Into the Archive: Isn't It Romantic?

The Romance of the Rose (Oxford World's Classics) Paperback

This is a new translation of The Romance of the Rose, an allegorical account of the progress of a courtly love affair which became the most popular and influential of all medieval romances. In the hands of Jean de Meun, who continued de Lorris's work, it assumed vast proportions and embraced almost every aspect of medieval life, from predestination and optics, to the Franciscan controversy and the right way to deal with premature hair-loss. – Amazon.

Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) is a medieval poem written in Old French and presented as an allegorical dream vision. As poetry, The Romance of the Rose is a notable instance of courtly literature, purporting to provide a "mirror of love" in which the whole art of romantic love is disclosed. Its two authors conceived it as a psychological allegory; throughout the Lover's quest, the word Rose is used both as the name of the titular lady and as an abstract symbol of female sexuality… The Romance of the Rose was written in two stages by two authors. In the first stage of composition, circa 1230, Guillaume de Lorris wrote 4,058 verses describing a courtier's attempts at wooing his beloved woman. The first part of the poem's story is set in a walled garden, an example of a locus amoenus, a traditional literary topos in epic poetry and chivalric romance. Forty-five years later, circa 1275, in the second stage of composition, Jean de Meun or Jehan Clopinel wrote 17,724 additional lines, in which he expanded the roles of his predecessor's allegorical personages, such as Reason and Friend, and added new ones, such as Nature and Genius. – Wikipedia.

It was one of the most popular and foundational books in the Middle Ages, and first came to my attention in C. S. Lewis’ The Allegory of Love. I remember seeing an old grotty paperback of it at one of the Half-Price Books stores in San Antonio, the one close to the zoo, that looked like it was a big old remodeled Victorian house. Its condition was poor, so I didn’t get it then, but I’ve always thought about it. It’s hard to imagine a time when such a work would be published as a popular paperback. This is the last item in my monthly book acquisitions.

While I was waiting for it to be delivered by UPS, I made up a little fantasy out of my fears, about a porch pirate snagging it, being disappointed that it had so little value, but then reading it in idleness and somehow being transformed into a scholar and a medievalist, even a proponent of Courtly Love, becoming almost a modern-day Don Quixote. Unlikely, but … a sort of a story.