as thecoquillards, who were a common
threat on the chaotic byways of France in
the years after the Hundred Years’ War. He
was granted leniency by the Paris city offi-
cials in the next year, when he completed
theLais, forty stanzas of eight lines each,
in which he describes his turbulent life
and satirically details a legacy for his
friends, enemies, and acquaintances. This
work is also known as theLittle Testament.
In 1461 he completed the Grand Testa-
ment, a much longer work that includes
two thousand lines in various forms and
presents a grand spectacle of personages
of the medieval French world in which the
poet moved. TheGrand Testamentincludes
Villon’s most famous poem, “Ballade of
the Ladies of Yesteryear.” In 1462 Villon
was arrested and imprisoned in the Chat-
elet fortress in Paris for the burglary at the
College de Navarre in 1446, for which he
was again granted a pardon on condition
that he make restitution for the crime.
When he took part in another street brawl,
he was sentenced to death; on appeal his
hanging was stayed by an edict of the Paris
Parlement. Some time after sentence was
passed he composed the “Ballade of the
Hanged,” in which he describes in vivid
detail his fate as an executed criminal. He
was sentenced to ten years of exile from
Paris; after this event he disappeared, and
historians know nothing of his where-
abouts for the remainder of his life.
Villon’scareerasanoutlawprevented
him from winning any patronage from the
court or the nobility. His poetry is in-
tensely personal, full of satire and a bitter,
grotesque sense of humor, describing his
life in his own words, and owing nothing
to the traditional themes of chivalry and
religion that were standard for medieval
poets and prose authors. His works were
collected and edited by Clement Marot,
and the discovery of Villon’s poetry by the
romantic poets of the nineteenth century
made his permanent reputation as one of
the great poets of French literature.Virgil ..............................................
(70B.C.–19B.C.)
Ancient Latin poet of Italy whose epicThe
Aeneiddescribed the mythological found-
ing of Rome, and whose works provided
the writers of the Renaissance with their
most respected poetic model from the clas-
sical world. Born as Publius Vergilius
Maro, a descendant of barbarian Celts, he
was raised in a small town near Verona,
the son of a laborer who managed to give
his son a good education. As a young man
Virgil made his way to the capital, where
he studied rhetoric and philosophy. Al-
though trained to practice law, he was too
bashful to make a good impression as a
speaker, an essential ingredient for a suc-
cessful public career in ancient Rome. In-
stead he turned to books, study, and the
writing of poetry.
When his family’s farm was confiscated
by the Roman government as a reward for
its victorious soldiers, the emperor Augus-
tus intervened and returned the property.
In thanks for this action, Virgil wrote the
Eclogues, a group of ten poems that cel-
ebrate nature and the serene life of shep-
herds and the countryside. In the four
books of theGeorgics, Virgil describes in
great detail the life and the labor of farm-
ers, modeling his writings on theWorks
and Daysof Hesiod, an ancient Greek poet.
The Aeneid, an imposing monument
of ancient literature, was written by Virgil
on a commission from Augustus for a his-
torical work that would celebrate his own
accomplishments in establishing the new
empire of Rome. The poem describes the
voyages and the battles of the hero Aeneas,
a Trojan who wanders the MediterraneanVirgil