Villainy in France (1463-1610)

Abstract

This is a book about the outward manifestation of inner malice—that is to say, villainy—in French culture (1463–1610). In pre-modern France, villainous offences were countered, if never fully contained, by intersecting legal and literary responses. Combining insights from legal anthropology with literary and historical analysis, this study examines villainy across juridical documents, criminal records, and literary texts (broadly conceived). While few people obtained justice through the law, many pursued out-of-court settlements of one kind or another. Literary texts commemorated villainies both fictitious and historical; literature sometimes instantiated the process of redress, and enabled the transmission of conflicts from one context to another. Villainy in France follows this overflowing current of pre-modern French culture, examining its impact within France and across the English Channel. Scholars and cultural critics of the Anglophone world have long been fascinated by villainy and villains. This book reveals the subject’s significant ‘Frenchness’ and establishes a transcultural approach to it in law and literature. Villainy’s particular significance emerges through its representation in authors remembered for their less-than respectable, even criminal, activities: François Villon, Clément Marot, François Rabelais, Pierre de L’Estoile, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Marston, and George Chapman. Villainy in France affords comparison of these authors alongside many of their lesser-known contemporaries; in so doing, it reinterprets French conflicts within a wider European context, from the mid-fifteenth century to the early seventeenth century.