JEAN DE MEUN
(Jehan de Meung; 1235/40–1305). Born at Meung-sur-Loire, Jean Chopinel (or Clopinel)
obtained the Master of Arts, most likely in Paris. He dwelt for much of his adult life in
the capital, where from at least 1292 to his death he was housed in the Hotel de la
Tourelle in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. Jean’s works exhibit a rich classical and
scholastic culture. Among the works he translated into French are Vegetius, De re
militari, dedicated to Jean de Brienne, count of Eu; Boethius, De consolatione
Philosophiae, dedicated to Philip the Fair; and the correspondence of Abélard and
Héloïse. He also claims two additional translations, which are not extant: versions of
Giraldus Cambrensis, De mirabilibus Hiberniae, and of Aelred of Rievaulx, De spirituali
amicitia. More likely than not, Jean was also the author of the satirical Testament maistre
Jehan de Meun and Codicile maistre Jehan de Meun.
But Jean is best remembered as the second author of the Roman de la Rose, an
allegorical narrative begun by Guillaume de Lorris. This masterwork has survived in over
250 manuscripts. It also had twenty-one printed editions from 1481 to 1538. The Rose
was translated partially or in toto during the medieval period once into Dutch, twice into
Italian, and three times into English—the first English fragment is attributed to Chaucer.
Jean de Meun influenced Dante, Boccaccio, Machaut, and Froissart; he played a crucial
role in the formation of both Chaucer and Gower. Jean’s section of the Rose became the
subject of the first great literary quarrel, at the beginning of the 15th century. Jean de
Meun was the first recognized auctor and auctoritas in French literary history, and his
book the first true French classic, glossed, explicated, quoted, indexed, anthologized, and
fought over—treated as if it were a masterpiece from antiquity.
Guillaume de Lorris wrote his Roman de la Rose, 4,028 lines left unfinished, in the
early 1220s. In the decade 1264–74 Jean de Meun brought Guillaume’s text to a
conclusion. Jean’s Rose, some 17,722 lines, does not merely complete the earlier poem:
he grafts a totally original sequel onto it.
The God of Love comes with his army to succor Guillaume’s forlorn Lover. First,
False Seeming and Constrained Abstinence slay Foul Mouth, permitting the Lover to
speak with Fair Welcome. A pitched battle occurs between the attackers and the
defenders of the castle, ending in a truce. Finally, Venus leads a victorious assault,
flinging her torch into the sanctuary: the castle bursts into flames, and the Lover wins the
Rose.
The action and the allegory no longer play a primary role, as they did for Guillaume de
Lorris. They serve as supports, and pretexts, for discourse: exhortations from Reason and
Friend to the Lover, False Seeming’s confession of his true nature to the God of Love
before he is admitted into the army, the Old Woman’s exhortation to Fair Welcome,
Nature’s confession to her priest, Genius, and Genius’s exhortation to the army before the
final battle.
The God of Love refers to Jean’s book as a miroër aus amoreus (1. 10,621). It is, in
one sense, a speculum or anatomy, a medieval encyclopedia, treating all knowledge,
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 930