The Romance of the rose

Helena Phillips-Robins discusses CUL MS Gg.4.6, displayed the exhibition 'The moving word: French medieval manuscripts in Cambridge', held in Cambridge University Library, 22 January-17 April 2014.

The Romance of the Rose was one of the best known, most admired and most imitated texts of the French Middle Ages. It is an allegorical love poem that is truly encyclopaedic in scope, telling the story of Amant (the Lover) who falls asleep and dreams that he enters a walled garden. In the same fountain in which Narcissus drowned himself he sees the reflection of a beautiful rosebud and is immediately inflamed by desire to possess it. A series of allegorical characters, from Fair Welcome to Reason to Foul Mouth, help and hinder him on his quest and he finally manages to pluck the rose in what is a violent, even rape-like sexual conquest.