The focus of this thesis is an analysis of two Western-European literary works that come from the late Medieval to early Renaissance period: the anonymous Spanish novel "Lazarillo de Tormes" and the poetic work "Le Grand testament" by Francois Villon. The purpose of this thesis is to give an insight into the period in which they fall and show how they exemplify four distinctive characteristics of this period's history. The four features are: the nature of writing, critiques of religion, moral relativism and blame, and a focus on death. After demonstrating this, I give a short conclusion about the value of these works and what we can take away from them.