Danse Macabre: Francois Villon: Poetry & Murder in Medieval Paris - Hardcover

Fran?ois Villon was a career criminal and a major poet, a priest killer (for which he was banished from France) and a recidivist thief who survived death row three times to write some of the most beautiful verses in the French language, including the famous refrain, "O? sont les neiges d'antan?" This heartfelt biography, the first full-length study of the poet's life in 50 years, focuses on the discrepancy between the brief, sad but boisterous life Villon led and the technical genius of his writing (of which only 3,000 lines remain today). Born in 1431 in war-ravaged Paris, Villon attracted the benevolence of clergyman Guillaume de Villon, who exposed the precocious boy to gentlefolk and church learning. According to Burl (a scholar whose particular expertise is neolithic monuments: Great Stone Circles: Fables, Fictions, Facts), Villon "remained a gamin of the Paris slums," consorting with prostitutes, drunks and a particularly sinister gang of desperadoes called the CoquillardsABurl suggests that Villon may have masterminded the gang's robbery of the College of Navarre. Villon's escapades were certainly colorful, but Burl never lingers over them unduly, always returning to the question of how, despite the constant chaos of his personal life, Villon produced his astonishingly controlled poetry. Readers will be struck by the freshness of Villon's language, presented here in the original French alongside uncensored English translation. Although the freewheeling chapters are sometimes hard to follow and Burl's purple prose can be distracting, this enthusiastic biography may reignite interest in a great poet with a checkered r?sum?. 8 pages b&w photos, not seen by PW. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Burl opens this study of the life and poetry of medieval French poet FranAois Villon (1431$?) by broadly paralleling Villon and England!s Chaucer. He then chronologically and seamlessly weaves together a biography rich with European history, Parisian debauchery and larceny, and poetic reprisal. Villon, almost a legend in his own time, was hardly known to English speakers until the late 19th century. He was familiar with prostitutes, prisons, decay, and existential entanglements. Burl compares translations of the poet!s work and offers great insight into what might have passed as a mere bawdy, appalling life were Villon not a great poet. This is a clear study of French pomp artfully derived from ruin and decay, retrieving what was once pawned in the more messy, often unresolved affairs of a great French poet. The writing is fluid and accessible but scholarly, with extensive footnotes, translation notes, and a bibliography that help the book go beyond Robert Louis Stevenson!s scurrilous 1882 essay, Wyndham Lewis!s 1928 biography, or Edward Chaney!s 1946 account of Parisian life. Highly recommended."Scott Hightower, Fordham Univ., New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.