The most celebrated of French medieval poets, François Villon makes poetry out the basest material the raw urban life of Paris with its petty officials, students, clergy, tradesmen, pimps, whores and thieves. Despite successful studies, the young Villon immersed himself in this world, embarking on a career of petty crime that brought him repeated imprisonment. Condemned to death, but then reprieved and banished from Paris, he disappears from history in 1463, leaving behind a legend of poète maudit that has never lost its fascination.

Violent, indignant, ribald and often brutally physical, Villon’s verse has a formidable satiric thrust, and yet it also encompasses passages of poignant nostalgia and haunting lyric expression, culminating in his digressive autobiographical masterpiece, The Testament, which counts among the most popular texts of French poetry.