letters sets the tone for the vast number of amatory verse epistles which was to be written in England in the fifteenth century. Although medieval manuals existed for the writing of actual letters, the various poetry manuals contain little about verse epistles.
