Roman de la Rose
Encyclopedia
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
poem
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
styled as an allegorical
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
dream vision
Dream vision
A dream vision is a literary device in which a dream is recounted for a specific purpose. While dreams occur frequently throughout the history of literature, the dream vision emerged as a poetic genre in its own right, and was particularly popular in the Middle Ages. This genre typically follows a...
. 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
Human female sexuality
Human female sexuality encompasses a broad range of behaviors and processes, including female sexual identity and sexual behavior, the physiological, psychological, social, cultural, political, and spiritual or religious aspects of sex...
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.
History
The poem was written in two stages. The first 4058 lines, written by Guillaume de LorrisGuillaume de Lorris
Guillaume de Lorris was a French scholar and poet from Lorris. He was the author of the first section of the Roman de la Rose. Little is known about him, other than that he wrote the earlier section of the poem around 1230, and that the work was completed forty years later by Jean de Meun.-...
circa 1230, describe the attempts of a courtier
Courtier
A courtier is a person who is often in attendance at the court of a king or other royal personage. Historically the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together...
to woo his beloved. This part of the story is set in a walled garden or locus amoenus
Locus Amoenus
Latin for "pleasant place", locus amoenus is a literary term which generally refers to an idealized place of safety or comfort. A locus amoenus is usually a beautiful, shady lawn or open woodland, sometimes with connotations of Eden...
, one of the traditional topoi
Literary topos
Topos , in Latin locus , referred in the context of classical Greek rhetoric to a standardised method of constructing or treating an argument. See topos in classical rhetoric...
of epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
and chivalric literature
Chivalry
Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...
. 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
Jean de Meun
Jean de Meun was a French author best known for his continuation of the Roman de la Rose.-Life:...
composed an additional 17,724 lines. Jean's discussion of love is considered more philosophical
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and encyclopedic, but also more misogynistic
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
and bawdy. The writer Denis de Rougemont
Denis de Rougemont
Denis de Rougemont was a Swiss writer, who wrote in French.He studied at the University of Neuchâtel, and then moved to Paris in 1930. There he wrote for and edited various publications, associating with the personalist groupings and the non-conformists of the 1930s...
felt that the first part of the poem portrayed Rose as an idealised figure, while the second part portrayed her as a more physical and sensual being. Still, much recent scholarship has argued for the essential unity of the work, which is how it was received by later medieval readers.
Reception
Jean Gerson
Jean Charlier de Gerson , French scholar, educator, reformer, and poet, Chancellor of the University of Paris, a guiding light of the conciliar movement and one of the most prominent theologians at the Council of Constance, was born at the village of Gerson, in the bishopric of Reims in...
, Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan was a Venetian-born late medieval author who challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated medieval culture. As a poet, she was well known and highly regarded in her own day; she completed 41 works during her 30 year career , and can be regarded as...
and many other writers and moralists of the 14th and 15th centuries. Historian Johann Huizinga writes, “It is astonishing that the Church, which so rigorously repressed the slightest deviations from dogma of a speculative character, suffered the teaching of this breviary of the aristocracy (for the Roman de la Rose was nothing else) to be disseminated with impunity.”
Manuscripts and incunabula
About 300 manuscripts are extant,, one of the highest figures for a secular work. Many of these are illustrated, most with fewer than ten remaining illustrations, but there are a number with twenty or more illustrations, and the exceptional BurgundianDuchy of Burgundy
The Duchy of Burgundy , was heir to an ancient and prestigious reputation and a large division of the lands of the Second Kingdom of Burgundy and in its own right was one of the geographically larger ducal territories in the emergence of Early Modern Europe from Medieval Europe.Even in that...
British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
Harley MS 4425 has 92 large and high quality miniatures, despite a date around 1500; the text was copied by hand from a printed edition. These are by the artist known as the Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500
Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500
The Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500 was a Flemish painter of illuminated manuscripts active in Bruges from about 1485 until around 1520. His name is derived from a collection of devotional manuscripts from the same artist dating to about the start of the 16th century...
, commissioned by Count Engelbert II of Nassau
Engelbert II of Nassau
Engelbert II of Nassau, Engelbrecht in Dutch, , was count of Nassau and Vianden, lord of Breda and Lek, Diest, Roosendaal, Nispen and Wouw...
The peak period of production was the 14th century, but manuscript versions continued to be produced until the advent of printing, and indeed afterwards - there are at least seven manuscripts dated after 1500. There are also seven incunabula printed editions before 1500, the first from Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
in about 1481, followed by two from Lyons
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
in the 1480s and four from Paris in the 1490s. An edition from Lyons in 1503 is illustrated with 140 woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
s.Digital images of more than 140 of these manuscripts are available for study in the Roman de la Rose Digital Library
Roman de la Rose Digital Library
The Roman de la Rose Digital Library is a joint project of the Sheridan Libraries of the Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The goal of the Rose DL is to create an online library of all manuscripts containing the 13th-century poem Roman de la Rose...
.
Translation and influence
Part of the story was translated from its original Old FrenchOld French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
into Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
as The Romaunt of the Rose
The Romaunt of the Rose
The Romaunt of the Rose is a partial translation into Middle English of the French allegory, the Roman de la Rose. In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women he confirms that he has translated at least part of the poem but the extant work is of dubious authenticity...
, 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. There were several other early translations into languages including Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects which were spoken and written between 1150 and 1500...
(Heinrik van Aken, c. 1280). Il Fiore is a "reduction" of the poem into 232 Italian sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s by a "ser Durante", sometimes thought to have been Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
, although this is generally thought unlikely. Dante never mentions the Roman, but is often said to have been highly conscious of it in his own work. C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
's 1936 study The Allegory of Love
The Allegory of Love
The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition , by C. S. Lewis , is an influential exploration of the allegorical treatment of love in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance....
renewed interest in the poem.
See also
- Romance (genre)Romance (genre)As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
- Courtly loveCourtly loveCourtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
- Courtly literature
- Allegory in the Middle AgesAllegory in the Middle AgesAllegory in the Middle Ages was a vital element in the synthesis of Biblical and Classical traditions into what would become recognizable as Medieval culture...
External links
- Full text from Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
: Vol. 1, Vol. 2 - Roman de la Rose Digital Library at Johns Hopkins University
- 12 Ms on Digital Scriptorium