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François Villon

François Villon , 1431-1463?, French poet, b. Paris, whose original name was François de Montcorbier or François Des Loges. One of the earliest great poets of France, Villon was largely rediscovered in the 19th cent. He was brought up by the chaplain of Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné, Guillaume de Villon, whose name he adopted. Knowledge of the facts of Villon's life is drawn from his poems and from the police records concerning him; it is believed that he died shortly after receiving a sentence of 10 years' exile from Paris, commuted from the death sentence. Confessedly a vagabond and rogue from his student days at the Sorbonne, Villon killed a man in 1455. During his subsequent banishment from Paris he fell in with the coquillards, a band of thieves that ravaged France at the close of the Hundred Years War, and for them he composed his ballads in thieves' jargon. The preservation of Villon's works was principally due to Clément Marot, who collected and edited them (1533). Villon used the medieval forms of versification, but his intensely personal message puts him in the rank of the moderns. Besides his ballads in jargon, Villon's work consists of his Lais (also known as the Little Testament ), written in 1456; the Testament or Grand Testament (1461); and a number of poems including the "Débat du cœur et du corps de Villon" [debate between Villon's heart and body] and the "Épitaphe Villon," better known as the "Ballade des pendus" [ballad of the hanged], written during Villon's expectation of the same fate. The Lais (a pun on the words lais, or lays, and legs, or legacy) is a series of burlesque bequests to his friends and enemies. The Testament follows the same scheme (not uncommon in medieval literature), but is far superior in depth of emotion and in poetic value. The work is filled with irony, repentance, constant preoccupation with death, ribald humor, rebellion, and pity. The Testament is interspersed with ballads and rondeaux, including the "Ballade de la grosse Margot," his bequest to a prostitute, and "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" with the famous refrain "But where are the snows of yester-year?" There have been many English translations of the poems, including those by Rossetti and Swinburne, and more recently (1973) by Peter Dale. The standard French edition of the works was made by Auguste Longnon (1892, several revisions).

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	Orpheus with arsenic. (Books). Magazine article from: New Criterion; 2/1/2002; ; 700+ words ; Francois Villon (1431-1463?) is the quintessential Orphean...claims what he has had. At the same time, Villon affects a drastic spontaneity; it is always...concerned with getting even. After Dante, Villon is the greatest poet of payback. But rancor... Read more
	New and Collected Poems. Magazine article from: National Review; 9/2/1988; ; 700+ words ; ...predecessor poets. So here's Richard Wilbur (1969) doing Villon, a kind of exercise he returns to every so often...tells us): all to get an agreeable ease far from Villon's grim thought.* Villon's point is that Flora is dead, not that she's strayed... Read more
	The Poetry of Francois Villon: Text and Context.(Book Review) Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 4/1/2004; ; 479 words ; The Poetry of Francis Villon: Text and Context. By JANE H. M. TAYLOR...to formulate an all-embracing view of Villon, Jane Taylor looks at his multiple identities...far from being an alienated outsider, Villon enthusiastically engages with the poetics... Read more
	Medieval faces.(Francois Villon) Magazine article from: The Magazine Antiques; 9/1/2006; ; 666 words ; About 1460 the French writer Francois Villon penned his interpretation of how his mother might have responded to the decoration of the walls of her local church: I'm just a... Read more
	Mythes, poesie et musique (dans les grands mythes-poemes). Magazine article from: Anthropologie et Societés; 5/1/2005; ; 700+ words ; ...cherchant à identifier leurs points de convergence et de divergence au-del...thou blow ; la Ballade des pendus de Villon, les Cierges de Cavafis et beaucoup...disait tout >>, la ballade de Villon si terrible est reprise par poè... Read more
	Galerie Schmit.(Around the galleries)(Brief Article) Magazine article from: Apollo; 6/1/2004; ; 79 words ; Jacques Villon (born Gaston Duchamp), elder brother of Marcel Duchamp, was a prolific and influential twentieth century artist. A pioneer of Cubism... Read more
	A century of modern sculpture. (19th- and 20th-century masterpieces currently on display at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY) Magazine article from: USA Today (Magazine); 4/1/1997; 292 words ; ...sculptures and examines developments of the last 125 years of the medium. Included are works by Constantin Brancusi, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Medardo Rosso, and David Smith. Remarkable not only for the... Read more
	Speaking the Taboo: A Study of the Work of Wolfgang Hilbig.(Book Review)(Brief Article) Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 10/1/2002; ; 526 words ; ...Amsterdamer Publikationen zur Sprache und Literatur, 141) Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. 2000. x + 247 pp. $43. One of Francois Villon's ballads, consisting almost entirely of proverb-like statements, contains the line 'Tant crie l'on Noel qu'il vient.' The equivalent... Read more
	Swinburne.(Guide to the Year's Work) Magazine article from: Victorian Poetry; 9/22/2005; ; 700+ words ; ...poetry and prose; at the same time, various critics have explored his exploitation and transformation of earlier works (poems by Villon, Milton, Baudelaire, Tennyson, and Swinburne himself), as well as the ways in which he influenced texts by later writers like... Read more
	Beyond Arthurian romances; the reach of Victorian medievalism.(Brief Article)(Book Review) Magazine article from: Reference & Research Book News; 11/1/2005; 134 words ; ...Normans, Arnold's Norse, Proctor's convent, Morris's northern warriors and bi-worldly women, and Swinburne's translations of Villon. Essays also address the Protestant re-writing of the medieval, Victorian medievalism as performance, and the refuting of the... Read more

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	ballade Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition ...ten-line stanza with four rhymes and a five-line envoy. The envoy is used primarily as a summary or as a dedication or direct address to an important person. Ballades of Charles d'Orléans, François Villon, and Geoffrey Chaucer are well known. Read more
	Justin M'Carthy Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition ...92) and a versatile writer, he was best known for his novel If I Were King (1901), which he based on the life of François Villon. His later dramatization of the novel became the basis for the operetta The Vagabond King. Read more
	French literature Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition ...outstanding poet of Old French, François Villon . The earliest French drama...early 17th-century critic François de Malherbe attacked the...comtesse de La Fayette , and François, duc de La Rochefoucauld . The works of the ecclesiastic François de la Mothe Fénelon , the... Read more

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