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A Byzantine Source for Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la Rose

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

F. M. Warren
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Extract

The poet of the Roman de la Rose dreamed one May morning that he came to a park wall decorated with allegorical representations of vices and defects. And when he entered the park he found there a company of dancers, whose individual members also represented different human attributes. With this company was the God of Love, and his attendant who carried his bows and arrows. So that when the dances had ended and the poet went on to explore the park, the god and his squire followed him. They soon found a spring, bubbling up under a pine, with a curb on which was written: “Here the beautiful Narcissus died.” In the spring's depths they could see two stones, like crystal, that changed their color under the sun's rays and reflected all the park round about. This was the water where Cupid had sowed the seeds of love, the famous Fountain of Love,

      Dont plusors ont en maint endroit
      Parlé, en romans et en livre. (Il. 1606, 1607)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , 1916 , pp. 232 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1916

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References

1 It may be well to quote Gautier's metaphor again:

Je ne vi onques nule tour
Eendre sanz plait et sanz estour.
Eracles voit bien que li rose
N'est pas de tel paliz enclose
Qu'il s'en fust pour fol tenuz
Teus qui peust estre venuz. (Éracle, 11. 2394-99)

And his comparisons:

Mais que l'ortie est od le rose, (do., l. 2508)
N'affert pas a l'empereur
Qu'il ait l'ortie entour la fleur. (do., 11. 2510, 2511)
Sire, ne malmetez le rose, (do., 1. 3136)

Cf. Pub. Mod. Lang. Assn., xxiii (1908), pp. 278-283.

Tantost com recevoit la flor,
Ne sentoit paine ne dolor,
Travail, grevance ne dehait.
(Guillaume de Palerne, 11. 1455-57)

Cf. Pub. Mod. Lang. Assn., loc. cit., p. 282, n.

3 Cf. R. Hercher's edition in his Erotici Scriptores Graeci, vol. ii, pp. 161-286. A document of 1186 may refer to this Eustathius (K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur, pp. 764-766).

4 This material lasts through half of the story, to the eighth chapter of the Sixth Book, or to page 219 of Hercher's edition.

5 A poem of Nicetas Euganianus, who was a contemporary of Eustathius, but somewhat his senior, furnishes the direct model for this fountain, without much doubt, but both park and spring go back to Achilles Tatius. [Clitophon and Leucippe, Book i, c. 15)

6 The immediate source of these ideas—nonsensical in some of their explanations—I have not found. Eros's emblems, less the sword, could derive from Clitophon and Leucippe (ii, c. 4, 5), which also attributes Eros's power over birds to his wings (possibly the starting-point of his power over fishes in Eustathius), and vaunts his sway over animals, plants, and even over stones and streams (i, c. 17). Among the paintings described by Achilles Tatius is a portrait of Eros. Yet he does not attempt allegory, however well some of his pages might lend themselves to it. Perhaps some allegorized revision of Clitophon and Leucippe underlies Eustathius's bewildering conceptions.

7 Eustathius's text for the first section of our quotation reads: . Book iii, c. 2 (Hercher's edition, p. 180, 11. 23, 24).

8 Here we reach solid ground. Allegorical treatment of the months of the year was a favorite theme among the Byzantines. Theodorus Prodomos († a. 1159) had recently attempted it. It arrives in our romance quite belated, as we see, coming in long after the other descriptions and in no way connected with them. So we would assume that the presence of the months is due to Eustathius's desire to make the list of his personifications complete.—For the months in Byzantine literature, see Krumbacher, op. cit., pp. 753, 754.

9 Op. cit., Book iv, c. 22 (Hercher's edition, p. 200, 11. 9, 10).

10 Op. cit., Book v, c. 17 (Hercher, p. 212). The original for the last sentence quoted above is: ' (11. 21, 22).

11 Op. cit., Book vi, c. 8 (Hercher's edition, p. 218, 11. 30-32).

12 Clitophon and Leucippe, Book i, c. 15, ¶6. Cf. Roman de la Rose, 11. 1557-60.

13 These details appear only in Hysmenias's account of his dream, as we have seen, but must have been given at length in Eustathius's source, here very clumsily abridged.

14 Yet Gautier also speaks of the nettle with the rose. See note 1 above.

15 Dunlop and his reviser are hardly conscious of them (History of Fiction, new edition, London, 1888, vol. i, p. 80).