The "Iliad" of France

The "Romance of the Rose" is a poetical allegory begun by Guillaume de Lorris in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and continued by Jean de Meung in the fourteenth century.

The poet dreams that Dame Idleness conducts him to the Palace of Pleasure, where he meets Love, whose attendant maidens are Sweet Looks, Courtesy, Youth, Joy, and Competence: by them he is conducted to a bed of roses.

He has just singled out one rose, when an arrow from Love's bow stretches him fainting on the ground, and he is carried away.

When he comes to himself, he resolves to find his rose; and Welcome promises to aid him. Shyness, Fear, and Slander obstruct his way; Reason advises him to give up the quest; Pity and Kindness show him the object of his search; but Jealousy seizes Welcome, and locks her in Fear Castle. Here the original poem ends. The sequel, longer than Homer's Iliad, takes up the tale at this point, and is an extraordinary mixture of erudition and satire; at one time a history of heroes, then a disquisition upon the hoarding of money, astronomy, duties of mankind, etc. the poem reached the height of its popularity in the sixteenth century. Then writers were never tired of quoting and explaining it; and some learned commentaries were written upon it, and passages often quoted from it in the pulpit. The poem, which is a very learned but tedious one of twenty-two thousand verses, contains many immoral passages, which so excited the animadversion of the Fathers of the Church, that, better literature being written, the romance finally lost its hold upon the French people.