SOURCE: Introduction to The Poems of François Villon, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977, pp. xi-xx.

In this excerpt from the introduction to his translation of Villon's poems, Kinnell contrasts Villon's Lais with his Testament as forms of mock-testaments, arguing that the later poem, despite its frequently comic tone, offers a very serious and unflinching view of death and mortality.

François Montcorbier, also known as François des Loges, was born in Paris in 1431. He took his bachelor's degree in 1449, and his master's degree in 1452, according to records at the University of Paris. Villon is a nom de plume taken from his friend and benefactor, Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of the church of Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné.

Whatever else we know about Villon comes mainly from police records. In 1455 he got into a fight with a priest and killed him, but was pardoned a few months later on grounds of...