Divina Commedia has also the power of its human realities of actually experienced pain and joy, and hate and love. Compared with it, the Anticlaudianus betrays the vapourings of monk and doctor, imaginative indeed, but thin. The author's feet were not planted on the earth of human life.
But the Middle Ages did not demand that allegory should have its feet planted on the earth, so long as its head nodded high among the clouds—or its sentiments wandered sweetly in fancy's gardens. In one of these dwelt that lovely Rose, whose Roman once had vogue. In structure the Roman de la rose is an allegory from the beginning of the first part by De Lorris to the very end of that encyclopaedic sequel added by De Meun. The story is well known.[1] One may recall the fact that in De Lorris's poem and De Meun's sequel every quality and circumstance of Love's sentiment and fortunes are figured in allegorical personifications—all the lover's hopes and fears and the wavering chances of his quest.
In this respect the poem is the courtly and romantic counterpart of such a philosophical or religious allegory as the Anticlaudianus. Personifications of the arts and sciences, the vices and virtues, current since the time of Prudentius's Psychomachia and Capella's Nuptials of Philology, were all in the Anticlaudianus, while in the Roman de la rose figure their secular and romantic kin: in De Lorris's part, Love, Fair-Welcome, Danger, Reason, Franchise, Pity, Courtesy, Shame, Fear, Idleness, Jealousy, Wicked-Tongue; then, with De Meun, others besides: Richesse, False-Seeming, Hypocrisy, Nature, and Genius.[2] The figures of the Roman de la rose have diverse antecedents
- ↑ The English reader will derive much pleasure from F. S. Ellis's admirable verse translation: The Romance of the Rose (Dent and Co., London, 1900). Each of the three little volumes of this translation has a convenient synopsis of the contents. Those who would know what is known of the tale and its authors should read Langlois's chapter on it, in Histoire de la langue et de la litérature française, edited by Petit de Julleville. It may be said here, for those whose memories need refreshing, that William de Lorris wrote the first part, some forty-two hundred lines, about the year 1237, and died leaving it unfinished; John de Meun took up the poem some thirty years afterwards, and added his sequel of more than eighteen thousand lines.
- ↑ The names are Englished after Ellis's translation.
