READING ANY TEXT outside of its cultural and temporal specificity requires acts of interpretation and imagination, and the poetry of Villon is no different. Critics have often meditated on the distance separating a modern reader from a medieval text, with Paul Zumthor evocatively stating:

It is perhaps the case that creative writers have felt better able to bridge these daunting contextual and temporal gaps than have critics, the former having the benefit of a shared identity as artists which, as later chapters will show, is often presented as transcending cultural barriers. However, critics have other tools at their disposal and, in the case of Villon, we can look to three sources in particular for clues as to how his work may have been received in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: the collection of comic tales known as the Repues franches; the preface to Clément Marot's edition of his poetry; and the Arts de seconde rhétorique, manuals of lyric versification. A survey of this evidence will permit us to draw several conclusions, stated simply in advance.

The first of these is that Villon's contemporaries were attracted, at least in part, to the same qualities in his work that have captivated today's readers. Then, as now, his picaresque, apparently autobiographical persona exerted a powerful pull, inspiring imitation and embellishment. The second is that while the legend of Villon's exploits (or those of his persona) was thriving as early as in the second half of the fifteenth century, his reputation as a serious poet might not have gained currency at all were it not for the favour of Marot.