Perrow—The Last Will and Testament in Literature. 705 
PART II. 
During the later Middle Ages the Testament became in West¬ 
ern Europe, and especially in France and England, a favorite 
form of literature. The vogue began in the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries and continued until as late as the eighteenth 
century. It is the purpose of this study to trace as far as pos¬ 
sible the beginnings and development of this vogue, and to ex¬ 
amine incidentally some of the more important examples of the 
genre with a view to classifying them according to the elements 
which predominate. 
The rise of the Testament during the centuries mentioned 
seems to be related to the general parody tendencies which at 
that time were so prevalent among European peoples. 1 Parody 
is a very ancient form of literature. It flourished in Greece side 
by side with the classic literature, and was copied by the Rom¬ 
ans, who made no small use of it both to burlesque . Greek 
models and to tease each other. ~No t much parody has survived 
from the earlier centuries of our era, but now and then a bit 
comes to light to show us that the spirit was not dead. When 
the affairs of Europe began to clear after the ferment of the 
dark ages, when customs became stable enough to endure par¬ 
ody and pieces of literature well enough known to invite it, and 
when a more critical and skeptical spirit began to develop among 
the young nations of Western Europe, the impulse to write par¬ 
ody not only came again to its own but became even a prevail¬ 
ing fashion in literature, and almost everything that was well 
known was imitated either seriously or in a spirit of burlesque. 2 
The first signs of this vogue for parody may be seen obscurely 
in the twelfth century; by the thirteenth it had gathered some 
force; and by the fourteenth it was well established. The fash- 
1 For the general subject of parody see A. S. Martin, On Parody , New 
York, 1896; also Francesco Novati, Studii Critici e letterari, Torino, 
1889, p. 177. 
2 Studii Critici , p. 188. 
