In Chapter 1, “Bonaventure, the Franciscans, and the Homiletic Revolution of the Thirteenth Century,” I provide some historical and cultural context of the Itinerarium. I argue for the cultural importance of what has been called the “homiletic revolution of the thirteenth century,” especially in the education of students in sacred doctrine at the University of Paris. Since learning to preach using the sermo modernus style was an important part of Bonaventure’s formation at Paris and it was a skill in which he had become proficient, he made creative use of it when he wrote the Itinerarium. Gaining a better understanding of the style, therefore, can help us better appreciate and understand Bonaventure’s text. I also make clear in this chapter why I believe Bonaventure is best understood as both a faithful Franciscan and a dedicated student of scholastic theology and that these two are not mutually exclusive in ways that are sometimes assumed. So, for example, the Itinerarium is both a profound work of Christian mysticism as well as a sophisticated expression of scholastic thought. Bonaventure shows that the two are not mutually exclusive.

The introduction gives an overview of the Rose’s engagement with thirteenth-century thought. It considers how the text’s game with the literal and allegorical senses of its words frustrate attempts to take unambiguous meaning from its poetry. It considers how the poem’s deliberate ambiguity responds to the context of its composition, both to the context of the University of Paris, racked by philosophical controversies in second half of the thirteen century, and to contemporary trends in satirical, philosophical poetry, strongly influenced by Roman poet Ovid, exemplified by the De amore of Andreas Capellanus. After a consideration of the Rose’s influence on later medieval poetry, the introduction gives an overview of the different chapters in the collection.

This chapter considers how it might make sense to think of the allegorical fiction as philosophical. The unsettling figure at the heart of the Roman de la Rose Faux Semblant is a walking sophism, embodying the paradox sometimes known as the Cretan Liar’s paradox: he tells us that he is lying and that nothing that he says can be trusted. In a sense he represents an extreme case of the problem of all literary endeavours that claim to offer truth through falsehood. In his sermon on hypocrisy, Faux Sembant explicitly names Aristotle’s De sophisticis elenchis, implying a connection between the Rose’s hermeneutic problems and those considered as part of dialectical training in medieval schools. This chapter reads the Rose against the tradition of the De sophisticis and sophismata-literature to show the poem itself as offering an education in sophistry, taken in a broader sense than its use in language arts. Sophism and sophistry are used figuratively throughout the Rose to refer to hypocrisy and falseness of all kinds, including literary falseness. Rooted in the intellectual culture of the university, the Rose considers the value of lying and the benefits of reading a work that rarely means what it says.

The university was a medieval invention and therefore a very medieval institution. Its very name, as Hastings Rashdall explained, grew out of the word universitas, which denoted both “an aggregate of persons,” and a “legal corporation.”1 The University of Paris, like the other early university, the University of Bologna, emerged at the end of the twelfth century and reflected the flowering of culture and learning of the 12th Century Renaissance.2 While Bologna came to be known for its Faculty of Law, Paris emerged as the “archetypal” University in the Faculties of Arts and Theology.