Le Roman de la Rose preserved in its superb contemporary morocco binding.
Lorris, Guillaume de and Meung, Jean de. Le Roman de la Rose… Revised on several Editions & on some old Manuscripts. Accompanied by several other Works, with a Phistorical preface, Notes & and a Gglossary.
Amsterdam, J.-Fr. Bernard, 1735.
3 volumes in-12 of: I/ (2) ff., lxviii pp., 362 pp.; II/ (1) f., 424 pp.; III/ (1) f., 384 pp., part torn on the margin of p.59 without affecting the text.
Full red morocco, triple gilt fillet framing the covers, smooth spines richly decorated, gilt edges on the cuts, inner roll, gilt edges. Binding of the era.
166 x 95 mm.
Extremely rare edition of the Roman de la Rose printed in 1735.
Brunet, III, 1175.
“Le Roman de la Rose, texts by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, will be one of the most copied works until the end of the 15th century: more than three hundred manuscripts remain. Reworked by Gui de Mori, translated into Flemish in the 13th century, into English by Geoffrey Chaucer, put into 232 sonnets by the Tuscan Durante in the 14th century, it will finally be converted into French prose twice in the 15th century. One of these adaptations is by Jean Molinet. Printed from 1480 onwards, several editions of the novel appeared, featuring a more or less rejuvenated text. The 1526 version is due to Clément Marot. The success of the novel, perhaps owed to the continuation by Jean de Meun, nevertheless imposed above all the methods of Guillaume de Lorris. The autobiographical dream, all its courtly personifications spread into literature, both narrative and lyrical, as well as into iconography. As for the encyclopedia of discourses, citations, and sentences by Jean de Meun, it was initially intended for learned readers. Thus, it is mainly writers and poets who used it, citing a number of key places in the text, such as the discourse of Genius or the jealous man’s complaints in Ami’s discourse. The debate on the Roman de la Rose that erupted 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 fragmented reading often made of the text leads to a misunderstanding of its overall system; therefore, the antifeminist pieces or those advocating sexual freedom are understood on their own. The novel will nevertheless survive this challenge and will even become at the beginning of the 16th century a reservoir of linguistic examples for the first French grammars.
Le Roman de la Rose will then be erected as an ancient national masterpiece. Its richness today continues to be offered to the interpretative gloss of critics.” (Sylvie Lefêvre).
“What always surprises when approaching the ‘Roman de la Rose’ is that it is a work of humanists, stemming from two quite different minds and illustrating in an exemplary manner the evolution of minds. The poem by Guillaume de Lorris is an art of loving, and if all courtly love, which is about to disappear, is expressed there, it is already permeated with the Ancients, particularly Ovid; that of Jean de Meun, is an encyclopedia, where the author gathers in noble discourse all the data of science and philosophy, it is also a great cosmological poem.
Thus, each, in their own genre, gathered everything possible on two such important subjects; but while Guillaume de Lorris turns to a past, which soon will no longer exist, Jean de Meun foresees the future and announces the 15th-century humanist. Thus,‘The Roman de la Rose’, the most significant work of the entire French Middle Ages, is situated at the turning point that the French spirit took between its two extreme dates of composition; one finds there, quite singularly united, two currents of thought that are in a way two main constants of French literature.”
Superb example of this very rare edition clad in a delightful contemporary red morocco.
