Amsterdam, J.-Fr. Bernard, 1735.
3 volumes 12mo of: I/ (2) ll., lxviii pp., 362 pp.; II/ (1) l., 424 pp.; III/ (1) l., 384 pp., small tear in the margin of p. 59 without affecting the text.
Full red morocco, triple gilt fillet framing the boards, flat spines richly ornamented, gilt fillet on the edges, inner dentelle. Contemporary binding.
166 x 95 mm.
Extremely rare edition of Le Roman de la Rose printed in 1735.
Brunet, III, 1175.
“Le Roman de la Rose, texts by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, would be one of the most copied works until the end of the 15th century: more than three hundred manuscripts survive. Reworked by Gui de Mori, translated into Flemish in the 13th century, into English by Geoffrey Chaucer, rendered into 232 sonnets by the Tuscan Durante in the 14th century, it would finally be put into French prose twice in the 15th century. One of these adaptations is by Jean Molinet. Printed as early as 1480, several editions of the romance appeared, bearing a text more or less modernized. That of 1526 is due to Clément Marot. The success of the romance, perhaps owing to the continuation by Jean de Meun, nevertheless imposed above all the procedures of Guillaume de Lorris. The autobiographical dream, all its courtly personifications, spread through literature, narrative as well as lyric, but also into iconography. As for the encyclopedia of discourses, quotations, and maxims by Jean de Meun, it was initially intended for learned readers. Writers and poets were therefore the principal users of it, citing a certain number of the text’s high points, such as the discourse of Genius or the complaints of the jealous man in the discourse of Ami. The debate over Le Roman de la Rose that broke out at the beginning of the 15th century concerns only Jean de Meun; Jean Gerson carefully distinguishes him from Guillaume de Lorris. And this quarrel is less literary than moral: the too often fragmentary reading that was made of the text led to a misunderstanding of its overall system; the antifeminist passages or those that advocate sexual freedom were therefore understood on their own terms. The romance nevertheless survived this challenge and even became at the beginning of the 16th century a reservoir of linguistic examples for the first French grammars.
Le Roman de la Rose was then elevated to the status of an ancient national masterpiece. Its richness today continues to offer itself to the interpretive gloss of critics.” (Sylvie Lefêvre).
“What always surprises one when approaching the ‘Roman de la Rose’ is that it is the work of humanists, proceeding from two very different minds and exemplifying in an exemplary manner the evolution of thought. The poem of Guillaume de Lorris is an art of loving, and if all courtly love, which is soon to disappear, is expressed there, it is already thoroughly imbued with the Ancients, Ovid in particular; that of Jean de Meun is an encyclopedia, in which the author gathers in noble discourse all the data of science and philosophy; it is also a vast cosmological poem.
Thus, each, in his own genre, brought together all that it was possible to gather on two subjects so important; but whereas Guillaume de Lorris turns toward a past that will soon no longer exist, Jean de Meun glimpses the future and announces the humanist 15th century. In this way, ‘Le Roman de la Rose’, the most significant work of the entire French Middle Ages, finds itself situated at the turning point taken by the French mind between its two extreme dates of composition; there are found, quite singularly united, two currents of thought which are in some sense two principal constants of French literature.”
Superb copy of this very rare edition clad in a delightful contemporary red morocco.
