A hundred manuscripts of the medieval bestseller – le Roman de la Rose – are on show in Paris at the Biblioteque nationale Francaise.
Le Roman de la Rose was a me-dieval allegorical bestseller. Like aversified play it invited readers to ponder the drama of courtly love, while at the same time diverting them with pure unadulterated pornography.
More than 320 manuscripts exist of the Roman de la Rose, many of them luxuriously illuminated. Of these Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris houses more than 120. This winter a grand exhibition at the library has placed a hundred manuscripts on show together with pertinent objects from the Louvre, Musée de Cluny and other collections.
Visitors are first invited into a long gallery emanating a sense of spring time. Here they are introduced to the different personified characters in the allegory. The object is to give a feeling for the poem and its main plot.
Next – in the large hall of exhibition – the visitor is invited to feel as a guest in the enclosed garden. Here 30 of the most magnificent manuscripts are on show, presenting the development of the reception of the poem. At the same time, however, the visitor is guided to an understanding of the intricacies of the medieval art of love with its ideas of chaste friendships, vile women, hateful marriages and lustful affairs.
Finally in the small salon – organised as a medieval office or scriptorium – the story is told about the aftermath of the poem: how it was read aloud, how it was reproduced, illustrated and commented upon, and finally how it became the centre of a very famous literary quarrel.
Read about this quarrel and the rest of the story in