Roman de la rose

Roman de la rose. The first 4,058 lines of this allegorical romance were written c.1230 by Guillaume de Lorris (c.1237); the remaining 17,622 lines were composed c.1275 by Jean de Meun. Loris's part of the poem is an allegorical presentation of courtly love; the allegorical figures mostly embody various aspects of the lady whom the lover-narrator meets in his endeavours to reach the rose which symbolizes the lady's love. The story is set in the walled garden of the god of love, the unpleasant realities of life being depicted on the walls outside. Jean de Meun shows love in a wider context of scholarship, philosophy, and morals, shifting the work from the courtly to the encyclopaedic literary tradition, in line with the rationalist and compendious spirit of the 13th cent. The poem remained an immense literary influence all through the later Middle Ages, both inside and outside France. About one-third of the whole (ll. 1–5, 154 and 10,679–12,360) is translated in the Middle English The Romaunt of the Rose, the first part of which may be by Chaucer.