Images of opening, penetration and closure in theRoman de la Rose

Abstract

Abstract Many of the almost three hundred manuscript copies of the Roman de la Rose surviving from the later Middle Ages contain extensive cycles of illustration. Over the years some of the most important miniature cycles have been subjected to a traditional kind of taxonomic analysis, classifying them according to date, provenance, style and iconography, as well as having been critically discussed in terms of their word-image relationships. While the cumulative results of the first kind of scholarly treatment remain in an inchoate, fragmentary and all but useless state, the ground~breaking work of Rosamund Tuve and John Fleming has constituted a solid base from which most of us now view the Rose cycles. To see the medieval illustrations as glossing the text in the sense of providing a simple explication or allegorical unveiling of meaning has enabled modern readers to gain closer access to medieval experiences of reading the text. But the nagging doubt left hy Tuve's ultimate disappointment in what she p...