Roman de la Rose Draft
Narrative & Literary Form
The thirteenth-century French allegorical poem that is the HP's most important literary predecessor in the dream-vision genre.
The Roman de la Rose (c. 1230-1275), by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, is the foundational European dream-vision allegory. Like the HP, it combines a love quest with encyclopedic digressions and allegorical encounters in a garden setting. Priki (2016) places the HP within a lineage running from the Roman de la Rose through the HP to later dream narratives, arguing that both texts use the dream frame to enable pedagogical encounters that prepare the dreamer for union with the beloved.
Why It Matters for the Hypnerotomachia
The Roman de la Rose provides the HP with its primary structural model: a dream-frame love quest through an allegorical landscape with pedagogical encounters. The HP extends this model through architectural elaboration and the addition of a second narrative voice (Polia).
Why It Matters in Scholarship
Priki (2016) argues that the HP consciously adapts and exceeds the Roman de la Rose model, particularly through its double dream structure and its unprecedented integration of text and image.
Key Passages / Evidence
- ... Del Lungo argues that the narrative reflects a medieval pilgrimage of Rome, allegorically progressing between S. Peters and S. Giovanni in Laterano, and argues that the 14bi-frontal dancers,... [O'Neill (Durham thesis)]
- ... far more piercing than that of any mortal’, embodying wisdom and moral perfection in a divine woman akin to Isis-Sophia. Philosophy in the medieval tradition can be identified with the heavenly... [O'Neill (Durham thesis)]
- <!-- Page 1 --> Interfaces 2 · 2016 · pp. 210–245 · DOI: 10.13130/interfaces-7005 EFTHYMIA PRIKI Teaching Eros The Rhetoric of Love in the Tale of Livistros and Rodamne, the Roman de la Rose, and... [Teaching_Eros_The_Rhetoric_of_Love_in_th]
Source Documents
Gollnick (Apuleius dreamworld); Lefaivre 1997 (Alberti attribution); O'Neill (Durham thesis); O'Neill (authorship); Priki 2009 (reception); Teaching_Eros_The_Rhetoric_of_Love_in_th
Page references: p. 27, p. 28, p. 29, p. 212, p. 213, p. 214, p. 1, p. 2, p. 34, p. 35, p. 204, p. 205, p. 206, p. 207, p. 123
Sources: Priki 2016; Godwin 1999
Review Status / Provenance
Draft
- Source method: CORPUS_EXTRACTION
- Confidence: MEDIUM
- Notes: Enriched from corpus reading packets on 2026-03-19. 20 passages retrieved from 6 documents.