The Romaunt of the Rose

Book excerpt: The Romaunt of the Rose translates in abridged form a long dream vision, part elegant romance, part rollicking satire, written in France during the thirteenth century. The French original, Le Roman de la Rose, had a profound influence on Chaucer, who says he translated the work. From the sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, scholars assumed that the Romaunt comprised large fragments of that translation. Subsequent debates have divided the Romaunt into two or three segments, and proffered arguments that Chaucer was responsible for one or more of them, or for none. The current consensus is that he almost certainly wrote the first 1,705 lines. Charles Dahlberg’s edition of the Romaunt provides a full summary of scholarship on the question of authorship as well as other important topics, including a useful survey of the influence of the French poem on Chaucer.