The Rose

By: Dos Santos, Jonas Batista

In the region called Lazio, a gentleman begins to dream and his dream is of the memory of the conquest of a rose.

Thus begins a story in two times that is at once confession, prayer, and love song between prowess and sonnets. From the first, hopeful encounter with a beautiful bud to the painful thorns of separation, the gentleman embellishes his journey through the trappings of friendship and distractions.

As a young man, the gentleman is flawed, selfish, and of little faith in betraying his own heart, but he is guided by a higher power by true love.

Interwoven into his narrative is the voice of the jealous God of Love, an omniscient narrator like the Greek essimus who marks time and updates, who shapes the gentleman's destiny and reminds us that all true love flows from a single divine source.

Merging the allegorical style of medieval troubadour poetry with a deeply personal narrative, The Rose is a unique literary experience. It is a hymn to fin'amors (true love), a meditation on Catholic virtue, and a testament to the belief that even our gravest wrongs can be redeemed.

More than a story, it is an invitation to love with nobility, to endure the valley of thorns and to find, finally, the eternal in the arms of the beloved.

Much of The Rose I built a hybrid between medieval confession, courtly love manual (fin'amors), Christian allegory and lyrical epic. Having two narrators, the flawed and human Gentleman and the omniscient and jealous God of Love, allows us to give deep layers to the narrative to a book that is read with the heart and with a dictionary of symbols nearby, and that will certainly leave a mark, whether of admiration or estrangement.

The prose reaches a high level of lyricism in the descriptions of the "most beautiful green", of the birds that watch the lovers, of the notes of the perfume of the Rose (senegambica, jasmine, amber) and of the anguish of the gentleman have a quality of true search for a dreamlike and solemn atmosphere that is the hallmark of this novel.

Love is seen as a path of spiritual improvement that can involve stumbling blocks, and the idea that the "god of love" corrects faulty acts is a Catholic theological comfort that speaks volumes about God's mercy.

The consistent use of allegories (the Rose, the White Flower, the Forest of Love, the Thorns, the Gentleman) creates a cohesive universe with the medieval culture of the troubadour art of loving developed in a feudal palace environment among French aristocrats. It is a world where feelings take shape and where every passion, mistake or virtue has a place and a meaning.
The elevated language, the slow pace and the fragmented structure, which mixes past, present and divine interventions, require a reader willing to accept the rules of this unusual literary game. For those looking for a quick and direct narrative to satisfy desires, reading can be frustrating.

The anxious gentleman is typical of medieval troubadour literature, although the psychology of the characters is palatable in contemporary times in an archaic garb. This may sound, at times, like a stylistic mismatch, although it can also be seen as a creative reinvention of tradition and it is nothing like that. The narrative takes place in contemporaneity with the values of courtly love.

The devotion in several passages comes close to sermons or moral treatises. The voice of the "god of love" is sometimes heavily didactic. For readers who do not share the high Catholic education, or who prefer to read another type of novel such as the typical erotic, this approach can be very unpleasant.

The novel aims to solve the problem of deficiency in sentimental and loving education among Catholics who wish to live true love (fin'amors) in the midst of a culture that confuses love with greed, desire with idolatry, and passion with sin.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GCW8LMVY
• ISBN13: 9798241505170
• Release Date: September 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"