Manuscript: Le Roman de la Rose

C’EST LE ROMANT DE LA ROUSE / OU L’ART D’AMOUR EST ENCLOSE – “This is the Romance of the Rose, in which the art of love is enclosed” – the inscription on the embossed Morocco leather cover of the Hermitage manuscript proclaims. The Romance was the creation of two authors. The first part, in the dream genre and entirely in the spirit of knightly literature, was written by Guillaume de Lorris between 1230 and 1235. The continuation appeared between 1264 and 1269, and its author, Jean de Meun, tells of love in a different way. The tale begins as the adventure of the courtly narrator who has fallen in love with the Rose, while it ends as a hymn to sensual love and a denunciation of chastity. Venus and Cupid come to the hero’s aid, storming the fortress constructed by Jealousy, allowing him to finally kiss and pluck the Rose, while Chastity is spurned as being against the commandments of Nature. The account is accompanied by digressions that relate other well-known love stories drawing edifying conclusions – mainly about the duplicity of women and the senselessness of abstinence. Of course, that stance aroused some furious arguments, making the Romance extremely popular. As the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga writes in his book The Autumn of the Middle Ages, the work became “a treasure of profane liturgy, learning, and legend. And it was precisely the duality of the Roman de la Rose, the work of two poets totally different in nature and outlook, that made it even more useful as a bible of erotic culture: it contained texts for various uses.” (translated by Dianne Webb)