TheRoman de la roseand Middle English Poetry

Abstract

AbstractThe late medieval French allegory,Le Roman de la rose[The Romance of the rose], the conjoined production of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, has long been recognized as an important literary influence on Middle English poetry. The majority of recent studies focus on Geoffrey Chaucer’s translation, citation, and adaptation of theRose. Directions in scholarly study include increasing attention to the formal complexity and polyvalence the model of theRoseprovides, on‐going interest in constructions of sexuality and gender, and a greater emphasis on the inter‐relation of Chaucer’s response to theRosewith the responses of French and Italian poets, including Guillaume de Machaut, Eustache Deschamps, Guillaume de Deguileville (or Digulleville), Christine de Pizan, and Giovanni Boccaccio. The discovery of a new manuscript fragment of the Middle EnglishRomaunt of the Roseand the re‐assessment of earlier linguistic exchange also set forth interesting possibilities for future exploration. Beyond the field of Chaucer studies, scholars of late medieval England’s alliterative poems, notablyCleannessbut alsoPiers Plowman, have re‐examined the ways theRosemay have shaped the construction of devotional, sexual, and social ideologies within this poetic tradition. The growing interest in Chaucer’s contemporary John Gower and in the English poetry of the fifteenth century, especially the works of Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, has brought further recognition of theRose’s widespread influence, as well as the continued influence ofRose‐inspired intermediaries, including not only Guillaume de Deguileville and Christine de Pizan but also Evrart de Conty, Alain Chartier, and Charles d’Orléans. Recalling the attribution of theRose’s authorship to an English ‘John Moon’ in early literary histories demonstrates one curious later misreading of Hoccleve’s Middle English response to theRoseand may also provoke a deeper appreciation for the strong continuity of interest in theRoseshared by French and English readers during the turbulent era of the Hundred Years War.