This poem about living and loving in medieval courts was both very popular and controversial in the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance.<\/p>\n
The \u2018Romance of the Rose<\/a>\u2019, a medieval French poem that takes the form of an allegorical dream vision, was written by two successive authors:\u00a0Guillaume de Lorris<\/a>\u00a0in the late 1230s, and\u00a0Jean de Meun<\/a>, who completed it almost forty years later. The authors\u2019 purpose is to both entertain and teach others about the art of courtly love, as a part of the tradition of the “art of love<\/a>” inspired by\u00a0Ovid<\/a>.<\/p>\n The poem tells of the Lover\u2019s quest for the Rose, representing his lady, from love at first sight to the deflowering of the beloved. The earlier part of the \u2018Rose\u2019 belongs to the tradition of the\u00a0fin’amor<\/em>\u00a0of troubadours and the romantic epic. In the later part, Jean de Meun replaces Guillaume de Lorris’s poetry with a summary of university culture and a more cynical vision of love. At the end, the \u2018Romance of the Rose\u2019 concludes in favour of the forces of nature, ignoring the tensions specific to courtly love, the moral obligations of marriage and the teachings of the Church.<\/p>\n The \u2018Rose\u2019 became the most popular work in the Old French vernacular. Some 250 medieval manuscripts are still extant. It had a strong influence on literature in France and beyond. Around 1290,\u00a0Gui de Mori<\/a>\u00a0rewrote the \u2018Rose\u2019 from a Christian point of view.\u00a0Guillaume de Digulleville<\/a>\u00a0also composed an allegorical work around 1330-1331, the \u2018P\u00e8lerinage de vie humaine<\/a>\u2019. Using the codes of the \u2018Rose\u2019, he invites his readers on a quest of spiritual rather than amorous initiation<\/p>\n The poem was also the subject of two moralisations: around 1400,\u00a0Evrart de Conty<\/a>, in the \u2018Livre des Echecs amoureux<\/a>\u2019 (\u2018Book of Love Chess\u2019), transposed in a didactic commentary the stages of amorous conquest into an allegorical game of chess. Later, around 1500,\u00a0Jean de Molinet<\/a>\u00a0rewrote the \u2018Romance of the Rose\u2019 in prose and gave it spiritual significance.<\/p>\n Echoes of the \u2018Romance of the Rose\u2019 were heard beyond the French language, especially through great European poets. The most relevant Italian translation is the poem \u2018Il Fiore<\/a>\u2019 (\u2018The Flower\u2019), attributed to\u00a0Dante<\/a>. The hypothesis of Dante\u2019s authorship is supported by the explicit naming of the poem\u2019s author,\u00a0Durante<\/em>\u00a0(the full form of Dante), and by the mention of the assassination of\u00a0Siger of Brabant<\/a>, an Averroist scholar at the Sorbonne who was murdered in Paris.<\/p>\n This episode is cited by only one other source, Dante\u2019s \u2018Paradise<\/a>\u2019. The poem is composed of 232 sonnets functionally linked to one another, representing one of the first examples of this kind of poetic structure. It is just called \u2018Flower\u2019, since the text never explicitly mentions a rose, but every time Dante mentions the \u2018Romance of the Rose\u2019 in the \u2018Comedy<\/a>\u2019, the quotation seems to depend on the translation of the French poem already given in the \u2018Fiore\u2019.\u00a0Geoffrey Chaucer<\/a>, the author of the \u2018Canterbury Tales<\/a>\u2019, translated the poem into English from the original Old French. Critics have suggested that the character of La Vieille acted as source material for Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, who claims the same lust for life.<\/p>\n At the beginning of the 15th century, the \u2018Romance of the Rose\u2019 sparked the first French literary quarrel between\u00a0Jean Gerson<\/a>,\u00a0Christine de Pizan<\/a>\u00a0and other writers and moralists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reception and Influence<\/h4>\n
Translations<\/h4>\n
The Quarrel of the Rose<\/h3>\n