CLANVOWE, SIR THOMAS, English 14th century poet, author of The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, long attributed to Chaucer. Little is known of Clanvowe, whose name is last men tioned in 1404. He figured at the courts of Richard II. and Henry IV., and was one of the 20 knights who accompanied John Beau fort to Barbary in 139o. His name was discovered on the best of the mss. by Professor Skeat in editing The Book of Cupid, God of Love, or the Cuckoo and the Nightingale.
The historic and literary importance of The Cuckoo and the Nightingale is great. It is the work of a poet who had studied the prosody of Chaucer with more intelligent care than either Occleve or Lydgate, and who therefore forms an important link between the 14th and 15th centuries in English poetry. Clanvowe writes with a surprising delicacy and sweetness, in a five-line measure almost peculiar to himself. Professor Skeat points out a unique characteristic of Clanvowe's versification, namely, the unprece dented freedom with which he employs the suffix of the final -e, and rather avoids than seeks elision. The Cuckoo and the Night ingale was imitated by Milton in his sonnet to the nightingale, and was rewritten in modern English by Wordsworth.
See also a critical edition of the Boke of Cupide by Dr. Erich Vollmer (Berlin, 1898).