Western Medieval Manuscripts : Le Roman de la Rose

Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun

Western Medieval Manuscripts

The Roman de la Rose was one of the most important and influential literary works written in medieval French. It survives in approximately 320 manuscripts and fragments made between the 13th and the 16th centuries. It is the work of two authors. The first 4000 or so lines were written by Guillaume de Lorris in the 1220s or 1230s; at some point between 1269 and 1278, Jean de Meun composed a continuation, adding more than 17,000 lines to the poem, including an account of the text's origins and evolution. The poem takes the form of an allegorical dream vision in which the Lover relates his journey into a walled garden and his quest for the beloved Rose. Into this standard courtly literature frame, Jean de Meun incorporated numerous commentaries and digressions on a variety of topics ranging from astrology and philosophy to optics, and employed a version of the learned disputation (common to university study at the time) between its various characters. His resolution of the tale further undercuts Guillaume de Lorris's idealised description of the conventions of the art of courtly love, with the protagonist achieving the supposedly unattainable Rose through deception and trickery. The Roman de la Rose was both popular and controversial for several centuries and its influence is evident in the writings of other major medieval poets including Petrarch, Dante and Chaucer. In common with many of the surviving manuscript copies, MS Gg.4.6 is illustrated with a cycle of miniatures, many of which are portraits of the allegorical figures who feature in the narrative. The artist of these miniatures has been identified by Richard and Mary Rouse and Marie-Thérèse Gousset as Richard de Montbaston (fl. 1325-1353), a professional illustrator who lived and worked with his wife Jeanne (fl. 1338-1353) on the rue Neuve Notre-Dame in Paris. According to their work, they were responsible for the illustration of as many as eighteen of the extant Rose manuscripts (including this one), out of a total of 53 manuscripts or fragments in which one or both of their hands have been identified. Given the (often richly) illuminated form of many of the surviving copies of the Rose, as well as continued literary interest in the text, more than 130 manuscripts have been digitised. These are available to view online via the <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://dlmm.library.jhu.edu/en/romandelarose/'>Roman de la Rose Digital Library</a>, a joint project of the Sheridan Libraries of John Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which also provides a summary of the text, a list of known extant manuscripts, information concerning their contents, decorative schemes and provenance, and other resources in support of the text's study.This copy of the Roman de la Rose has featured in two recent exhibitions: <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/moving-word/'>The moving word: French medieval manuscripts in Cambridge</a>, an online exhibition that explored how knowledge travelled in written form around Europe and the Mediterrean between 1150 and 1350 (2014); and the <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/illuminated/'>Cambridge Illuminations</a> exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum (2005), which surveyed manuscript production and culture in Europe from the 6th to the 16th centuries.Dr James Freeman Medieval Manuscripts Specialist Cambridge University Library