''The Romaunt of the Rose'' (''The Romaunt'') is a partial translation into

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...

of the French allegorical poem, ''

Le Roman de la Rose ''Le Roman de la Rose'' (''The Romance of the Rose'') is a medieval poem written in Old French and presented as an allegorical dream vision. As poetry, ''The Romance of the Rose'' is a notable instance of courtly literature, purporting to provid ...

'' (''Le Roman''). Originally believed to be the work of

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

, ''the Romaunt'' inspired controversy among 19th-century scholars when parts of the text were found to differ in style from Chaucer's other works. Also the text was found to contain three distinct fragments of translation. Together, the fragments—A, B, and C—provide a translation of approximately one-third of ''Le Roman''. There is little doubt that Chaucer did translate ''Le Roman de la Rose'' under the title ''The Romaunt of the Rose'': in ''

The Legend of Good Women ''The Legend of Good Women'' is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer during the fourteenth century. The poem is the third longest of Chaucer's works, after ''The Canterbury Tales'' and ''Troilus and Criseyde'', and is possib ...

'', the narrator, Chaucer, states as much. The question is whether the surviving text is the same one that Chaucer wrote. The authorship question has been a topic of research and controversy. As such, scholarly discussion of the ''Romaunt ''has tended toward linguistic rather than literary analysis. Scholars today generally agree that only fragment A is attributable to Chaucer, although fragment C closely resembles Chaucer's style in language and manner. Fragment C differs mainly in the way that rhymes are constructed. And where fragments A and C adhere to a London dialect of the 1370s, Fragment B contains forms characteristic of a northern dialect.

Source material: ''Le Roman de la Rose''

Guillaume de Lorris Guillaume de Lorris (c. 1200c. 1240) was a French scholar and poet from Lorris. He was the author of the first section of the ''Roman de la Rose''. Little is known about him, other than that he wrote the earlier section of the poem around 1230, ...

completed the first 4,058 lines of ''le Roman de la Rose'' circa 1230. Written in

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...

, in

octosyllabic The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in trochees in languages with a stress accent. Its first occurrence is in a 10th-century Old French saint's legend, the '' Vie de ...

iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There ...

couplets, the poem was an allegory of what D. S. Brewer called fine amour. About 40 years later,

Jean de Meun Jean de Meun (or de Meung, ) () was a French author best known for his continuation of the '' Roman de la Rose''. Life He was born Jean Clopinel or Jean Chopinel at Meung-sur-Loire. Tradition asserts that he studied at the University of Paris. He ...

continued the poem with 17,724 additional lines. In contrasting the two poets,

C. S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univers ...

noted that Lorris' allegory focused on aspects of love and supplied a subjective element to the literature, but Meun's work was less allegory and more satire. Lewis believed that Meun provided little more than a lengthy series of digressions.

Writing work and characteristics

Geoffrey Chaucer began translating ''Le Roman'' into Middle English early in his career, perhaps in the 1360s. Chaucer may have selected this particular work because it was highly popular both among Parisians and among French-speaking nobles in England.Modern scholars consider ''Roman de la Rose'' to be "the most influential French poem of the Middle Ages." See He might have intended to introduce the poem to an English audience as a way of revising or extending written English.Chaucer intended English to "attain higher spheres of expression." see Moreover, ''Le Roman'' was controversial in its treatment of women and sex, especially in the verses written by Meun. Chaucer may even have believed that English literature would benefit from this variety of literature. Chaucer's experience in translating ''Le Roman'' helped to define much of his later work. It is a translation which shows his understanding of French language. Russell Peck noted that Chaucer not only drew upon the poem for subject matter, but that he trained himself in the poem's literary techniques and sensibilities. "Le Roman" enabled Chaucer to introduce a "stylish wit and literary manner" to his English audience and then to claim these attributes as his own. ''The Romaunt'' is written in octosyllabic, iambic tetrameter couplets in the same

meter The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

as ''le Roman''. The translation is one of near-minimal change from the original. Raymond Preston noted that "a better poem in English would have meant a lesser translation." An early fifteenth-century manuscript of ''the Romaunt of the Rose'' was included in the library William Hunter donated to the University of Glasgow in 1807. In 1532,

William Thynne William Thynne (died 10 August 1546) was an English courtier and editor of Geoffrey Chaucer's works. Life Thynne's family bore the alternative surname of Botfield or Boteville, and he is sometimes called "Thynne ''alias'' Boteville". In 1524 he w ...

published the first collected edition of Chaucer's work. Commissioned by

Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...

to search for copies of Chaucer's manuscripts in the libraries and monasteries of England, Thynne printed a collection that included ''the Romaunt of the Rose''.

Analyses

Henry Bradshaw and Bernard ten Brink

By 1870, Henry Bradshaw had applied his method of studying rhymes to Chaucer's poetry. Working independently, Bradshaw and Dutch philologist Bernard ten Brink concluded that the existing version of ''the Romaunt'' was not Chaucer's translation of ''le Roman'', and they placed the work on a list that included other disqualified poems no longer considered to have been written by Chaucer.

Walter Skeat

Citing research by both Linder and Kaluza, Walter Skeat, a nineteenth-century scholar, divided ''the Romaunt'' into the following three fragments that correspond to French text in ''le Roman'': ''Le Roman'' continues another 9,510 lines without a corresponding English translation in ''the Romaunt''. When the 5,547 untranslated lines between fragments B and C are included, the English translation is roughly one-third of the original French poem. Skeat subjected ''the Romaunt'' text to a number of tests, and he found that on average, fragment A required 101.6 lines of English poetry for every 100 lines of French poetry. Fragment C required 102.1 English lines for 100 French lines. But Fragment B required 117.5 English lines for 100 French lines. Skeat also found that a northern dialect was present in fragment B, where Chaucer almost exclusively used a London dialect. Fragment B also broke with Chaucer's rule in rhyming words that end in ''y''. Finally, Skeat discovered that where Chaucer did not employ assonant rhymes, fragment B depended upon them. These discoveries led nineteenth-century scholars to conclude that fragment B was not written by Chaucer. Skeat found that Fragment C departs from Chaucer's usage, beginning again with words ending in ''y'' that the author rhymed with words ending in ''ye''. Where Chaucer rhymed the words ''wors'' and ''curs'' in ''The Canterbury Tales'', the author of fragment C rhymed ''hors'' and ''wors''. In what Skeat said would be a "libellous" attribution to Chaucer, the author of fragment C rhymed ''paci-ence'' with ''venge-aunce'' and ''force'' with ''croce''. Fragment C rhymes ''abstinaunce'' with ''penaunce'' and later ''abstinence'' with ''sentence''. These and other differences between fragment C and the works of Chaucer led Skeat to disqualify fragment C.

Later studies

Further research in the 1890s determined that the existing version of ''the Romaunt'' was composed of three individual fragments—A, B, and C--and that they were translations of ''le Roman'' by three different translators. The discussion about the authorship of ''the Romaunt of the Rose'' is by no means ended. In a recent metrical analysis of text, Xingzhong Li concluded that fragment C was in fact written by Chaucer or at least "88% Chaucerian."

Synopsis

The story begins with an allegorical dream, in which the narrator receives advice from the god of love on gaining his lady's favor. Her love being symbolized by a rose, he is unable to get to the rose. The second fragment is a satire on the mores of the time, with respect to courting, religious order, and religious hypocrisy. In the second fragment, the narrator is able to kiss the rose, but then the allegorical character Jealousy builds a fortress encircling it so that the narrator does not have access to it. The third fragment of the translation takes up the poem 5,000 lines after the second fragment ends. At its beginning, the god of love is planning to attack the fortress of Jealousy with his barons. The rest of the fragment is a confession given by Fals-Semblant, or false-seeming, which is a treatise on the ways in which men are false to one another, especially the clergy to their parishioners. The third fragment ends with Fals-Semblant going to the fortress of Jealousy in the disguise of a religious pilgrim. He speaks with Wikked-Tunge that is holding one of the gates of the fortress and convinces him to repent his sins. The poem ends with Fals-Semblant absolving Wikked-Tunge of his sins.

References

External links

Fragment A
at Bartleby
Pickering edition, 1845
at Google Books

at Project Gutenberg

The manuscript collection at the University of Glasgow, including the pre-typographic copy of ''the Romaunt of the Rose''.
Romaunt of the Rose
a free translation and retelling in modern English prose of the ''Romaunt of the Rose'', a Middle English translation of the Old French ''Roman de la rose'' (by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun) of which the first seventeen hundred lines were by Geoffrey Chaucer. {{DEFAULTSORT:Romaunt Of The Rose, The Medieval literature Translations into English