SOURCE: “Gothic Love and Death: François Villon and the City of Paris,” in Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 11, No.3, 1977, pp. 719-29.

In this essay, Hayes focuses on the theme of death and dying to demonstrate how Villon wrote “city” poetry, in contrast to the courtly poetry of the aristocracy. In addition to literary analysis, Hayes draws from the culture of Medieval France and the art of the late Gothic era to establish Villon's place in the development of a more popular literature.

In the popular imagination one literary figure from the close of the Middle Ages towers above all others, Francois Villon. Later ages have made much of his death-defying scrapes, underworld connections and grotesque cynicism. For the poets of nineteenth-century France he was the archetype of the romantic Bohemian. Robert Louis Stevenson described him as the “sorriest figure on the rolls of fame.” Our own, more...