The Romance of the Rose
A dreamer enters a walled garden, sees a rosebud mirrored in the fountain where Narcissus died, and is shot by the God of Love; what follows is his siege of the Rose, obstructed by Danger, Shame and Jealousy. Guillaume de Lorris leaves it unfinished around 1230 and Jean de Meun completes it forty years later at four times the length, turning courtly allegory into a digressive encyclopedia by turns learned, obscene and misogynist. It is the most widely read secular work of the Middle Ages, the book Chaucer translated and Christine de Pizan attacked.
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Lineage
- influenced by ↑ Metamorphoses
- ↓ The Canterbury Tales
- ↓ Pearl
- ↓ The Book of the Duchess
- ↓ The Parliament of Fowls
- ↓ The Legend of Good Women
Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
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Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 52% · 10 shared
- 49% · 11 shared
- 45% · 10 shared
- 41% · 11 shared
- 41% · 11 shared
- 40% · 10 shared