The Romance of the Rose, Part 1

Let's talk about the most popular secular literary work in the Middle Ages. More manuscripts have survived of the Roman de la Rose than just about any other non-religious work. It has a few other notable aspects. One is its length: 21,782 lines! The other is that it is an unintended collaboration by two men who never met.

Guillaume de Lorris (c.1200 - c.1240) was a French scholar and poet who wrote 4,058 lines of a romantic poem called the Roman de la Rose c.1230. That is all we know about him; we would know even less if not for Jean de Meun. Jean de Meun (c.1240 - c.1305) was a Parisian writer who picked up Guillaume's work and added 17,724 lines. The only reason we know the name "Guillaume de Lorris" is that Jean de Meun names him as the man who started the poem that de Meun continued.

"Continued" should not be construed to mean "carried on in the same vein as the original." Guillaume's section takes place in a walled garden, a stereotypical locus amoenus ("pleasant place") for medieval lovers. The narrator describes a dream he had as a young man, finding the garden with carvings on the outside of the wall of women representing vices such as Cruelty, Covetousness, and Avarice.

When I the age of twenty had attained –
The age when Love controls a young man’s heart –
As I was wont, one night I went to bed
And soundly slept. But there came a dream
Which much delighted me, it was so sweet...

Inside the garden, however, he finds a different situation. A beautiful woman named Idleness introduces him to a young man named Pleasure, who in turn introduces the narrator to Love, Joy, Courtesy, and Pleasant Looks. After spending some time with them, the narrator goes for a walk, unaware that he is being stalked by Love. He comes to a pool in which he glimpses a beautiful rose. Just then, Love shoots him with five arrows— Beauty, Simplicity, Courtesy, Company, and Fair Seeming—and then demands the narrator become a servant to Love.

The narrator's goal then is to pursue the rose (which represents a lady as well as female sexuality). Reason appears and tells the narrator to abandon his quest for the rose. Friend comforts the narrator, who goes back to kiss the rose, but Jealousy builds a castle around the rose to keep the narrator away.

It doesn't seem likely that that is where Guillaume meant his poem to end, but that is all we have from him. When Jean de Meun came across it and decided to add more, he changed the tone a bit (he also might have edited the original, so we cannot be certain we know exactly what Guillaume wrote). Tomorrow I'll tell you how he changed the direction and used it to criticize more than just the act of falling in love.