SOURCE: “Francois Villon's Testament and the Poetics of Transformation,” in Fifteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 11, 1985, pp. 71-83.

In this essay, Peckham considers the mix of high and low—spiritual and crude—in Villon's Testament as a sign of the transformation of the narrator that takes place within the poem.

Readers have long observed ambiguities in François Villon's Testament (T.). Some of these have been deemed the incidental results of an extended period of composition,¹ but more recent scholarship tends to view them as the deliberate acts of a truly protean poetic voice.² Furthermore, studies by Jean Dufournet within the last two years show them to be numerous, and one might well conclude that they are fundamental rather than exceptional elements of Villon's testamentary poetics.³

Transformation and substitution are two processes which often create these ambiguities. Their mechanics are quite visible, especially in the T.'s narrative frame, which is...