The Roman de la Rose was a major bestseller - largely due to its robust treatment of 'natural' sexuality. This study concentrates on the ways in which Jean de Meun, in imitation of Ovid, assumed the mock-magisterium (or mastership) of love. From Latin texts and literary theory Jean derived many hermeneutic rationales and generic categorizations, without allowing any one to dominate. Alastair J. Minnis considers allegorical versus literalistic expression in the poem, its competing discourses of allegorical covering and satiric stripping, Jean's provocative use of plain and sometimes obscene language in a widely accessible French work, the challenge of its homosocial and perhaps even homoerotic constructions, the subversive effects of coital comedy within a text characterized by intermittent aspirations to moral and scientific truth, and - placing the Rose's reception within the European history of vernacular hermeneutics - the problematic translation of literary authority from Latin into the vulgar tongue.

The Roman de la rose in its Philosophical Context offers a new interpretation of the long and complex medieval allegorical poem written by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun in the thirteenth century, a work that became one of the most influential works of vernacular literature in the European Middle Ages. The scope and sophistication of the poem's content, especially in Jean's continuation, has long been acknowledged, but this is the first book-length study to offer an in-depth analysis of how the Rose draws on, and engages with, medieval philosophy, in particular with the Aristotelianism that dominated universities in the thirteenth century. It considers the limitations and possibilities of approaching ideas through the medium of poetic fiction, whose lies paradoxically promise truth and whose ambiguities and self-contradiction make it hard to discern its positions. This indeterminacy allows poetry to investigate the world and the self in ways not available to texts produced in the Scholastic context of universities, especially those of the University of Paris, whose philosophical controversies in the 1270s form the backdrop against which the poem is analysed. At the heart of the Rose are the three ideas of art, nature, and ethics, which cluster around its central subject: love. While the book offers larger claims about the Rose's philosophical agenda, different chapters consider the specifics of how it draws on, and responds to, Roman poetry, twelfth-century Neoplatonism, and thirteenth-century Aristotelianism in broaching questions about desire, epistemology, human nature, the imagination, primitivism, the philosophy of art, and the ethics of money.

Around the year 1400, the poet Christine de Pizan initiated a public debate in France over the literary "truth" and merit of the Roman of the Rose, perhaps the most renowned work of the French Middle Ages. She argued against what she considered to be misrepresentations of female virtue and vice in the Rose. Her bold objections aroused the support and opposition of some of the period’s most famous intellectuals, notable Jean Gerson, whose sermons on the subject are important literary documents. "The Quarrel of the Rose" is the name given by modern scholars to the collection of these and other documents, including both poetry and letters, that offer a vivid account of this important controversy. As the first dual-language version of the "Quarrel" documents, this volume will be of great interest to medievalists and an ideal addition to the Routledge Medieval Texts series. Along with translations of the actual debate epistles, the volume includes several relevant passages from the Romance of the Rose, as well as a chronology of events and ample biography of source materials.

The thirteenth-century allegorical dream vision, the Roman de la Rose, transformed how medieval literary texts engaged with philosophical ideas. Written in Old French, its influence dominated French, English and Italian literature for the next two centuries, serving in particular as a model for Chaucer and Dante. Jean de Meun's section of this extensive, complex and dazzling work is notable for its sophisticated responses to a whole host of contemporary philosophical debates. This collection brings together literary scholars and historians of philosophy to produce the most thorough, interdisciplinary study to date of how the Rose uses poetry to articulate philosophical problems and positions. This wide-ranging collection demonstrates the importance of the poem for medieval intellectual history and offers new insights into the philosophical potential both of the Rose specifically and of medieval poetry as a whole.

Remembering Boethius explores the rich intersection between the reception of Boethius and the literary construction of aristocratic identity, focusing on a body of late-medieval vernacular literature that draws on the Consolation of Philosophy to represent and reimagine contemporary experiences of exile and imprisonment. Elizabeth Elliott presents new interpretations of English, French, and Scottish texts, including Machaut's Confort d'ami, Remede de Fortune, and Fonteinne amoureuse, Jean Froissart's Prison amoureuse, Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, and The Kingis Quair, reading these texts as sources contributing to the development of the reader's moral character. These writers evoke Boethius in order to articulate and shape personal identities for public consumption, and Elliott's careful examination demonstrates that these texts often write not one life, but two, depicting the relationship between poet and aristocratic patron. These works associate the reception of wisdom with the cultivation of memory, and in turn, illuminate the contemporary reception of the Consolation as a text that itself focuses on memory and describes a visionary process of education that takes place within Boethius's own mind. In asking how and why writers remember Boethius in the Middle Ages, this book sheds new light on how medieval people imagined, and reimagined, themselves.

This book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of medieval French literature but also to students and specialists of other medieval European languages, as well as to medieval historians, and those working in gender studies."--BOOK JACKET.

With the possible exception of Great Britain, France can justifiably lay claim to possess the richest literary history of any country in Western Europe. This book covers the authors and their works, literary movements, and philosophical and social developments that have had a direct impact on style or content, and major historical events such as the two world wars, the Franco-Prussian War, the Algerian War, or the events of May 1968 that are directly reflected in a substantial body of imaginative writing. Historical Dictionary of French Literature, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on individual writers and key texts, significant movements, groups, associations, and periodicals, and on the literary reactions to major national and international events such as revolutions and wars. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about French literature.