SOURCE: "Montcorbier, alias Villon," in The Spirit of Romance, New Directions Books, 1910, pp. 166-78.

An American poet and critic, Pound is regarded as one of the most innovative and influential figures in twentieth-century Anglo-American poetry. He is chiefly renowned for his ambitious poetry cycle the Cantos, which he revised and enlarged throughout much of his life, and his series of satirical poems Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920). In the following essay, Pound analyzes Villon's particular method of writing poetry, comparing his approach to those of various literary movements and medieval and renaissance poets, especially Dante.

The century between Dante and Villon brought into the poetry of northern Europe no element which was distinctly new. The plant of the Renaissance was growing, a plant which some say begins in Dante; but Dante, I think, anticipates the Renaissance only as one year's harvest foreshadows the next year's Spring. He is the culmination...