The 'Roman de la rose' in its Philosophical Context: Art, Nature, and Ethics

The Roman de la rose is one of the most erudite, complex works of poetry to have been produced in medieval Europe, rich with allusions to French and Latin literature and to Scholastic philosophy. Its second and more prominent author Jean de Meun wrote his lengthy continuation of the Rose in the 1260s and 1270s at a time of institutional and intellectual contestation at the University of Paris, which saw fierce polemic around the status of philosophy, provoked by controversies over the reception of Aristotle. This book reads the Roman de la rose against the philosophical traditions to which it makes reference, considering the possibilities of poetry as a vehicle for thought that is provisional, uncertain, and inescapably bound up with affective experience. It offers a re-evaluation of the entire work as an intellectually coherent text that does not offer philosophical solutions as much as it makes its readers reflect on three interwoven themes: art, nature, and ethics. Chapters consider the philosophical importance of paradox in the Rose, the relationship between art and nature, animality and human appetite, the myth of the Golden Age, the ethics of money and profit, and the intertwined themes of idolatry and psychology as they inform the Rose’s ethics of desire. Throughout, there is a sustained attention to the reception of philosophy, especially Aristotle and Boethius, and poetry, especially Alain de Lille and Ovid. Ultimately, it shows that all of the Rose’s theoretical games use particularly poetic ways to grapple with the text’s central focus: the intractable problem of human desire.