The Romance of the Rose

by Jean, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, et al.

Book Overview

This is a new translation of The Romance of the Rose, an allegorical account of the progress of a courtly love affair which became the most popular and influential of all medieval romances. In the hands of Jean de Meun, who continued de Lorris's work, it assumed vast proportions and embraced almost every aspect of medieval life from predestination and optics, to the Franciscan controversy and the right way to deal with premature hair-loss.

About...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199540675
• ISBN13: 9780199540679
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Chivalry and Medieval Romance at it's Best

This is a very relaxing yet thought-provoking allegory of life and love, but primarily love. I first heard of it in the film "Shadowlands", about the great C.S. Lewis. After having bought it and read it after hearing Anthony Hopkins describe it to his character's Oxford students in the film, I see it's significance in both that particular film and as a remarkable work of literature which, in it's day, seemed to have been far more popular than even the "Canterbury Tales"; more than twice as many original manuscripts of RotR exist today than of "Canterbury". The Romance of the Rose is fluid, metaphorical, philosophical, lyric and, of course, very romantic. An exquisite illustration of courtly love.

Prefer the unexpurgated translation

Nothing wrong with this edition. Just thought that people might want to know that there is another translation out there that is easier to read AND more fun. It's the translation in blank verse published in unabridged and unexpurgated form by Meridian (0452010837), and edited by Charles W. Dunn, one of the finest modernizations of a medieval classic ever published. The translation was the life's work of Professor Harry W. Robbins.

"By my faith, said Love,...I want him to be in my court."

This review relates to the work, -The Romance of theRose- by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun,Translated by Charles Dahlberg, Princeton Univ.Press, Third Edition, 1995. 484 pp.This edition of -The Romance of the Rose- is interestingfor it contains all 3 Prefaces which Charles Dahlbergwrote. In the Preface to the 1st edition, publishedin 1971, Dahlberg says: "This translation of the -Romanceof the Rose-, the first in modern English prose, is one of nearly a dozen volumes during the past decade to presentan edition, a translation, or a major commentary on theOld French poem. The aim of this book is to provide aclear, readable text that is as faithful as possible tothe original, particularly in terms of imagery. Becausetranslations have their pitfalls and because thirteenth-century assumptions about the use of imagery, indeed ofpoetry, are very different from ours, I have provided avariety of materials that may help the reader to approach the poem with an approximation of the perspective of that time. The Introduction, Notes, and Illustrations are designed primarily to elaborate and clarify such a viewof the poem."In the 2nd Preface, to the 1983 edition, Dahlberg says:[after saying that minor errors have been correctedand additions have been made to the Bibliography]"During recent years, a number of writers have reemphasizedthe contrast between the two authors in their treatmentof the poem's allegory. Such is the case even in therelatively small space devoted to the poem in Jung'simportant book on Latin and French allegory, a work thatparallels the series of essays by Hans Robert Jausson the origins and development of allegorical poetry upto the -Romance-."In the Preface to the 1995 edition, Dahlberg againdeals with the scholarly publications concerning thepoem which have occurred since the last edition. Hecites works in the Preface which deal with Sources andInfluences ["Among source studies, the greatest attentionhas been givven To Ovid: in the Narcissus episode, thePygmalion episode, or both. Huot studies the relation ofthe Medusa interpolation to these spisodes and to theDeucalion-Pyrrha passage, Browlee studies the relationof the Pygmalion and Adonis passages, and Steinle addsthe Narcissus passages to these two."]; The Two Authors;The Nature of the Allegorical Narrative; The Use of theFirst Person; and Early Reception. This work is in two parts. Part I [The Dream of Love]is authored by Guillaume de Lorris and comprises some 4,000plus lines. Part II [The Overthrow of Reason] is authored by Jean de Meun.The sections of Part I are titled by Dahlberg as: (1) The Garden, The Fountain,and the Rose; (2) The God of Love and the Affair of theHeart; (3) The Involvement of Reason and the Castle ofJealousy.Part II [The Overthrow of Reason] by Jean de Meun, istitled in sections by Dahlberg as: (4) Discourse ofReason; (5) The Advice of Friend; (6) The Assault onthe Castle. False Seeming's Contribution; (7) The OldWoman's Intercession; (8) Attack a

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I really like this book because it is a romance book and i love all romance books. I really like books that are writen in the old ages. I think if a person likes to just read books they should read Romance of the Rose.

Allegory continued

The Romance of the Rose is the famous and much discussed 13th century allegorical romance. It consists of two parts of unequal length-- the first shorter part by Guillaume de Lorris and the second longer part continued 40 years after de Lorris' death by Jean de Meun. Throughout the medieval period, this was one of the most widely read book in the French language.Scholars have rather endlessly debated how unified the allegory really is, and the trend recently seems to have shifted to seeing the two authors as less in opposition, and more composing a complete treatment of courtly Love.For the casual (non-academic) reader like myself, the experience is rather less unified. The de Lorris section is quite lyrical and fits more with what I imagine an allegorical dream poem to be. When Idleness leads the dreamer into the garden of Diversion and when Love shoots him with the five deadly arrows that bind him to the Rose, the imagery is compelling and lovely.On the other hand, the second part, while often *very* funny is much more obviously satirical with long digressions that focus more on social mores than on the world of the Dreamer as established in the first half. The effect is sort of like a serious and literary Spike Jones song-- which is not at all a bad thing.