It is impossible to read far into Villon's works without being struck by the concentrated, elliptical nature of his language. We have only to turn to the opening lines of his major work:

En l'an de mon trentiesme aage,
Que toutes mes hontes j'eus beues,
Ne du tout fol, ne du tout sage,
Non obstant maintes peines eues,
Lesquelles j'ay toutes receues
Soubz la main Thibault d'Aussigny…
S'evesque il est, seignant les rues,
Qu'il soit le mien je le regny.

Mon seigneur n'est ne mon evesque,
Soubz luy ne tiens, s'il n'est en friche…
(T [Testament] 1-10)

It is at once made clear that Villon is writing about himself at the age of thirty, though his account in these opening lines reads more like a series of disconnected jottings than a properly arranged autobiography. We are at once taken into his confidence and find ourselves in the midst of his affairs, hearing of disgrace and suffering, but learning little or nothing of what it is really all about. An impression of near incoherence is created. He takes it for granted that his readers know who is writing—there is nothing corresponding to the 'Je, Françoys Villon, escollier' of the Lais—and he expects us to accept without question his remarks on the cruelty and injustice shown him by the bishop. Not a word on why he had been in prison. Here and elsewhere he gives his own obviously biased comments on episodes in his life without explaining just what had happened, a necessary reticence, no doubt, in view of his undeniably evil ways, which other sources, less discreet and less subjective, have revealed to us.

The language of this first stanza deserves closer attention:

En l'an de mon trentiesme aage…

The meaning is quite clear: 'In the thirtieth year of my life…' but the construction is puzzling: 'In the year of my thirtieth …?' Modern editors have explained that aage could mean 'year of one's life', but this does not solve the problem. The real difficulty is to know why Villon did not use the more common and logical construction: 'En l'an trentiesme de mon aage', the reading advocated by Gaston Paris even though not a single manuscript of Villon's work contains it. It is true that similar expressions from contemporary texts usually associate the numeral with an rather than with aage: 'ou XXXVI^e an de mon aage', 'en l'an XXXIX^e de l'aage d'icellui translateur', 'au XXXV^e an de mon aage', 'ou XVI^e an de son aage', etc. Only rarely does the numeral appear with aage, and then usually an is omitted altogether: 'en mon aage soixante et dixiesme'. The sole example resembling Villon's line which has been brought to light is the following, and the resemblance is only slight:

La noble dame sur ce point trespassa,
De quoy ce fut ung merveilleux dommage,
Car jamais l'an en vie ne passa
Avec six moys le quatorziesme aage…

but this may be accounted for by the exigencies of metre and rhyme. The free choice open to Villon ('En l'an trentiesme…' or 'En l'an de mon trentiesme…') was not available to this writer in these circumstances, and the parallel between this couplet and the line of Villon, to which both [Lucien] Foulet [in his 1932 edition of Villon's work, Oeuvres, 4th ed.] and [Louis] Thuasne [in his 1923 edition of Oeuvres] point, is misleading. The effect of Villon's order is to change the expression from a logical one: 'In the thirtieth year of my life', to a pleonastic one, 'In the year of my thirtieth year', so changing from one stylistic level, that of the written language, straightforward and syntactically logical, to that of the spoken language, which has at all times been fond of tautological constructions such as 'aujourd'hui' ('in the day of this day'), which in present-day popular French has become 'au jour d'aujourd'hui', cf. 'tout un chacun' ('un chascun' is used several times by Villon—T 596, 760, 1684, etc.), 'reculer en arrière', 'descendre en bas', etc. These constructions belong to conversation far more than to the written language, being sometimes of therapeutic value, as in the reinforcing of hui Qiodie) by the addition of 'au jour d", but more often conveying emphasis, turning a purely intellectual statement into an affective one. It has often been pointed out that Villon's opening line is reminiscent of that of the Roman de la Rose: 'Ou vintieme an de mon aage' but its very word order is enough to assign it to an altogether different type of literature, popular and not courtly. It is more of a parody than a simple reminiscence.

Que toutes mes hontes j'eus beues…

'boire ses hontes', 'to drink one's disgrace', 'to drain the cup of one's disgrace' is a striking metaphor, introducing the confessions straightaway on a note of intimacy and familiarity.

Ne du tout fol, ne du tout sage…

sums up very neatly Villon's attitude towards himself, about which we are to hear so much in the following stanzas: he is not entirely foolish, and so has not deserved the harsh treatment meted out to him, but neither is he altogether wise, for he has wasted his early years and been too intent on having a good time. This line also provides the first example in the Testament of the use of balance and contrast, of which Villon was so fond.

Non obstant maintes peines eues,
Lesquelles j'ay toutes receues
Soubz la main Thibault d'Aussigny….

The way this accusation is flung out in the opening lines makes it clear that Villon is quite unable to restrain his indignation, his resentment at the way he had been treated. The very mention of the name Thibault d'Aussigny deflects him from his purpose; he switches over abruptly from describing his sufferings to vituperating against the bishop. The very suddenness of the change is in itself an indication of the strength of his feelings.

'S'evesque il est…' Of course he was a bishop, as Villon knew only too well. This quick remark can have only a derogatory intent: 'If bishop he is…' that is, 'if we really must look on him as a bishop.' '…seignant les rues' (literally, 'signing the streets'), picturesque and pithy, is elliptical as are so many of Villon's expressions, and Thuasne has had to expand it considerably in his rendering: 'bénisant la foule en faisant le signe de la croix.'

'Qu'il soit le mien je le regny', the last line of the stanza, rounds it off neatly and drives the lesson home swiftly and surely, dispelling any shadow of doubt which may have lingered as to his true feelings for the bishop: I deny that he is my bishop, that is, that he has any jurisdiction over me—a point enlarged upon in the next stanza. However, something vital is missing from the whole of this passage. These lines which have told us so much give us only half a sentence, less in fact, for there is no main verb. It is of no avail hunting for it in the second stanza, for Villon really has left his first sentence incomplete. This appears to have been something of a mania with him; the opening sentence of the Lais is also left hanging perilously in midair, and if we turn to the real beginning of the Testament, once the long lyrical passages of the introduction are over, we encounter a similar feature. Here, in the burlesque work, the traditional solemn opening of a will suddenly gives way to a mischievous thought:

Ou nom de Dieu, Pere eternel,
Et du Filz que vierge parit,
Dieu au Pere coeternel,
Ensemble et le Saint Esperit,
Qui sauva ce qu' Adam perit
Et du pery pare les cieulx…
Qui bien ce croit, peu ne merit,
Gens mors estre faiz petiz dieux.
(T LXXX)

The construction closely resembles that of the first stanza of the Testament, with an abrupt and quite unexpected switch-over to an irreverent remark in the last two lines. One has the impression of listening to the poet as the thoughts pass quickly through his head and he gives them their first expression, imperfect, illogical perhaps to anyone preoccupied with grammar, yet clear and natural. We follow the workings of his lively mind moment by moment. We are with him as he composes, we are at his elbow, we feel the impact of his newly formed thoughts, addressed directly, so it seems, to us. He appears to write as he would think and speak. At times the chain of thought is pushed into the background, and a mischievous aside, which slid suddenly into his mind, comes to the fore. He develops it, plays around with it, then tiring of it, drops it and reverts to his main theme, the making of his will, but it is not long before we are off once more on another digression. The internal structure of stanza after stanza, passage after passage, reflects the disjointed nature of the Testament as a whole. Sometimes the aside is only very brief, but then it is often the more telling, as when the old harlot warns the young ones who have taken her place that when they too have aged, they will find that nobody is interested in them any more, except old priests (T 547).

This cruel, biting wit, this mind hopping swiftly and dexterously from one thought to another, are traits which the French people still possess, but none has ever been able to display them to better effect than Villon, not even the seventeenth-century master of this style, La Fontaine. Villon had an advantage in that he was not compelled to be explicit and grammatically logical as is the modern French writer. He did not have to trick out his sentences with an orderly array of tool-words: conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions and the like. He shapes language to his thoughts and feelings, and if a sentence is broken off suddenly, that is of no importance, for the moment he has said what he has to say, or hinted at it sufficiently, he has already passed on to the next thought crowding into his head. This moment-by-moment way of composing determines some of the salient features of his poetry: its rambling nature, full of digressions and contrary sentiments, 'mes lubres sentemens' as he calls them. We are promised the real beginning of the Testament after we have read not far from 800 lines, but yet another digression intervenes, and we are kept waiting for another 50 lines or so, a wait which can be borne patiently, moreover, for the digressions have a much greater interest—for the modern reader at least—than the actual string of legacies. However, it is only too easy to use terms such as 'spontaneity' in connection with Villon, and the fact that these three beginnings, that of the Lais, that of the introduction to the Testament and that of the Testament proper, are construed, or misconstrued, in this way, suggests deliberate intention. The beginning of the Lais gives the game away even more than does that of the Testament. In the latter the mention of the bishop's name arouses Villon's indignation to such an extent that he is impelled to abandon his first subject in order to inveigh against the bishop, so that the change here is very clearly motivated, but in the Lais there is nothing to jolt him out of his first train of thought. It is simply a matter of a loosely constructed sentence which has become too involved, so necessitating a new beginning in the second stanza:

L'an quatre cens cinquante six,
Je, Francoys Villon, escollier,
Considerant, de sens rassis,
Le frain aux dens, franc au collier,
Qu'on doit ses œuvres conseillier,
Comme Vegece le raconte,
Sage Rommain, grant conseillier,
Ou autrement on se mesconte…
En ce temps que j'ay dit devant,
Sur le Noel, morte saison,
Que les loups se vivent du vent
Et qu'on se tient en sa maison,
Pour le frimas, pres du tison,
Me vint ung vouloir de brisier
La tres amoureuse prison
Qui souloit mon cuer debrisier.
(L [Lais] I—II)

Here no suddenly occurring thought or overpowering emotion obliges him to leave the first stanza incomplete, and he could so easily have completed it had he so desired. This is in fact a conscious art, not the purely undisciplined outpouring it appears, on the surface, to be. These incomplete openings and quick asides, like the very word order of the first line of the Testament, declare his intention of avoiding altogether a logically developed presentation, but this is no less an art than any other. To write as one speaks and thinks is far more difficult than may seem. To manage it at all is a rare achievement, and to manage it in rhymed verse of eight syllables in such a way as to make the arguments and feelings more, not less, forceful and convincing, is an even more formidable achievement. It is admittedly an art well suited to Villon, reflecting the nature of the man's mind, mercurial, penetrating, seeing all at a glance yet unable to concentrate for long on any one subject. It is an admirable expression of his personality, and the art can never be wholly separated from the man. The longest piece that we have from him devoted entirely to a single topic and avoiding digressions of all kinds is the "Épître à Marie d'Orléans," which contains a mere 132 octosyllabic lines. On two occasions Villon pretends that the Testament has been dictated by him to a clerk. This is doubtless a fiction, but it is a fiction well suited to the character of his work, suggesting that he himself never set pen to paper. But we must not allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that this is all 'spontaneous', 'inspired' verse, where instinct replaces art, composed at tremendous speed in one or two days, and without effort of any kind. It has been maintained that art is the last word to use in connection with Villon. On the contrary it should surely be the first word, for writing in analogical, conversational style is an art in itself as rare in the age of the Grands Rhétoriqueurs as it is today. It is this art which gives his poetry its flavour and individuality, and makes it live as though he were there before our eyes, speaking directly to us.

Villon's syntax reveals to us not only the workings of his mind, but also the seeing quality of his eye, for with a few terse expressions he depicts a whole scene, imparting a photographic impression. He may mention only one or two seemingly incidental details, but they are chosen in such a way that the imagination is fired and the picture leaps into life. Here is a group of Parisiennes chatting busily together:

Regarde m'en deux, trois, assises
Sur le bas du ply de leurs robes,
En ces moustiers, en ces eglises;
Tire toy pres, et ne te hobes;
Tu trouveras la que Macrobes
Oncques ne fist tels jugemens….
(T 1543-8)

The "Ballade de Mercy" at the end of the Testament is addressed to the many types of people with whom he had rubbed shoulders in the streets of Paris; the crowds he had known and loved live and move again in this most vivid of verse:

A Chartreux et a Celestins,
A Mendians et a Devotes,
A musars et claquepatins,
A servans et filles mignotes
Portans surcotz et justes cotes,
A cuidereaux d'amours transsis
Chaussans sans meshaing fauves botes,
Je crie a toutes gens mercis.

A filletes monstrans tetins
Pour avoir plus largement d'ostes,
A ribleurs, mouveurs de hutins,
A bateleurs, traynans marmotes,
A folz, folles, a sotz et sotes,
Qui s'en vont siflant six a six,
A vecyes et mariotes,
Je crie a toutes gens mercis….
(T 1968-83)

Villon is an adept at finding the expression or adjective which really describes and is not used merely to fill out the line. [Georges] Lote has condemned the feeble choice of adjectives in so much medieval poetry [in his Histoire du vers français, Vol. 1, 1949; Vol. 2, 1951; Vol. III, 1955]. Grant, bel and such words are grossly overworked, just as nice is overworked in English; descriptions of castles, heroines, landscapes abound but they are all so stereotyped, so conventional in this age when no high store was set by originality. Villon is one of the few poets of his century who possess a real talent for observing directly through their own eyes, not through those of a rather effete literature. Lote acknowledges Villon's superiority in this respect, and quotes the following stanza describing the harlot in her old age. The italics are his:

Le front ridé, les cheveux gris,
Les sourcilz cheus, les yeulx estains,
Qui faisoient regars et ris
Dont mains meschans furent attains;
Nez courbes de beaulté loingtains,
Oreilles pendantes, moussues,
Le vis pally, mort et destains,
Menton froncé, levres peaussues…
(T LIV)

Editors of Villon's poetry sometimes quote, in their notes, expressions which seem to them to refer to something that Villon has seen and of which he has kept impression. Thus Thuasne, commenting on the line:

S'evesque il est, seignant les rues…
(T 7)

suggests that before his arrest, Villon must actually have seen the bishop blessing the crowds in the streets of Orléans. G. Atkinson, commenting on the image in the following lines:

Mes jours s'en sont allez errant
Comme, dit Job, d'une touaille
Font les filetz, quant tisserant
En son poing tient ardente paille…
(T 217-20)

points out that it is a paraphrase of Job vii, 6: 'My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle…', and adds: 'Villon's image is much more specific than the Biblical picture. He had seen the process of weaving.' The substitution of a precise image for a more general one is significant, as also is the knowledge revealed here and on a number of occasions of the exact nature of the work done by people of a variety of trades and of the terms they used. The sharp visual impact of his phraseology constantly surprises the reader and keeps him alert. On the other hand, it must be confessed that the imagination of some readers is rather too easily aroused. The mere line:

L'emperieres au poing dorez
(T 394)

conjures up the whole Orient for D. B. Wyndham Lewis: '…the minarets; the coloured domes; the Liturgy of Chrysostom; the ikonostasis and its array of strange framed ovalfaced saints with hands vestments of solid gold and silver, studded with gems; the flowery Greek rites.' Such effusions can be tremendous fun to read, but they are of course concerned much more with the critic's imagination than with the poetry he is supposed to be writing about. The critic's business is with the text, but to dictate exactly how the imagination should react to the poetry, or to catalogue the images which he feels it ought to conjure up, is to say the least a vain enterprise.

Brevity is the soul of Villon's genius (but not that of his critics, it would seem). Reading through his poetry one frequently comes across examples of elliptical syntax, a peculiar telescoped style which, though not representing a complete departure from the fifteenth-century norm, is used far more consistently by him than by his contemporaries, many of whose works are extremely prolix and would have benefited greatly from a more concentrated expression. It is the same with details of syntax as with his thoughts and feelings: the beginning is there, but the end is not infrequently missing. 'Qui plus est' ('moreover') becomes 'Qui plus'. 'Somme toute' becomes 'Somme' (more common in the sixteenth century than in the fifteenth). His stanzàs are based on a climactic pattern which we have already encountered in the introduction to the Testament. The last line rounds the whole thing off and drives the point home. In this he is really following the tradition of concluding a stanza with a proverb, but he will generally substitute for the proverb a cutting expression of his own, again elliptical or paratactic in structure. Thus, having appointed his heirs who are to meet his debts and make sure that his legacies are distributed, he concludes in this way:

De moy, dictes que je leur mande,
Ont eu jusqu'au lit ou je gis.
(T 775-6)

This brisk culmination snaps one's breath away its with very suddenness. It explains with a wry humour why these people have been chosen as heirs. The hearty, ribald laughter of the tavern echoes in this line. Another example: having bequeathed to one Mademoiselle de Bruyères the right to preach out-of-doors, Villon concludes the stanza with this stipulation:

Mais que ce soit hors cymetieres,
Trop bien au Marchié au fillé.
(T 1513-14)

The last line shows the real point of this legacy, so far quite innocuous in appearance: at the Threadmarket adjoining the cemetery will be a suitable place for her preaching, since it was there, as everyone knew, that the prostitutes were to be found.

Describing a shed or hovel in which he took refuge at one time and where he seems to have put up a hook in lieu of a sign, Villon concludes:

Qui que l'ait prins, point ne m'en loue:
Sanglante nuyt et bas chevet!
(T 1004-5)

Once more the last line is elliptical and has to be expanded in translation as have so many of Villon's lines: 'he certainly spent a beastly night in the place and had a low pillow' (i.e. slept on the ground).

Villon says what he has to say quickly, briefly, without undue wordiness, and the forceful impact of his verse is due largely to this habit. He captures beautifully the incomplete, untidy utterances of conversation. Indeed, on numerous occasions he deliberately turns his poetry into a conversation by inventing an interlocutor who objects to a statement he has just made; he then proceeds to demolish that objection, sometimes in a few lines (T III, LXXI, CXXXV), sometimes taking two or more stanzas (T LVIII-LXIV, LXXXII-LXXXIII): 'And if anyone should take me up on this…' (T 17), 'And if anyone should question me on this…' (T 725), 'And should anyone blame me for these words…' (T 571-2), 'If anyone asks me…' (T 809). He also addresses an imaginary audience (T XLIII, CLVI-CLVIII, CLIX, T 1692-1719, T 1968-95), sometimes adopting for this purpose a disguise such as that of the Belle Heaulmière, or else he anticipates objections and accusations as though following the line of thought his poetry creates in the reader (T 105-6, 185-92). He is particularly fond of poking questions at himself and then providing the answer, which may be anything in length from a couple of words to a couple of stanzas (T 174-6, 205-8, 225-48, 289-92, 327-8, 418-20, 609-12, 732-6, 759-60, 773-6, 914-17, 1100-1, 1283, 1355-61, 1655, 1737-43, 1815-16, 1919, 1930-2, 1934). Some of these questions are obviously supposed to come from his clerk, Firmin; for example, when he is appointing the various executors of the will, he gives their names in reply to his clerk's questions:

Qui sera l'autre? G'y pensoye:
Ce sera sire Colombel…
(T 1930-1; cf. 1919, 1934)

It may well be that this clerk fulfilled a need felt by Villon for another presence, someone, even if only imaginary, at whom he could fling his sarcasms and reflections. It is also worth nothing that one of the longer digressions in the early part of the Testament takes the form of a conversation between Alexander and Diomedes, with whom Villon identifies himself: he is a Diomedes who has never met his Alexander. This conversational style is in fact one of Villon's main methods of keeping his mind on the move from one idea or feeling to another; repartee, questions, objections, accusations act as a stimulus, constantly urging him on. The conversational nature of his style is reflected also in the use of exclamatory expressions such as 'Viore' and 'Dieu merci', which appear, on the surface, merely to fill the line out, though they are not out of place in this most lyric of poetry, subjective in thought and construction alike, and are in fact reflections of the particular art of Villon.

In medieval French, word order was far more of a stylistic device than it is nowadays. Examples of its use to provide stress abound in the earliest texts:

Halt sunt li pui e tenebrus e grant

in the Chanson de Roland (1. 1830) emphasises the height of the hills more than would 'Li pui sunt halt…', and also gives a more strongly marked caesura. Similarly:

Granz est la noise, si l'oirent Franceis
(1. 1005)

rather than 'La noise est granz…' stresses the loudness of the noise of battle. From late medieval French onwards, word order was to become more stereotyped, but even so the fifteenth-century writer still had far more choice in such matters than has his modern counterpart. However, in any study of this subject as it affects poetry, two factors must be constantly borne in mind. Firstly, certain word orders may appear to be based on stylistic considerations but are in fact due to the exigencies of rhyme or metre. Thus, when Villon writes:

Pour ce que foible je me sens
(T 73)

foible may appear to be thrown into prominence, but the placing of the word at the end of the line would not give him the rhyme he was seeking. Also, it cannot be said that he wrote:

S'evesque il est, seignant les rues
(T 7)

as a more emphatic form of 'S'il est evesque…', for this order would involve a syllable too many, so that in point of fact he had no choice in the matter. Similarly:

Tiop forte elle est pour telz enfans
(T 1293)

would involve a syllable too many if written as 'Elle est trop forte…', and in the line:

Vostre je suis et non plus mien
(PD [Poésies Diverses] VIII, 86)

the first word certainly seems to be singled out for emphasis, but

Je suis vostre et non plus mien

would lack a syllable. Secondly, despite the freedom of choice open to the medieval writer in the sphere of word order, certain tendencies were followed from the earliest times. One was to place the past participle in front of its auxiliary. The Testament provides several instances:

Peu [nourri] m'a d'une petite miche
(T 13)—not 'M'a peu…'

Escript l'ay l'an soixante et ung…
(T 81)

Allé s'en est et je demeure…
(T 177)

Tollu m'as la haulte franchise…
(T 461)

Abusé m'a et fait entendre…
(T 689)

Degeté m'a de maint bouillon…
(T 853)

Villon was not influenced in such cases by the tendency of earlier medieval French to avoid using the regime form of the weak personal pronoun at the beginning of a line, since he writes:

Me vint ung vouloir de brisier…
(L 14)

not 'Ung vouloir me vint…' and between them the two testaments contain a number of such examples (L 28; T 95, 101, 148, 197, 327, 483, 996, 1010, 1413, 1480, 1592, 1675, 1773, 2015). On the other hand, this habit of inverting participle and auxiliary was allied to the long-established one of keeping a central position for the verb. Where a compound tense was involved, or a construction with an infinitive, it was the part of the verb indicating the person that was allotted the central position; usually it was made the second element of the sentence (cf. inversion of subject and verb after certain adverbs in modern French, and even after conjunctions such as et in Middle French), occasionally the third. Thus, for 'You are his master', Villon could not write 'Es son seigneur'. Theoretically he had the choice between 'Tu es son seigneur' as in modern French, or 'Son seigneur es', but the 4-6 division of decasyllabic verse made the former impossible and it is accordingly the latter he has used:

Son seigneur es, et te tiens son varlet
(PD XI, 34)

This order was dictated by a combination of syntactic convention and metrical requirements, not simply by a desire to lay emphasis on seigneur. There is a number of similar examples in Villon's poetry:

Mon seigneur n'est ne mon evesque…
(T 9)

Riens ne hayt que perseverance…
(T 104)

Griefz ne faiz a jeunes n'a vieulx…
(T 125)

Bons vins ont, souvent embrochiez…
(T 249)

Moue ne fait qui ne desplaise…
(T 440)

Rondement ayment toute gent…
(T 579; cf. T 717, 749, 758, 767, 801, 869, 895, 985, etc.)

Only rarely does one find a verb, positive or negative, as the first element of a line in Villon's poetry, unless it is an interrogative form, an imperative, a subjunctive expressing a hypothesis, or unless it completes a clause or sentence begun in the preceding lines:

Moy, povre mercerot de Renes,
Mourray je pas?
(T 417-18)

Dieu, qui les pelerins d'Esmaus
Conforta,..
(T 99-100)

…en grant povreté…
Ne gist pas grant loyauté.
(T 150-2)

Griefz ne faiz a jeunes n'a vieulx
Soie sur piez ou soie en biere…
(T 125-6)

Excusez moy aucunement…
(T 149)

Of a total of over a hundred examples (a hundred positive, fourteen negative) which occur in the two testaments, only two do not fit in to any of the above categories, and even here the subject has already been given in the preceding lines:

Ont eu jusqu'au lit ou je gis;
(T 776)

We have seen above that this line was intended to have a startling effect.

Regrete huy sa mort et hier.
(T 431)

Foulet points out in the notes to his edition of Villon's poetry that this line is peculiar since it makes hier dissyllabic 'malgré l'usage constant de l'ancien français'. He draws attention to the reading of one manuscript (F): 'Regretant sa mort huy et hier', and this may well have been the original version, since the present participle, like the past participle, is frequently used by Villon at the beginning of a line.

Two questions arise from what precedes. The first is this: is word order in Villon's poetry ever influenced by stylistic considerations? The answer is certainly yes, and in more ways than one…. euphony was an important con sideration with him, and he avoids, where possible, awkward clashes of sounds. Thus, although he writes in PD IX, 17: 'Quant mort sera', he does not follow the same order in T 1760: 'Or mors sont ilz…' but prefers: 'Or sont ilz mors…' (also in T 485: 'Or est il mort…'). Similarly in T 11 he writes: 'Foy ne luy doy…', not 'Ne luy doy foy…'; and in T 259: 'Je ne suis juge…', not 'Juge je ne suis'. Balance and contrast are also important considerations; thus he does not write:

but

In addition, word order is used on occasion for purposes of emphasis, as in the numerous examples of overflow mentioned earlier. Also, it is noteworthy that, when speaking of poverty and the terrible hold it had on his life, he writes, not:

Je suis povre de ma jeunesse

but

Povre je suis de ma jeunesse…
(T 273)

But on the other hand, presenting himself as a sinner, without wishing to stress the fact any too heavily, he writes, not:

Pecheur je suis, je le sçay bien

but

Je suis pecheur, je le sçay bien,
(T 105)

and the 'je le sçay bien' makes it quite clear that he feels no need for stress: 'the fact is quite obvious enough' is the implication. In his version of the carpe diem theme, stressing the folly of neglecting the joys of life until one is too old to appreciate them, he writes:

Viel je seray; vous, laide, sans couleur
(T 962)

not

Je seray viel…

whilst in the "Ballade pour prier Nostre Dame," which he wrote for his mother, she is made to say, not:

Je suis femme povrette et ancïenne,

which would be a dull statement of fact devoid of emotive content, but

Femme je suis, povrette et ancïenne,
(T 893)

a word order which has also the effect of giving a more firmly marked caesura, although the lyric caesura that 'Je suis femme…' would entail is common enough in Villon's decasyllabic verse.

This brings us to the second question arising from these remarks on word order. Is it possible, and is it necessary, to distinguish between those instances where word order was intended by the poet to achieve a stylistic effect and those where grammatical conventions or metrical requirements give the reader an impression of stylistic effect, as in

Son seigneur es, et te tiens son varlet

The value of linguistic analysis of the type given above is that it enables us to get the poetry into a fairly true perspective. It throws light on the circumstances governing its composition, and prevents us from attributing to the poet what belonged to the period as a whole. Obviously, however, such considerations cannot be allowed to come between the poetry and our appreciation of it. We cannot postpone our reaction until the analysis has been made, as though it were some sort of postmortem examination. Stylistic effects sometimes derive not so much from the poet's intentions as from the metre he is using and the syntactic conventions he is following. They are thus inherent qualities of the system as a whole, but are no less real for that. Furthermore the stature of the poet is revealed when the effect of his poetry is enhanced by such matters as metre and rhyme, for this is by no means an inevitable occurrence. With lesser poets a line of verse is so often distorted, or allowed to fall flat, or to strain the understanding simply in order to achieve a suitable rhyme or the required number of syllables. There is very little straining of this kind with Villon; he is the complete master of his versification, and where he himself is not directly responsible for a stylistic effect, always and inevitably he is indirectly responsible. Thus if he had no choice between

Tu es son seigneur et te tiens son varlet

and

Son seigneur es et te tiens son varlet

he could on the other hand have chosen between the latter and

Tu es son maistre et te tiens son varlet

so that the wording as it stands does all the same involve a choice, as any line of poetry is ultimately bound to do, be the choice felicitous or otherwise. It is not simply a matter of some effects being accidental, and therefore spurious, and others deliberate, and therefore genuine. Whether the ultimate source is provided by the personal style of the poet himself or by the language of the period in which he is writing, each trait contributes towards the impression created by the whole. The flavour of any work is in part that of its period.

Not the least remarkable aspect of Villon's poetry is the very wide range of vocabulary it reveals. He handles words and phrases with an exuberance worthy of a writer of the Renaissance. He revels in the word matter for its own sake. His piling up of words in crisp, staccato formation contributes to the lilt and energy of his verse. The few doublets and clichés apart, each word is there with a purpose and has something to add to the overall pattern. The personality the poetry builds up for itself is thin, wiry, sharp of look and quick of manner. It has none of the rather dreary obesity characterising many a late medieval poet, such as Guillaume Alexis. All is grist to Villon's mill, whether it be names of chemicals or foods, lists of proverbs or occupations, dialect forms, thieves' slang, nationalities, names of heroes or heroines, whores and harlots. We may turn to the "Ballade de Bonne Doctrine" with its argot terms, its heaping up of nouns and verbs relating to a variety of professions, most of them of a dubious kind:

Car ou soies porteur de bulles,
Pipeur ou hasardeur de dez,
Tailleur de faulx coings et te brusles
Comme ceulx qui sont eschaudez,
Traistres parjurs, de foy vuidez;
Soies larron, ravis ou pilles:
Ou en va l'acquest, que cuidez?
Tout aux tavernes et aux files.

Ryme, raille, cymballe, luttes,
Comme fol, fainctif, eshontez;
Farce, broulle, joue des fleustes;
Fais, es villes et es citez,
Farces, jeux et moralitez;
Gaigne au berlanc, au glic, aux quilles:
Aussi bien va, or escoutez!
Tout aux tavernes et aux filles.
(T 1692-1707)

The raciness and vigour of these lines are quite clear to any reader, even if the meaning is not. We may also turn to the "Ballade des Langues Envieuses" which lists a wide variety of substances in which, says Villon, certain jealous tongues should be fried; along with several minerals he places in this witches' brew the most loathsome things his extremely fertile mind could conjure up. These tongues have evidently done him harm in the past, but however fierce and nasty they may have been, they were clearly no match for Villon's pen:

En realgar, en arcenic rochier,
En orpiment, en salpestre et chaulx vive,
En plomb boullant pour mieulx les esmorchier,
En suye et poix destrempez de lessive
Faicte d'estrons et de pissat de juifve,
En lavailles de jambes a meseaulx,
En racleure de piez et viels houseaulx,
En sang d'aspic et drogues venimeuses,
En fiel de loups, de regnars et blereaulx,
Soient frittes ces langues envieuses!
(T 1422-31)

An enumeration of a very different kind appears at the end of the Lais, which pokes fun at the pompous language of the Sorbonne:

Lors je sentis dame Memoire
Respondre et mectre en son aulmoire
Ses especes collateralles,
Oppinative faulce et voire,
Et autres intellectuelles,

Et mesmement l'estimative,
Par quoy prospective nous vient,
Similative, formative…
(L 284-91)

The "Ballade des Proverbes" accumulates popular sayings of the day:

Tant grate chievre que mal gist,
Tant va le pot a l'eaue qu'il brise,
Tant chauffe on le fer qu'il rougist,
Tant le maille on qu'il se debrise,
Tant vault l'homme comme on le prise,
Tant s'eslongne il qu'il n'en souvient,
Tant mauvais est qu'on le desprise,
Tant crie l'on Noel qu'il vient.
(PD 11, 1-8)

In the Ballades en Jargon, Villon takes an obvious delight in handling the special, secret language of the Parisian underworld of his day, not to be confused with argot which, unlike the jargon or jobelin, did not necessarily strive to place itself beyond the comprehension of all but the initiated:

Brouez, Benards, eschecquez a la saulve,
Car escornez vous estes a la roue;
Fourbe, joncheur, chascun de vous se saulve:
Eschec, eschec, coquille si s'en broue!
Cornette court: nul planteur ne s'i joue.
Qui est en plant, en ce coffre joyeulx,

Pour ses raisons il a, ains qu'il s'escroue,
Jonc verdoiant, havre du marieulx!

This accumulative technique is an integral part of Villon's poetry, and appears throughout his work, in the lines on death, in the lists of foodstuffs, in the names of the heroes and heroines of the past, in the description of woman's beauty. It is used in various ways, sometimes merely facetiously, the better to bring out the point of a joke, sometimes more seriously, to underline the inevitability of fate, and sometimes with a bewildering mixture of the two, which imparts the cynicism to poems such as the "Ballade de Bonne Doctrine". But this very technique reveals the fascination that Villon finds in words. He never tires of building them up into fantastic patterns. None the less, however brilliantly he uses this technique, it is far from being original. Similar features appear already in the Chanson de Roland and other chansons de geste, where poets revel in accumulating sonorous, mouth-filling words, for example in descriptions of armies:

Li amiralz ·x· escheles ajusted.
La premere est des jaianz de Malpruse,
L'altre est de Hums e la terce de Hungres,
E la quarte est de Baldise la lunge
E la quinte est de cels de Val Penuse
E la siste est de … Maruse
E la sedme est de Leus e d'Astrimonies,
L'oidme est d'Argoilles e la noefme de Clarbone
E la disme est des barbez de Fronde…

According to Leo Spitzer, names have a poetry of their own, for they are less ringed about with grammatical considerations than are other words, and in consequence exist more as sounds which appeal to our ears. He quotes as example Racine's

La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé

and then applies his remarks to Villon's accumulation of names in the "Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis". Whatever its potentialities, this word-building technique inevitably lends itself to abuse, and the poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries often overworked it, using it sometimes for no purpose other than to provide intricate leonine rhymes, or even simply to fill out a poem. With Villon it is never the case of a string of words or names serving merely as padding; always there is a motive, and always a rhythm and sound pattern appropriate to the context.

An outstanding feature of Villon's vocabulary, apart from its breadth, is its 'modernism'. Rather more than one hundred of the words he uses were, at the most, little over a century old; several old words appear in new forms unknown to writers of earlier centuries and which are still those of today; whilst about thirty which have come down to modern French appear in his poetry for the first time or were used only very rarely by his predecessors. A few others appear to have been invented by him, either in their actual form, or in the meaning and use allotted to them. The hundred or so words from the immediate past are mostly Latinisms and learned forms introduced into the language from the fourteenth century onwards.

It is characteristic of the many-sided and contradictory nature of this poet that, having pointed out how his syntax resembles that of ordinary speech, we should have to go on to speak about his use of Latinisms. To be sure, his language is not invariably that of conversation; he was by no means without erudition, and was capable of a formal style, at times oddly out of place, as in the opening lines of the "Ballade pour prier Nostre Dame". This prayer is supposed to be uttered by his mother, poor, ignorant and illiterate:

yet it begins in a pompous way with learned literary expressions:

Dame du ciel, regente terrienne,
Emperiere des infernaux palus…
(T 873-4)

If this poem is so celebrated today it is because of its latter section where Villon, having cast aside his learning, has reverted to a simpler style, more suited both to him and to the occasion, and far more moving:

Au moustier voy, dont suis paroissienne
Paradis paint, ou sont harpes et lus,
Et ung enfer ou dampnez sont boullus:
L'ung me fait paour, l'autre joye et liesse.
La joye avoir me fay, haulte Deesse,
A qui pecheurs doivent tous recourir,
Comblez de foy, sans fainte ne paresse:
En ceste foy je vueil vivre et mourir.
(T 895-902)

An occasional whiff of pedantry reminds us once again that his conversational style was not just simply 'spontaneous', 'natural', 'instinctive'. It is not that he was capable of this style and nothing else. He had to make a choice, and had to feel his way like any other in order to find the art best suited to his personality.

A look at some of the terms Villon may have introduced into French literature brings us back once more into contact with his more familiar style. Here are some examples of words which appear in his poetry for the first time, or are only rarely found earlier: un tantinet (T 1109), la plupart (L 117), en effet (T 587), toutefois 745, 805, 1217, PD VIII, 52), corvée (T 1031) in its extended sense of 'nuisance', 'bother', altérer (L 54) in its connection with thirst, défaut (L 59) in the sense of 'fault', and en dépit de (T 1803). There are good grounds for believing that tantinet originated amongst the people of Paris, whilst an abbreviation such as la plupart for plus grande partie de (in T 1832 Villon uses la plus partie de), a transformation such as toutefois for earlier toutes voies (cf. Spanish todavîa), and extensions of meaning such as those involved in corvée and altérer all illustrate usages and developments common in speech. On the other hand, one old form used by Villon, extrace (T 274) in place of the then relatively new borrowing from Latin, extraction, had a popular flavour retained to this day by the spoken language which uses forms such as administrace for administration.

Turning to the Ballades en Jargon, we find a host of strange words, and some familiar terms with new meanings. It is impossible to estimate Villon's originality in this sphere; he may well have coined some of these expressions himself, but we have no means of knowing. It is here that we encounter the first attested use of niais in its modern sense of 'simpleton'; formerly it had meant 'fledgling', having been derived from the noun le nid; blanc was used in the same sense, as an extension of its first metaphorical meaning of 'innocent', 'inexperienced' (cf. modern blanc bec, which like niais referred originally to a young bird); rouge on the other hand meant 'cunning', owing to the reputation for slyness enjoyed by red-haired people; criminals whose ears had been cut off are described as having been 'circumcised of their handles'—des ances circoncis, which seems not inappropriate in a language whose word for head had meant originally 'earthenware pot' (tête<testa)! Several expressions are obviously ironical: être accolé meant 'to be hanged'; le mariage meant 'hanging'; montjoye ('Hill of Joy', originally the name given to a hill near Paris where St Denis was martyred) meant 'gibbet'; un ange was a hangman's assistant; dorer meant 'to lie', literally 'to cloak beneath a bright exterior'—a little like English 'to gild the pill'; a vendengeur was a thief, as was also gagneur, recalling the euphemistic use of 'to win' in modern English. Ne pas sçavoir oignons peller may have had the same meaning as English 'not to know one's onions'; babiller, originally 'to stutter' (onomatopoetic, cf. English 'to babble') meant 'to spill the beans'; rebigner, originally 'to squint', meant 'to look at', 'to take a squint at'; while pigeon, yet another word for 'simpleton', recalls an American use of the word. Beffleur, 'a cheat', 'swindler', is of the same origin as English 'to baffle'; estre sur les joncs, meaning 'to be in prison', the floor of which was covered in rushes, reveals a semantic evolution analagous to that of English 'to be on the mat'—at least they share the same basic meaning, 'to be in trouble'! Although a few of these jargon terms are obvious enough: la dure, 'the ground', la tarde (cf. modern Spanish la tarde) 'the evening', le contre, 'companion', le coffre, 'prison', banc, 'scaffold', plue, 'spoils', literally 'peel' (cf. modern French épluchure), large numbers remain obscure and can only be guessed at. Not only the meaning, but the very authoriship of some of these poems is in doubt, so that one is in danger of attributing to Villon expressions which he never used in point of fact. None the less, enough is known about the poems in jargon which Villon definitely wrote, and about the jargon in general—racy, ironical, terse, absorbing expressions from a wide variety of sources—to show clearly that it had considerable influence on Villon. This is the school which fashioned his imagery, which imparted the pungency to his style and developed his feeling for words. The jargon contained special terms for even the commonest notions: some were archaic and had been forgotten by most people or had survived only in the provinces; large numbers were based on metaphorical extension of meaning; some were adopted from other languages. What the trobar clus had been to the troubadours of Provence the jargon was to Villon and his associates. Although the two were at opposite ends of the social scale, the trobar clus sophisticated, literary rather than spoken, the jargon earthy and popular, the latter was, all the same, not nearly as wholly vulgar and coarse as one might imagine. Its heterogeneous nature, by no means ignorant of learned terms and expressions, betrays people of some education, and it is known that Villon was by no means the only cleric to haunt the underworld of fifteenth-century Paris.

The influence of jobelin may be seen in the peculiar and original use of metaphor in Villon's poetry. It is not necessarily a matter of direct borrowing from the language of the Coquillards, but concerns rather the basic approach to words, a continual readiness to use even the commonest terms metaphorically. The reader is constantly coming across a strange use of a word which contributes to the brisk slanginess of the language, and helps to build up an impression of freshness, of boundless life and vigour. The metaphor is frequently only trifling and not necessarily original, but the cumulative effect is considerable. Thus, in his quarrel with Grosse Margot, Villon gives her a blow on the nose with a piece of wood:

Dessus son nez luy en fais ung escript
(T 1609)

and in another ballade he refers to:

Serpens, lesars et telz nobles oyseaulx
(T 1440)

'Beeswax' is estrons de mouche (T 1199, literally 'bees' excrement'); 'physical love' is contempladon when applied, mischievously, to the religious Orders (T 1165) and more conventionally le jeu d'asne (Ô 1566). Occasionally the meaning of such expressions has become obscured; thus a reference to the caige vert of an aged monk (T 1195) is generally taken to mean his mistress, but this is uncertain; there was, apparently, a brothel by the name of La Caige in the Paris of Villon's day, and the colour green may have been associated with such places, or may have symbolished prostitution. When Villon wanted to say: 'What a beating I was given', he wrote in fact: 'Such mittens there were at that marriage', and it was only a reference by Rabelais to the quaint custom of slapping people on the back with a mitten at marriage feasts—with the idea of implanting the occasion on their memories—that revealed the meaning of the line. The expression appears to be unique in medieval literature. These are but a few random examples of the peculiar metaphorical uses to which Villon puts his words. Metaphorical expressions with an altogether richer and deeper symbolical meaning occur frequently in his poetry, but these lighter, relatively insignificant ones help to create in the mind of the reader an impression of a springy, quick-fire inventiveness. Everything points to a fresh and lively mind, the very antithesis of the pedantic Rhétoriqueurs who ruled French poetry in the second half of the fifteenth century.

A writer of varying moods and uneven inspiration, Villon treats words in a number of ways. When facetiously inclined, he plays around with puns, using them, as he uses almost every device that language can offer, to ridicule those whom he disliked:

Je ne suis son serf ne sa biche…
(T 12, serf='slave' or 'deer')

Ne luy laisse ne cuer ne foye…
(T 911, cuer abstract or concrete)

Qui luy laira escu ne targe…
(T 917, escu='coin' or 'shield')

Qui n'entent ne mont ne vallee…
(L 99 mont='hill' or 'much', a variant of mout)

He is also fond of toying with antiphrasis in such a way that the reader never quite knows whether love means hate or black means white. At times the joke, such as it is, is plain enough:

Et s'aucun, dont n'ay congnoissance
Estoit allé de mort a vie…
(T 1860-1)

Villon is evidently looking on earthly life as death, and on life in the next world as true life. Sometimes a remark was for long taken at its face value: the reference to three poor orphans, for example, who in point of fact were, as we have seen, rich old money-lenders well known in the Paris of Villon's day. Sarcasm of this sort abounds in his poetry, and when poking fun at people he excels; but on the other hand, when he is writing out of duty, in praise of some benefactor, his words not infrequently assume a leaden quality and he trips up over them:

Raison ne veult que je desacoustume,
Et en ce vueil avec elle m'assemble,
De vous servir, mais que m'y acoustume.
(T 1390-2)

These clumsy lines have not an ounce of feeling behind them. Opinions differ as to how this ballade, written for the provost Robert d'Estouteville, should be interpreted. Some claim that it is the usual, insulting Villon, for, they say, the unfortunate provost's wife is compared to a ploughed field! However much in character this may seem, it is not what the poem in fact says, and we must resist the temptation to out-Villon Villon by seeing some lubricous intention or thinly veiled insult beneath every remark. The entire ballade is put into the month of the provost, who is telling his wife of his love for her, and is certainly not casting aspersions on her moral behaviour. Villon simply makes the provost say: 'I do not lose the seed I sow in your field since the fruit resembles me. God ordained me to till and enrich it.' For once this is not thinly disguised insult, but heavyhanded flattery. At the beginning of the Testament the flattery of Louis XI, to whom Villon owed his release from prison, is also clumsily worded and in no way heralds the lyric poetry to follow. The lines:

…suis, tant que mon cuer vivra,
Tenu vers luy m'humilier,
Ce que feray jusques il mourra.
(T 85-7)

are, to say the least, awkward, for they appear to mean: 'I will honour the king until he dies.' It has been suggested that il of the last line may refer to cuer, meaning in that case 'until I die', which seems far more appropriate, but the fact remains that the line is ambiguous in a way that cannot have been intended. It is difficult to share Marot's regret that Villon was not a court poet; both the life and literature of court circles were altogether alien to his nature.

Villon was hopelessly lacking in inspiration when writing out of duty, or when he had nothing particular to say about his associates (which was rare) or about himself (which was even more rare). His poetry leaps to life whenever he is in springly mood or when he is breaking some victim on the wheel of his wit. But only when he is haunted by the fear of poverty, of suffering and death, does his poetry reach its greatest heights. At such moments his vocabulary, for all its scope and richness, becomes stark, ascetic almost. Vulgarisms and learned expressions alike are left on one side. Nothing could be simpler or more direct than:

Freres humains qui après nous vivez,
N'ayez les cuers contre nous endurcis…
(PD XIV, 1-2)

The word content of this verse is very plain, yet such is the art of Villon that it echoes for long in the memory even after the context has faded away:

Deux estions et n'avions qu'ung cuer…

Hé! Dieu, se j'eusse estudié
Ou temps de ma jeunesse folle…

Les aucuns sont morts et roidis,
D'eulx n'est il plus riens maintenant…

Hommes, icy n'a point de mocquerie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!