Jean de Meun
Mirth and Gladness lead a Dance in
this miniature
from a manuscript of the Roman de la
Rose in the
Bodleian Library (MS Douce 364, folio
8r).
born c. 1240,
Meung-sur-Loire, France
died before 1305
French poet famous for his
continuation of the Roman de la
rose, an allegorical poem in the
courtly love tradition begun by
Guillaume de Lorris about 1225.
Jean de Meun’s original name was
Clopinel, or Chopinel, but he became
known by the name of his birthplace. He
probably owned a home in Paris and may
have been archdeacon of the Beauce, a
region between Paris and Orléans. Little
is known of his life.
His poems are satiric, coarse, at
times immoral, but fearless and
outspoken in attacking the abuses of the
age. His strong antifeminism and
censures on the vices of the church were
bitterly resented.
Jean used the plot of the Roman
de la rose (c. 1280) as a means
of conveying a mass of encyclopaedic
information and opinions on every topic
likely to interest his contemporaries,
especially the increasingly important
bourgeois class. At various times he
relates the history of classical heroes,
attacks the hoarding of money, and
theorizes about astronomy and about the
human duty to increase and multiply.
Many of his views were hotly contested,
but they held the attention of the age.
The allegory itself was of little
importance to him; the famous
“Confession” of Nature (one of the
characters in the poem) digressed from
the narrative for some 3,500 verses, yet
it was such digressions that secured the
poem’s reputation. Nearly a century
later Geoffrey Chaucer translated a
segment of the poem, and some scholars
hold that it influenced his work more
than any other vernacular French or
Italian poetry.
