Rethinking the Romance of the Rose

The Romance of the Rose has been a controversial text since it was written in the thirteenth century. There is evidence for radically different readings as early as the first half of the fourteenth century. The text provided inspiration for both courtly and didactic poets. Some read it as a celebration of human love; others as an erudite philosophical work; still others as a satirical representation of social and sexual follies. On one hand it was praised as an edifying treatise, on the other condemned as lascivious and misogynistic. Over the course of the last thirty years, the Rose has been the focus of some of the most intensive and innovative scholarship in the field of medieval studies. This activity has been characterized by a wide variety of critical approaches and methodologies. Two striking features emerge from the volume's survey of recent work on the Romance of the Rose. First, a wide range of disciplines have been involved: philosophy, theology, history, art history and codicology, and literature. This diversity is not only a function of the medieval work of art itself, but also the result of our postmodern focus on "culture" from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Second, the methodological heterogeneity of the past three decades of Rose research has been extremely fruitful. Kevin Brownlee and Sylvia Huot and the contributors to this volume - Pierre-Yves Badel, Emmanuele Baumgartner, John V. Fleming, Robert Pogue Harrison, David F. Hult, Stephen G. Nichols, Lee Patterson, Daniel Poirion, Karl D. Uitti, Dieuwke E. van der Poel, and Lori Walters - represent all the major areas of current work on the Romance of the Rose, both in America and in Europe. The volume will be of value to students and scholars of medieval literature, intellectual history, and art history.