The Romance of the Rose

“Her beauty was quite spoiled, and she had become very ugly. All her head was white and bleached, as if with blossom. If [Old Age] had died, her death would not have been important or wrong, for her whole body was dried up and ruined by age.”

The narrator here describes the allegorical figure of Old Age, which sets the patten for how the figures function in the text. Old Age is less of an individual character than the embodiment of an abstract concept: Her faded looks, white hair, and “dried up” body are meant to invoke the physical qualities typically associated with aging, which stand in contrast to the narrator’s youth.

“There were buds, some tiny and closed up and others slightly larger, and some much larger ones which were coming into flower and were on the point of bursting. These buds are attractive, for wide-open roses have completely faded after a day, whereas buds stay fresh for at least two or three days.”

This passage introduces and develops the extended metaphor used throughout the poem of rosebuds and flowers as representing the female body and female sexuality. The comparison to time seems to be a reference to a girl or woman’s maturity and age, implying that the narrator believes younger girls are more attractive—and more romantically or sexually responsive—than older, more experienced women. This introduces the theme of Misogyny and Gender Roles in Courtly Love.

“Now because I love you, I wish to be so certain of you and bind you to me so closely that you are unable to be false to your promise and agreement, or to commit any wrong act. It would be a crime for you to cheat, for you seem to be to be so fair-minded.”

The language Love uses here to bind the narrator is reminiscent of oaths of fealty common in the feudal society of medieval Europe, in which those of lower rank would swear loyalty to a higher-ranking lord in exchange for protection or favors. In accepting Love as his lord, the narrator makes his allegiance to ideals of courtly love and desire plain—an allegiance that he will adhere to throughout the text.

“You never heeded my advice when you surrendered to the God of Love. Your too-fickle heart led you into this folly, folly that you were quick to undertake but will require much skill to abandon. Now forget love, which makes your life valueless, for this folly will constantly increase if you do not stop it. Take the bit firmly between your teeth, subdue your heart and master it.”

Reason’s stance here offers a critical view of The Complications of Sexuality and Desire. While other characters extoll the worth of love and sexuality, Reason rejects love as an irrational and worthless "folly” that the narrator ought to foreswear. Reason’s metaphor at the end of this passage—comparing one’s heart to a wild horse in need of taming—also brings in a level of self-determination absent in the rest of the book. Reason suggests that the narrator could resist love if he wished to, which clashes with the narrator’s own view of love as irresistible.

“I too feared that I had lost my hope and my expectation, for Love had so favored me that I had already begun to speak very intimately to Fair Welcome, who was ready to receive my advances, but Love is so capricious that he robbed me of everything at once, just when I thought I had won.”

The difficulties of love are reflected in the narrator’s language and characterization of Love. When Love appears as a character, the narrator is usually consistent, but when Love is absent, the narrator loses power and often blames him for his downfalls. This passage reflects the conflicting ways the narrator speaks about Love—despite his faithfulness to him, he regularly describes him in less than flattering ways, invoking the unpredictable nature of love.

“Love, if my judgement is correct, is a mental illness afflicting two persons of opposite sex in close proximity who are both free agents. It comes upon people through a burning desire, born of disordered perception, to embrace and to kiss and to seek carnal gratification. A lover is concerned with nothing else but is filled with this ardent delight.”

Reason’s description of love is highly sexual, indicating that she is speaking of eros, or the Greek concept of romantic and sexual love. Her characterization of lovers as “free agents” is also significant, as while arranged marriages were common, courtly love literature recognized that love was best formed outside of these planned relationships, emphasizing the need for mutual consent and interest in romantic relationships.

“Even though I have already told you of Socrates, that valiant man who I loved very much and who so loved me that he had recourse to me in all his deeds, since I want you to be particularly mindful of this point, I can find many other examples of Fortune acting in this way, degrading and destroying the good while holding the wicked in honor.”

Reason invokes Socrates, the Greek philosopher who lived from 470-399 BC, as her ideal follower. In praising Socrates and lamenting the “destruction of the good”—a reference to Socrates’ execution for his philosophical beliefs—Reason depicts Fortune and the world at large as irrational and unfair, destroying virtue while elevating the “wicked.”

“Although the mariner who sails upon the sea in search of many unexplored lands may keep his eye upon a single star, he does not always rely on one sail, but changes it often in order to avoid storms or wind. In the same way, a heart that loves ceaselessly does not always succeed in a single sprint; he who wishes to enjoy true love must sometimes chase and sometimes flee.”

The passage uses nautical imagery to depict the dynamics of The Complications of Sexuality and Desire for a lover. Just as a wise mariner must sometimes switch sails to keep pace with changing conditions at sea, so too must a lover be willing and able to change tactics depending on the circumstances of their pursuit: They must know when to woo boldly and when to hold back.

“Thus we see that in marriages where the husband imagines that he is wise to scold and beat his wife and fill her life with wrangling, and tells her she is silly and foolish for spending so much time dancing and so regularly frequenting the society of handsome young men, true love cannot last, since they inflict so many evils upon each other and he wants to be master of his wife’s body and possessions.”

This passage addresses Misogyny and Gender Roles in Courtly Love, depicting a wife seeking to amuse herself with “dancing” and “handsome young men,” as courtly lovers are supposed to do, while her husband abuses and criticizes her for doing so. Here, the husband is depicted as foolish for being harsh and controlling, with the speaker suggesting that in seeking to dominate his wife, he will only alienate her.

“Then will come Jean Chopinel, gay in heart and alert in body, who will be born in Meung-sur-Loire and will serve me, feasting and fasting, his whole life long, without avarice or envy. He will be so wise that he will care nothing for Reason, who hates and condemns my ointments, which smell sweeter than balm.”

This tongue-in-cheek reference to Jean de Meun, the writer of the second part of the poem, emphasizes the double authorship of the poem (See: Background). The passage playfully emphasizes the omniscience of Love, with de Meun’s self-deprecating reference to his rejection of reason presenting himself as a true believer in love.

“They agreed to go disguised as good, pious, holy people, as if they were on a pilgrimage. At once, Constrained Abstinence donned a robe of cameline and dressed as a beguine, covering her head with a large kerchief and a white cloth.”

This passage reflects the important motif of clothing (See: Symbols & Motifs), invoking class, personality, and the problems of The Tensions Between Nobility and Poverty in the text. Cameline is a reference to fabric ostensibly made of camel hair, which was used in religious garments. A beguine is a woman not belonging to an official religious order but nonetheless living an austere, religious life—like a freelance nun. These symbolize Abstinence’s determination to appear as a religious woman without being one.

“Then she resumed her speech, the false and servile crone, imagining that through her teaching she could make me lick honey from thorns, for according to Fair Welcome, who remembered everything she said and recounted it to me afterwards, she wanted him to call me his lover without loving me par amour. If he had been the kind of person to believe her, he would certainly have betrayed me, but he pledged me his word, and this was the only assurance he gave me, that nothing she said could have made him commit such treason.”

The term “par amour” recurs throughout the text as a term for following the rules of courtly love; thus, the Old Woman is trying to convince Fair Welcome to break the rules of courtly love, which he steadfastly refuses to do. The relationship between Fair Welcome and the narrator is complex, with many layers of allegory intertwined with an undeniably devoted and romantically coded relationship. Fair Welcome symbolizes both his name and a common figure in courtly love literature: the friend who assists the hero in rendezvous with his lover.

“A woman should always strive to be like the wolf who is about to steal a sheep: to avoid failure she will attack a thousand for the sake of one, not knowing which she will take until she has captured it. A woman too should spread her nets everywhere to ensnare all men, for since she cannot know whose favor she may win, she should sink her hook into all of them in order to attract at least one to herself.”

While satirical, the Old Woman’s cynical advice to Fair Welcome illuminates the desperation women in France might have felt to marry, reflecting Misogyny and Gender Roles in Courtly Love. While the ideal woman should not have pursued men, women were nonetheless expected to either marry or join a convent. Exceptions existed but were rare. The “rules” of courtly love idealize women, placing them on pedestals to passively attract men; women who seek attention are often villainized in the tradition. Thus, this passage contradicts the rules of courtly love, with the Old Woman instead advocating for women to bend the rules to their advantage.

“I beg all you worthy women, whether maidens or ladies, in love or without a lover, if you find any words that seem to you to be a harsh and savage attack on feminine behavior, please do not censure me or speak ill of my writing, which is intended only to instruct. It is certain that I neither say or wish to say anything in drunkenness or anger, hate or envy, against any woman alive. No one scorns a woman unless he has the worst of all hearts.”

Female writers of the era like Christine de Pizan condemned the treatment of women in The Romance of the Rose. Despite the critiques, this poem was overwhelmingly popular in Europe. De Meun insists that no one scorns a woman unless he has “the worst of all hearts,” but some characters in the text do so repeatedly, with this passage sarcastically acknowledging the Misogyny and Gender Roles in Courtly Love.

“Then [Venus] summoned her household and ordered her chariot to be harnessed, since she did not want to walk through the mud. The four-wheeled chariot was very fair, studded with gold and pearls. Between the shafts were harnessed, instead of horses, six beautiful doves, taken from her dovecot.”

The detail of doves drawing Venus’ chariot appears throughout ancient literature and art but is more commonly associated with Venus’ Greek counterpart, Aphrodite. Doves were an important symbol of Aphrodite’s divinity, representing her beauty. Venus’ chariot therefore reflects her nature as a goddess of love.

“When God, whose beauty is beyond measure, gave Nature her beauty, he made of it an ever-full and ever-flowing stream, the source of all beauty, whose banks and depths none has fathomed. Therefore it would not be right for me to give an account of her body or of her face, which is so fair and lovely that no new May lily, no rose on its branch or snow on a bough is so red or so white. I should have to pay for it if I dared compare her to anything, for no man can comprehend her beauty or her worth.”

This passage describes Nature as a beautiful woman but allegorically implies that Nature is the source of all inspiration and beauty. This passage sets up a concept of an “ideal” beauty, establishing that all art is a mimicry of Nature. This is also the theological turning point in the story: Whereas before, references to the Christian God had been cloaked under layers of mythology, Nature’s identity and confession here are used to pontificate extensively on the qualities of God and Jesus Christ.

“Malicious Delilah used her poisonous flattery upon Samson, who was so brave and valiant, so strong and warlike. Holding him close and softly as he lay sleeping in her lap, she cut off his hair with her scissors. Thus shorn of his hair, he lost all his strength, and Delilah revealed all the secrets that the foolish man, unable to hide anything from her, had told her.”

This passage references the biblical story of Samson and Delilah from the Book of Judges. The contrasting adjectives describing the two characters—malicious versus brave—demonstrates some common biases against women at the time. Although Samson is called “foolish,” the emphasis is on Delilah’s villainy and treachery, which reinforces the Misogyny and Gender Roles in Courtly Love that also sometimes play to unflattering female stereotypes.

“God has done me the honor of placing in my keeping the fair golden chain that links the four elements, all of which bow before my face. He also entrusted to me all the things enclosed within the chain, and ordered me to guard them and maintain their forms.”

Like many medieval texts, Nature references the four Aristotelian elements of air, fire, water, and earth, which were believed to be the foundation of all life and matter. They played important roles in the medieval art of alchemy. Nature’s dominion over the elements, then, is functional dominion over everything ever made.

“It is said that demons bring [storms] about with hooks and catapults, claws and talons, but this saying is not worth two farthings; it is wrong to suspect the demons, for all the harm is done by the storms and winds; nothing else.”

This passage illuminates the divide between superstition and scientific understanding in medieval Europe. While many other passages demonstrate inaccurate or superstitious beliefs, this passage is an explicit call to recognize a rational view of natural events. Nature’s rational view of the world links her to Reason.

“When you have ploughed so much that you are weary of ploughing (for things will come to a point where you will need some respite, and nothing can last long without a rest), you will not immediately be able to begin again to advance the work, but do not let your desire flag. On the instructions of Lady Pallas, Cadmus ploughed more than an acre of ground and sowed the teeth of a serpent.”

This extended metaphor for sexual intercourse ends with an allusion to the legend of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes in Greek mythology. This myth, where Cadmus slays a dragon and uses its teeth to create the Spartoi (Greek warriors who spring from the earth), symbolizes reproduction. This mythological metaphor involving the creation of new life emphasizes the importance of reproduction.

“Time is not measured in this fair and everlasting day, smiling in its ever-present brightness. There is neither future nor past for, if I understand the truth correctly, all three tenses are present and the day is ordered by this present. It is not a present that will pass in part and come to an end, nor of which part is yet to come, for the past was never present there, and I can also tell you that the future never will be present, so stable and permanent is the day.”

One of the most philosophic passages in the text, this passage deliberates on the nature of time in heaven (or, alternatively, the Christian concept of the new heavens and the new earth, which comes about after the apocalypse). This passage demonstrates the often-extensive philosophical nature of de Meun’s addition to the romance. At times, the subject of courtly love is entirely abandoned in favor of pontifications on entirely different subjects.

“Then Venus tucked up her skirts, a picture of womanly anger. She drew the bow and fitted the brand to the string, then, when it was properly nocked, she brought the bow, no longer than six feet, up to her ear. Then, like the good archer she was, she took aim at a little loophole that she saw hidden in the tower.”

This passage provides an interplay between femininity and warrior behavior. Venus is not traditionally viewed as a warrior goddess, yet in a war for love, she is a capable archer and fighter, which speaks to the irresistible power of love in the text.

“I had laboriously brought with me my scrip and my staff that was so stiff and strong that it needed no ferrule when going on journeys. The scrip was well made of a supple, seamless skin, but I assure you it was not empty. At the time she made the scrip, Nature, who gave it to me, had forged two hammers for it with great skill and care.”

This passage provides an extended metaphor for genitals—“scrip,” a word for a small bag, alludes to testicles, as “staff” does for the penis. The scrip not being “empty” implies that the narrator is reproductively capable as well as sexually talented. An earlier passage includes the narrator berating Reason for using the word “testicles,” which aligns with his use of a metaphor rather than using the actual words to describe his body.