Romancing the Rose: The Readings of Chaucer and Christine

Abstract

Both Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400) and Christine de Pizan (1364–1429?) draw on a common stock of stories that circulated in England and on the Continent, and we know for certain that both authors were very familiar with the Roman de la Rose, the famous medieval work that considers love from the sacred to the profane.1 Chaucer and Christine, both close readers of the Rose, are often very different interpreters, drawing on their common source to recommend or present opposed models of behavior. One recalls the advice of La Vieille, in Jean de Meun’s text, that “A woman should be careful not to stay shut up too much, for while she remains in the house, she is less seen,” which is echoed by the Wife of Bath’s delight in seeing and being seen (Wife of Bath’s Prologue, III(D), 551–53).2 Christine, on the other hand, admonishes women in her The Book of the Three Virtues that “the very safest course for the profit of the soul and the honour of the body is not to be in the habit of gadding all over town.”3