Roman de la Rose  

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"The question of the origin of this habit of allegorising and personification is one which has been often incidentally discussed by literary historians, but which has never been exhaustively treated."--Short History of French Literature (1882) by George Saintsbury


"The typical allegorical romance of the middle ages is the Roman de la Rose, a terribly long versified story in over twenty-two thousand verses, telling how the hero dreamed of a rose in an orchard, into which he enters, admitted by Dame Oiseuse, who leads him to the Palace De'duit (pleasure), where he finds Love, Courtesy, Youth, etc., dancing and singing. Dangier, who is not Danger, but rather Guardian, drives him away ; however, Bel Acceuil leads him back, and he is permitted to see and kiss the rose. After this, we find Shame and Jealousy interposing, and he is driven out again. This part of the poem is written by Guillaume de Loris, who was a contemporary of St. Louis, and was evidently saturated with Provençale poetry. The allegory is dull enough, but the descriptions are lovely. Jean de Meung continued the Roman de la Rose in quite another style; his contemporaries said that he had de-flowered the rose which he handled. Instead of the troubadour spirit, we have free-thinking invectives, satire, erudition, immorality and tediousness. At the best, the Roman de la Rose ' is wanting in poetry, at the worst it is insufferably dull and coarse. Its influence however was so great and lasting that Gerson, one of the many claimants set up by later times for the honour of having written the Imitation of Christ, composed a treatise against it in the 15th century, characteristically however admiring the learning heaped pell-mell into it by Meung."--Monthly Packet of Evening Readings


"Estes ou fustes, d'effet ou de volonte, putes"


"Even before Dante had found the eternal harmony of his Vita Nuova, the Roman de la Rose had inaugurated a novel phase of erotic thought in France. The work, begun before 1240 by Guillaume de Lorris, was finished, before 1280, by Jean Chopinel. Few books have exercised a more profound and enduring influence on the life of any period than the Romaunt of the Rose. Its popularity lasted for two centuries at least. It determined the aristocratic conception of love in the expiring Middle Ages. By reason of its encyclopedic range it became the treasure-house whence lay society drew the better part of its erudition."--The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919) by Johan Huizinga

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The Roman de la rose is a medieval French poem styled as an allegorical dream vision. It is a notable instance of courtly literature. The work's stated purpose is to both entertain and to teach others about the Art of Love. At various times in the poem, the "Rose" of the title is seen as the name of the lady, and as a symbol of female sexuality in general. Likewise, the other characters' names function both as regular names and as abstractions illustrating the various factors that are involved in a love affair.

Contents

History

The poem was written in two stages. The first 4058 lines, written by Guillaume de Lorris circa 1230, describe the attempts of a courtier to woo his beloved. This part of the story is set in a walled garden or locus amoenus, one of the traditional topoi of epic and chivalric literature. In this walled garden, the interior represents romance, while the exterior stands for everyday life. It is unclear whether Lorris considered his version to be incomplete, but it was generally viewed as such. Around 1275, Jean de Meun composed an additional 17,724 lines. Jean's discussion of love is considered more philosophical and encyclopedic, but also more misogynistic and bawdy. The writer Denis de Rougemont felt that the first part of the poem portrayed Rose as an idealised figure (Venus Celestis), while the second part portrayed her as a more physical and sensual being (Venus Vulgaris). Still, much recent scholarship has argued for the essential unity of the work, which is how it was received by later medieval readers.

Reception

The work was both very popular and very controversial — one of the most widely read works in France for three centuries, it survives in hundreds of illuminated manuscripts. The popularity of the work is especially notable because it predated the Gutenberg printing press by some two hundred years. Still, its emphasis on sensual language and imagery provoked attacks by Jean Gerson, Christine de Pizan and many other writers and moralists of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Translation and influence

Part of the story was translated from its original Old French into Middle English as The Romaunt of the Rose, which had a great influence on English literature. Chaucer was familiar with the original French text, and a portion of the Middle English translation is thought to be his work. C. S. Lewis's 1936 study The Allegory of Love renewed interest in the poem.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Roman de la Rose" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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