Jennifer Owen - Edinburgh University
Variously interpreted as dream poem, allegory, encyclopaedia, or mirror of love, the Roman de la Rose offers as many contradictions as it does answers. And yet its imagery, present in two-thirds of the extant manuscript corpus, suggests many of its medieval readers and interpreters recognised the didactic promise of the text.
While the poem ostensibly follows a love-quest, the authors in fact take us through a series of debates on love, morality, and philosophy – though neither unambiguously declares the poem’s ultimate meaning. Although Jean utilises more specific citations of authority, both authors share a primary tactic: presenting contrary opinions on Love through a series of personifications. As a result of this reticence to provide a single explanation, the poem’s meaning has been questioned since its completion, with the interventions of scribes, artists and readers in the manuscript corpus speaking to a variety of interpretations.
Visual means of exploring the poem’s didactic message varied, from relatively simple representations of conversing figures, to more elaborate attempts to stress a particular line of thought. One of the most interesting elements of Rose cycles was however the emphasis on visual and textual authority through a series of scenes depicting authors and sermons.
The idea of authority was first raised in the text, and was clearly recognised as important by readers and planners of visual cycles. Scribes and writers, keen to finalise the poem’s ambiguous meaning, left notes in the margins or added summary lines after Jean’s abrupt closing lines. However, despite the uncertainties of these supplementary writers, the fact there was some meaning or authority to be found in the Rose was not disputed. This was emphasised visually by depictions of the authors, or figures tutoring in formal settings.
Although Jean conceals his intervention textually until the midpoint of the Rose, many planners incorporated an explanatory rubric at the crossover between the two authors, stating that Guillaume ends and Jean begins. Often, artists drew special attention to this by marking it with an author portrait, sometimes depicting both authors. At least 79 manuscripts contain such author portraits (sometimes in variable or multiple positions, although most occur where Guillaume’s section ends) and this subject is the ninth most popular out of 89 typical scenes.[1]
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| Image 1: Image of Jean de Meun beneath the rubric 'Here begins Master Jean de Meun', miniature on fol. 27v of Albi, Bibliothèque Municipale, Rochegude 103, c.1325-50 |
This depiction of one of the authors in the Albi manuscript is typical of Rose author portraits. The format itself has a distinguished history, deriving from author portraits in antique texts and popularised in religious texts with evangelist portraits. While the portrait of our vernacular poet – here also performing the role of scribe – has less clout than an evangelist opening to a gospel, the allusion to the act of recording authority, preserving information in a written form, is clear. In other instances, the poet is shown reading rather than writing, strengthening the relation of the Rose to a historical lineage of poetic authority. In some select manuscripts, both authors were shown together, and in one early manuscript Guillaume is actually shown handing the manuscript of the Rose to his continuator. Both Jean and Guillaume referenced previous authors in the poem to support their assertions in a manner in-keeping with scholastic rules for composition at the time. By placing an emphasis on the physical process of the poem’s creation, aligned with historical and religious precedents for visualising the writers of authoritative texts, such images clearly mark this poem as a source of educational information, as the writers themselves claim.
The image cycles also reference the poem’s application as teaching aid. In BnF fr. 1569, the incipit image clearly refers to this aspect, pairing a lecturing figure with the standard topos for introductory images in Roses, the Dreamer with Danger. While unclear whether this is the author, or merely someone reciting the poem, it does align with Guillaume’s stated aims outlined in the verses below – that one may use the information contained in this dream for the benefit of others.
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| Image 2: Bipartite Rose incipit: Left: Guillaume/Author reading to a crowd, Right: Dreamer and Danger, miniature on fol. 1r in BnF Fr. 1569, c.1275-1325 |
However, while author portraits remained consistent in image cycles throughout the history of Rose manuscript production, the tutoring figure at the head of the poem was eclipsed by other incipit traditions. Although it resurfaced in the fifteenth-century, this teaching figure, expounding meaning to an assembled crowd, was replaced by a more controversial image in the fourteenth century: the Sermon of Genius.
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| Image 3: Genius Gives His Sermon, miniature on fol. 128v of BnF fr. 1560, c.1340-55 |
In this scene, which appears in 65 of the Roses considered in this study, Genius is delivering the pronouncements of Nature, who is scandalised by those who refuse to procreate. Ultimately, Genius suggests that those who copulate and reproduce will be admitted into the Heavenly Park of the Lamb – a garden that strongly contrasts with the Garden of Delight. This controversial moral is expressly parodied in both text and image, as Genius is vested as a bishop, mounts a lectern and proceeds to give a sermon to the company of the God of Love. The instructive message of the tutor-poet has been replaced by an ironic sermon that calls into question the validity of the information being offered by a seemingly authoritative figure.
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| Image 4: Bipartite Rose incipit: Left: Guillaume writing with onlookers, Right: Dreamer in Bed, miniature on fol. 1r of Bodleian Douce 195, c.1480-1500 |
By the time the tutor-author image resurfaces in the fifteenth-century Douce 195, we can see that its meaning has substantively altered. Far from representing the poet expounding his truths to an assembled public, now the clear meaning is restricted to the author, with readers and listeners relegated to eavesdropping at the window in the hope of catching its meaning. And while the dream is still an important part of the incipit, its meaning is no longer clearly exposed to the reader.
[1] Statistics derive from my research into 189 illuminated Rose manuscripts. The 89 ‘typical’ scenes referred to are those present in 3 or more copies
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