Enuig

[Tinker]

Explore the Craft of Writing Poetry
French Verse

The enuig (Occitan for "complaint" or "vexation"), a descendant of the Greek Complaint, is a style of verse that presents a list of complaints. It originated with the 14th century troubadours. It was most often a series of gripes, not necessarily connected topically. The frame is at the discretion of the poet.

The enuig is "the enumeration in epigrammatic style of a series of vexatious things" Raymond Hill.

              William Shakespeare's
              Sonnet LXVI an example of an English enuig.
              Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
              As, to behold desert a beggar born,
              And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
              And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
              And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
              And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
              And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
              And strength by limping sway disabled,
              And art made tongue-tied by authority,
              And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
              And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
              And captive good attending captain ill:
              Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
               Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.