takes his new vassal in charge and instructs him carefully in the art of love. The Lover
makes an attempt to approach the Rose but is repulsed by Resistance, the figure in charge
of the Rose and the precincts within the hedge around her. Dejected by his failure and
miserable from the pains of love, the rejected Lover is approached by Reason, described
in Boethian terms as a lady of such lineage that she must have come from Paradise, as
Nature would not have been able to make a work of such dimension. Reason reproaches
the Lover for his foolishness in becoming acquainted with Idleness and explains that the
evil he calls love is really madness. Is it wise or foolish to follow what causes you to live
in grief, she asks? The Lover reacts angrily to Reason’s advice, arguing that it would not
be right for him to betray his lord, Love.
The Lover then seeks consolation from a Friend, who advises him that, though
Resistance is angry at the moment, he can be overcome by flattery. With the aid of
Openness and Pity, who plead for mercy on the Lover’s behalf, the Lover once again
gains access to Fair Welcome, who is persuaded to allow him to draw ever nearer the
Rose, finally bestowing a kiss. Outraged, Slander arouses Jealousy; Shame, and Fear go
to awaken the sleeping Resistance. Angry that he has been duped, Resistance chases the
Lover from the Rose, and Jealousy builds a prison to keep Fair Welcome locked up. The
Lover laments his misery and stresses that he is worse off now than he was before. The
poet returns to the contrasting theme of the brevity of love’s pleasures and the eternity of
grief that follows. The Lover evokes the Wheel of Fortune, comparing Love’s treatment
of him to Fortune’s own behavior. In the midst of further lamenting, the poem breaks off.
From the beginning, the reader of the Roman de la Rose is faced with difficulties in
understanding Guillaume’s poem. The dream-allegory setting implies multiple levels of
meaning, in the medieval sense of allegory as saying one thing and meaning another.
Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio demonstrates the medieval concern for
the dream and its relationship to other orders of reality. Moreover, the narrator is not
merely the author but also the Dreamer and Lover, who operates in an objective world of
personifications. Or are the personifications merely devices for the psychological
description of the Lover and the Rose? In this question lies one of the most difficult
medieval problems concerning the understanding of character and personality. But
beyond these questions of form and meaning lie questions raised by the narrative itself.
What is this garden the Lover enters—a kind of paradise involving a beautiful, elite
society and a new form of love that transcends ordinary morality? Or is it a society
obsessed with its own youth and the pleasures of self-gratification, careful to exclude
images of Old Age and Poverty from the inner precincts of its own self-interest? Is this a
love beyond Reason’s comprehension, or is it the self-de-lusion of youth calling
something amor that is really folie? Is this the meaning of the Fountain of Narcissus for
the Lover? Is it really a dangerous fountain that might lead ultimately to death, or are the
crystals a gateway to a higher form of love?
Because the poem breaks off with no hint of how it will end, or even how near the end
the reader is, scholars have often turned to Jean de Meun’s continuation and other texts
for help in interpreting Guillaume’s formidable roman. It is a poem shrouded in mystery
and tantalizingly inconclusive.
Emanuel J.Mickel
[See also: COURTLY LOVE; JEAN DE MEUN; POIRE, ROMAN DE LA; ROSE,
ROMAN DE LA; QUARREL OF THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE]
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 816