with a large four-part miniature that takes up most of the first page and, with some
variation, illustrates the opening scenes of the poem: the Dreamer sleeping, rising, going
out of doors, arriving at the garden wall. Aside from the opening miniature, other favorite
motifs are the anticourtly images on the garden wall, nearly always represented in a series
of miniatures; Idleness admitting the Lover to the garden; the carole; Narcissus at the
fountain; the interactions of the Lover and the God of Love; and an author portrait at the
beginning of Jean de Meun’s continuation. Many manuscripts feature an illustration at
the beginning of each of the major discourses, illustrating the character about to speak;
many illustrate mythological exempla, especially Narcissus and Pygmalion; and many
depict the events of the narrative. In addition to their aesthetic value, the illustrations can
be useful as a guide to ways in which the poem was understood by its medieval readers.
Equally important are the numerous rubrics that, in most manuscripts, chart the
narrative and thematic divisions of the poem. Rubrics, too, vary considerably; there was
no standardized program. Most manuscripts, however, do use rubrics to identify which
character is speaking throughout the poem; and by identifying the first-person voice as
either Amant (“Lover”) or Acteur (“Narrator”), according to the context, these rubrics
allow us to study medieval readings of the complex narrative voice of the Rose. Rubrics
identifying thematic divisions are often elaborate and show what different medieval
readers found important in the poem. In some cases, rubrics even offer a moral gloss on
the text. Such is the case, for example, in the late 13th-century manuscript B.N. fr. 1569,
in which a series of rhymed rubrics establishes the allegorical framework for the poem as
a celebration of love, stressing the values of joy, love, and beauty. In the 14th-century
manuscript B.N. fr. 1574, on the other hand, the rubrics establish a moralizing critique of
the erotic Garden of Delight, stressing the Lover’s folly. The comparative study of these
and other rubricated manuscripts shows that there was no single way of reading the Rose
in the Middle Ages.
Rubrics indicate the formal structures perceived in the Rose by copyists; the reactions
of other readers are revealed in marginal glosses and annotations. Even the terse
comment Nota tells us that the line so marked was judged worthy of memory; and, as
might be expected, different readers were attracted to different aspects of the poem. Nota
often appears next to antifeminist passages, bearing out Christine de Pizan’s assertion
that the Rose fostered negative attitudes toward women. Some readers additionally
focused on the satirical portrayal of marriage, courtship, and erotic love, annotating most
heavily the discourses of Friend and the Old Woman; others, however, concentrated on
the more erudite sections of the poem, such as the discourses of Reason and Nature.
Where annotations are more extensive than the simple word Nota, they typically consist
of literary citations and proverbs in either French or Latin. The author most frequently
cited is Ovid, although one also finds citations of Seneca, Aristotle, Pamphilus, Gratian’s
Decretum, and others. Such glosses indicate that the Rose reached an educated
readership, one interested in its character as a vernacular compendium drawing on the
Latin tradition.
The Rose inspired several projects of revision, or remaniements, as well as numerous
interpolations, some of which appear in as many as one-fourth of the 116 manuscripts
collated by Ernest Langlois. The earliest is probably the brief anonymous conclusion,
predating jean de Meun’s longer and far more famous continuation, that allows
Guillaume de Lorris’s lover to spend a night of bliss with the Rose. The most extensive
The Encyclopedia 1551