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click to zoomGuillaume de Lorris
Le Roman de la rose
(The Tale of the rose)
  c.1350
Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits

 

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Bibliothèque nationale de France
Paris
France

Le Roman de la rose
c.1350

Le Roman de la rose is an allegorical work written in France in the thirteenth century, and later recognised as a national masterpiece.

The author, who writes in the first person, is the 'Lover' in the story. He travels in his dreams through a marvellous orchard where 'Déduit' (Deduct) and his companions, 'Jeunesse' (Youth), 'Liesse' (Gaiety) and 'Beauté' (Beauty) live. These personified courtly ideals are the real protagonists of the tale, as they follow the adventures of the Lover who must avoid the traps set by 'Malebouche' (Bad Mouth), 'Danger' (Danger) and 'Jalousie' (Jealousy) in order to win his Lady, the Rose.

Without being luxurious, the manuscript stands out among the average editions of the fourteenth century because of the quantity and quality of its paintings: 30 for the text attributed to Guillaume de Lorris and 49 for the sequel written by Jean de Meun. Throughout the text, gold-filigreed letters, inscribed by two different artists, indicate the beginning of each paragraph. The paintings, however, with the exception of one leaf, are the work of one artist only. Although we do not know for whom this copy was made, the coat of arms added at the bottom of leaf 1, in the fifteenth century, shows that it belonged to the family of Joyeuse, before passing into the hands of Antoine de Tournon in the sixteenth century.