Image above of MY IRL bookshelf?
Yes. Not photo-shopped or fake or mandela or…!
This book has killed my brian (!) for years.
It’s dense and tangled and thorny. Fact!
But it is HUGE part of my literature/history/hidden journey.
Allegory can be as confusing as eff.
The Romance of the Rose was written in two stages by two authors. In the first stage of composition, circa 1230, Guillaume de Lorris wrote 4,058 verses describing a courtier’s attempts at wooing his beloved woman. The first part of the poem’s story is set in a walled garden, an example of a locus amoenus, a traditional literary topos in epic poetry and chivalric romance. Forty-five years later, circa 1275, in the second stage of composition, Jean de Meun or Jehan Clopinel wrote 17,724 additional lines, in which he expanded the roles of his predecessor’s allegorical personages, such as Reason and Friend, and added new ones, such as Nature and Genius. They, in encyclopedic breadth, discuss the philosophy of love.
I’m a rose grower. I have about 20 rose bushes in my garden. All but 2 planted by me.
A ROSE by any other name etc…….
Oh. And. DO NOT get onto the book to the left of Romance of the Rose. Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin.
I’m feeling feisty and tigerish today.