Le “Roman de la Rose” entre texte et images: une mise en prose manuscrite face aux premiers imprimés

Abstract

The textual tradition of the Roman de la Rose evolved importantly during the first two decades of the 15th century. In order to make the reading of the poem easier, its first printers cleverly organized it into divisions which underline the work’s structure: just as each section is preceded by a woodcut that illustrates its contents, an octosyllabic quatrain, sextain or octave sums up each chapter. This paper aims to explore the relations between this first edited version and the manuscript tradition, whether it be the text’s divisions or its iconography. We will focus on the anonymous prose of the Roman de la Rose conserved in manuscript 1462 of the BnF and in manuscript 484 of the Musée Condé, at Chantilly: despite being unfinished, these two texts, which have remained unknown until now, present many similarities with the poem’s first printed editions.