The poetic translation approach to the translation of rhythm in the poetry of Francois Villon

The current paper aims to present the devices used by four Spanish translators for rendering the features that enrich Francois Villon's quintessential poems. Firstly, this paper will explore the most popular theories of poetical translation concerning, more concretely, the French/Spanish language combination. Secondly, it will examine the main features of Villonian poetry and lastly, this work will evaluate comparatively and separately the translation devices employed by translators Alfredo Darnell Gascou (1946), Federico Gorbea (1976), Mercedes Lloret (1977) and Juan Victorio (1995), which have ensured the continuity of the phonetic and phonological patterns exploited by Villon in his poetical works.