About this Item
In French. Printed in script. Parchment style binding. Uneven pagination. Approx. 116 pages. Illustrations. Bookplate from previous owner [ Ruth and Charles deY Elkus] inside front cover. François Villon (c. 1431 - c. 1463) is the best known French poet of the Late Middle Ages. He had multiple encounters with law enforcement authorities, Villon wrote about some of these experiences in his poems. Villon's real name may have been François de Montcorbier or François des Loges: both of these names appear in official documents drawn up in Villon's lifetime. In his own work, however, Villon is the only name the poet used, and he mentions it in his work. His two collections of poems, especially "Le Testament" (also known as "Le grand testament"), have traditionally been read as autobiographical. Other details of his life are known from court or other civil documents. Villon wrote that he spent the summer of 1461 in the bishop's prison at Meung-sur-Loire. His crime is not known, but in Le Testament ("The Testament") dated that year he inveighs bitterly against Bishop Thibault d'Aussigny, who held the See of Orléans. Villon may have been released as part of a general jail-delivery at the accession of King Louis XI and became a free man again on 2 October 1461. In 1461, he wrote his most famous work, Le Testament (or Le Grand Testament, as it is also known). In 1461, at the age of thirty, Villon composed the longer work which came to be known as Le grand testament (1461-1462). This has been judged Villon's greatest work, and there is evidence in the work itself that Villon felt the same. Le Testament, also called Le Grand Testament, long poem by François Villon, written in 1461 and published in 1489. It consists of 2,023 octosyllabic lines arranged in 185 huitains (eight-line stanzas). These huitains are interspersed with a number of fixed-form poems, chiefly ballades and chansons, including the well-known "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" ("Ballad of the Ladies of Bygone Times"). While it is full of cruel humour, it is less overtly comic and much more complex than his earlier Le Petit Testament. In the poem, Villon bitterly reviews his life and expresses his horror of prison (the poem itself was written after he was released from prison), sickness, and old age with its attendant misery and his fear of death. It is notable for the poignant note of regret for his wasted youth and squandered talent. As in Le Petit Testament, he makes bequests to those he is leaving behind, but his tone in this work is much more scathing than that in his earlier work, and he writes with greater ironic detachment. Between 1922 and 1965, Ruth C. and Charles deYoung Elkus of San Francisco assembled an important collection of nearly 1700 examples of historic and contemporary Native American art, with an emphasis on Navajo and Pueblo material. The collection includes paintings, textiles, pottery, jewelry, baskets, and katsinam carvings, and includes early works by Charles Loloma, Kenneth Begay, Maria and Julian Martinez, Fred Kabotie, Beatien Yazz, Pablita Velarde, and more than 200 other artists, representing 74 tribal groups. This is one of the few know items from their library known to be in private hands. Seller Inventory # 81391
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