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THE MEDIAEVAL MIND
BOOK V
scattered through the entire store of knowledge and classic literature possessed by the Middle Ages; perhaps their immediate source of inspiration was the scheme of courtly love which the mediaeval imagination elaborated and revelled in.[1] The poem of De Lorris was a veritable romantic allegory. De Meun, in his sequel, rather plays with the allegorical form, which he continues; it has become a frame for his stores of learning, his knowledge of the world, his views of life, his wit and satire, and his great literary and poetic gifts. Yet it ends in a regular Psychomachia, in which Love's barons are hard beset by all the foes of Love's delight, though Love has its will at last.
- ↑ See ante, Chapter XXIII.; De Meun took much from the De planctu naturae of Alanus.
