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François Villon
(c.1431-63)
French poet

Special Lecture Series 3

Legenda: Oxford, 1999
£9.50 ($14.50 US)  Paperback  34pp
ISBN: 1-900755-28-9

Mock wills were astonishingly popular in France in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They could be written by poets — or creatures like mules or birds; they could convey repentance or satire; they could be comic or tragic, clever or caustic. They could serve a political purpose — or simply raise a belly-laugh in the tavern. In this lucid and broad-ranging study, Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, whose knowledge of the period is unparalleled, traces the history and poetics of an intriguing sub-genre whose best-known exponent is, of course, François Villon. L’écriture testamentaire à la fin du Moyen Age was delivered as the Spring 1999 Zaharoff Lecture at the Taylor Institution in the University of Oxford.

Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet is Professor of Literature at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). She has edited works by Guillaume de Machaut and Christine de Pizan, and is the author of a number of books, including ’Un engin si soutil’: Guillaume de Machaut et l’écriture au XIVe siècle and La Couleur de la mélancolie: la fréquentation des livres au XIVe siècle.