En voyage avec François Villon et Sainte-Beuve

Abstract

A certain number of serious errors in our reading of the Testament of Francois Villon have led critics, over two centuries, to transform this remarkable poem into an autobiographical document, and hence to constitute a largely fictional biography of the author. Villon studies have thus been shifted away from the poetry, following a tendency in modern criticism due partly to the pervasive influence of Sainte-Beuve who, as Proust remarked, reads all poetry as if it were anecdotal prose. Even with the errors revealed since 1967, editors of Villon have persisted in clinging to this tendency, with dire results for the reading of all our poetry.