ROMAN DE LA ROSE, a French poem of which the first part was written about 123o by Guillaume de Lorris (q.v.), and which was completed about 4o years later by Jean de Meun (q.v.). Guillaume de Lorris wrote an allegory, which is an artistic presentment of the love philosophy of the troubadours. In a dream the Lover visits a park to which he is admitted by Idle ness. In the park he finds Pleasure, Delight, Cupid and other personages, and at length the Rose. Welcome grants him per mission to kiss the Rose, but he is driven away by Danger, Shame. Scandal, and especially by Jealousy, who entrenches the Rose and imprisons Welcome, leaving the Lover disconsolate. The story, thus left incomplete, was finished in 19,000 lines by Jean de Meun, who allows the Lover to win the Rose, but only after a long siege and much discourse from Reason, the Friend, Nature and Genius. In the second part, however, the story is entirely subsidiary to picturesque and poetic digressions, and to violent satire in the manner of the fabliaux against the abuse of power, against women, against popular superstition, and against the celibacy of the clergy. The length of the work and its hetero
geneous character proved no bar to its enormous popularity in the middle ages, attested by the 200 mss. of it which have survived.
The Romaunt of the Rose was translated into English by Chaucer (see the prologue to the Legende of Good Women), but the version which has come down to us (see an edition by Dr. Max Kaluza, Chaucer Society, 1891), is generally admitted to be by another hand. For a list of books on the authorship of the English translation see G. Kiirting, Grundriss der engl. Lit. (Munster, 1905, 4th ed. p. i84). Three editions of the Roman de la Rose were printed at Lyons between 1473 and 1490 ; two by Antoine Verard (Paris, 149o? and 1496?), by Jean du Pre (Paris, 1493 ?), by Nicholas Desprez for Jean Petit (Paris) , by Michel le Noir (Paris, 1509 and 1519). In 1503 Jean Molinet produced a prose version. Marot modernized the text (1526), and his corrections were followed in subsequent editions. There is a modern English version by F. S. Ellis (3 vols., 1900).