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‘A Very Perfect Forme of a Will’

In the late medieval and early modern periods, the last will and testament was not just a legal document; it was also a kind of literature. A range of poems and prose that engaged with the conventions of the legal last will became a feature of writing in English from the fourteenth century onwards. Sometimes fictional testaments exist as free-standing pieces of writing; often they are found embedded within larger literary texts. They focus on a range of imaginary testators, ranging from figures from myth and history, through notorious contemporaries, and animals, to the devil himself. Bequests were similarly various, including curses, farts, abstract qualities such as peace, and even the body of the testator. This chapter discusses fictional testaments by (amongst others) Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, Robert Henryson, George Gascoigne, and Isabella Whitney.