The Romaunt of the Rose (the Romaunt) is a partial translation into Middle English of the French allegorical poem, le Roman de la Rose (le Roman). Originally believed to be the work of Chaucer, the Romaunt inspired controversy among 19th-century scholars when parts of the text were found to differ in style from Chaucer's other works. Also the text was found to contain three distinct fragments of translation. Together, the fragments--A, B, and C--provide a translation of approximately one-third of Le Roman. There is little doubt that Chaucer did translate Le Roman de la Rose under the title The Romaunt of the Rose: in The Legend of Good Women, the narrator, Chaucer, states as much. The question is whether the surviving text is the same one that Chaucer wrote. The authorship question has been a topic of research and controversy. As such, scholarly discussion of the Romaunt has tended toward linguistic rather than literary analysis. Scholars today generally agree that only fragment A is attributable to Chaucer, although fragment C closely resembles Chaucer's style in language and manner. Fragment C differs mainly in the way that rhymes are constructed. And where fragments A and C adhere to a London dialect of the 1370s, Fragment B contains forms characteristic of a northern dialect.

The Romance of the Rose has been a controversial text since it was written in the thirteenth century. There is evidence for radically different readings as as early as the first half of the fourteenth century. The text provided inspiration for both courtly and didactic poets. Some read it as a celebration of human love; others as an erudite philosophical work; still others as a satirical representation of social and sexual follies. On one hand it was praised as an edifying treatise, on the other condemned as lascivious and misogynistic. Kevin Brownlee and Sylvia Huot and the contributors to this volume—Pierre-Yves Badel, Emmanuele Baumgartner, John V. Fleming, Robert Pogue Harrison, David F. Hult, Stephen G. Nichols, Lee Patterson, Daniel Poirion, Karl D. Uitti, Dieuwke E. van der Poel, and Lori Walters—represent all the major areas of current work on the Romance of the Rose, both in American and in Europe. The volume will be of value to students and scholars of medieval literature, intellectual history, and art history.

Many English-speaking readers of the Roman de la rose, the famous dream allegory of the thirteenth century, have come to rely on Charles Dahlberg's elegant and precise translation of the Old French text. His line-by-line rendering in contemporary English is available again, this time in a third edition with an updated critical apparatus. Readers at all levels can continue to deepen their understanding of this rich tale about the Lover and his quest--against the admonishments of Reason and the obstacles set by Jealousy and Resistance--to pluck the fair Rose in the Enchanted Garden. The original introduction by Dahlberg remains an excellent overview of the work, covering such topics as the iconographic significance of the imagery and the use of irony in developing the central theme of love. His new preface reviews selected scholarship through 1990, which examines, for example, the sources and influences of the work, the two authors, the nature of the allegorical narrative as a genre, the use of first person, and the poem's early reception. The new bibliographic material incorporates that of the earlier editions. The sixty-four miniature illustrations from thirteenth-and fifteenth-century manuscripts are retained, as are the notes keyed to the Langlois edition, on which the translation is based.

A medieval French poem styled as an allegorical dream vision.

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Around the year 1400, the poet Christine de Pizan initiated a public debate in France over the literary "truth" and merit of the Roman of the Rose, perhaps the most renowned work of the French Middle Ages. This is the first dual-language version of the "Quarrel" documents.

The culmination of a lifetime's scholarly work, this pioneering study by Sister Prudence Allen traces the concept of woman in relation to man in Western thought from ancient times to the present. Volume I uncovers four general categories of questions asked by philosophers for two thousand years. These are the categories of opposites, of generation, of wisdom, and of virtue. Sister Prudence Allen traces several recurring strands of sexual and gender identity within this period. Ultimately, she shows the paradoxical influence of Aristotle on the question of woman and on a philosophical understanding of sexual coomplemenarity. Supplemented throughout with helpful charts, diagrams, and illustrations, this volume will be an important resource for scholars and students in the fields of women's studies, philosophy, history, theology, literary studies, and political science. In Volume 2, Sister Prudence Allen explores claims about sex and gender identity in the works of over fifty philosophers (both men and women) in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. Touching on the thought of every philosopher who considered sex or gender identity between A.D. 1250 and 1500, The Concept of Woman provides the analytical categories necessary for situating contemporary discussion of women in relation to men. Adding to the accessibility of this fine discussion are informative illustrations, helpful summary charts, and extracts of original source material (some not previously available in English). In her third and final volume Allen covers the years 1500--2015, continuing her chronological approach to individual authors and also offering systematic arguments to defend certain philosophical positions over against others.

Enchanted by Narnia's fantastic world as a child, prominent critic Laura Miller returns to the series as an adult to uncover the source of these small books' mysterious power by looking at their creator, Clive Staples Lewis. What she discovers is not the familiar, idealized image of the author, but a more interesting and ambiguous truth: Lewis's tragic and troubled childhood, his unconventional love life, and his intense but ultimately doomed friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien. Finally reclaiming Narnia "for the rest of us," Miller casts the Chronicles as a profoundly literary creation, and the portal to a lifelong adventure in books, art, and the imagination.