Reading the Signs in Villon: Puns, Proper Names, and Implied Language Theory in the Lais

Abstract

Villon's Lais quickly announces itself as the last will and testament of a poor scholar named Francois Villon, and the poem unfolds in accordance with this formal conceit: a catalogue of items the first-person narrator wishes to bequeath, and the names of their intended recipients. As Villon scholars have frequently pointed out, pictorial enseignes--the signs hung on taverns and houses--are among the facetious bequests. Modern editions of the text obligingly guide the reader through Villon's picaresque Paris: footnotes point out the pubs and street corners named in the verses, capital letters and italic type ensure that the names of these places are recognized as proper names. In a recent edition, for example, a typical stanza of the Lais is a typographically busy space: Item, a Jehan Trouve, Item, to Jehan Trouve, the boucher, butcher, Laisse Le Mouton franc et I leave The Sheep, choice tendre and tender, Et ung tacon pour esmouchier and a whisk to swat the flies off Le Beuf Couronne qu'on veult the Crowned Ox, which he'd love vendre, to sell, Et La Vache qu'on ne peult and The Cow which can't be prendre, caught. Le villain qui la trousse au That clod who bears her on col his back-- S'il ne la rend, qu'on le puist if be won't give over, let him pendre be hanged Ou assomer d'un bon licol. (1) or finished off with a good halter! With the cues on the printed page and an extensive apparatus of notes, the editor guarantees that the reader will recognize that Le Mouton and Le Beuf Couronne were the enseignes of houses in the Rue de la Harpe and that the image of the peasant carrying a cow was depicted on the sign that gave its name to the Rue Troussevache. I would like to call attention to the way these helpful editorial interventions close off important dimensions of multiple meanings in Villon's text. A reader who is allowed to misread the signs--or rather, to read the enseignes as signes--tumbles headlong into a poetic construct of carnivalesque and disorienting images. When the proper names of the Parisian locales that Villon mentions are read as common nouns, the mimetic figures of the signboard take on an active role in Villon's macabre burlesque. The vache and the villain from the sign of the Rue Troussevache are recast as active participants in a narrative. Along with a sheep, a steer, and a cow, a poor rustic is given away as part of a bequest, and Jehan Trouve, boucher, is granted the right to strangle him and hang him up like a side of beef. The availability of such a reading makes the enseignes part of a texture of double entendres, uncertainties, and comic horrors. I use the word enseignes throughout to refer to the painted or sculpted signs that labeled the medieval city's taverns, streets, and houses. It seems practical to take advantage of the French word for these signs in order to avoid confusing them with signs of the sort studied by semioticians. The distinction, as we will see, has a certain artificiality: the game afoot with Villon's enseignes has a great deal to do with the complexity of all signs, and partakes of the problematics that bedevil--and enrich--all acts of signifying and naming. The enseignes are loci of semantic instability in the Lais, opportunities for Villon to stage a dazzling interplay of signs and sign, of proper name and common noun, of word and image. (2) This investigation will proceed in two parts: a short philological inquest followed by a consideration of theoretical implications. The philological examination is designed to test the starting premise of the essay: Does the physical presentation of the text eliminate ambiguities and enforce a certain editorially endorsed reading? …