The value of wealth in 'Le Roman de la Rose

The discourse of and about wealth provides one of the essential structures and a key to the unity of Le Roman de la Rose, a poem begun by Guillaume de Lorris ca. 1225 and finished forty years later by Jean de Meun. Confronted with the growth and qualitative change of the thirteenth-century economy, Jean de Meun explores the implications of money and the market system, as do many of his contemporaries. While noted as a common theme in Le Roman de la Rose as in the literature of the period, readers and critics have generally accepted the narrator's dismissive attitude towards wealth and the repeated condemnations of worldly riches that are attributed to the protagonist, several of his advisors, and many learned auctores to whom they refer. My dissertation, however, emphasizes the diversity of attitudes towards wealth presented by those within the poem and shows the way that it is put to use by Jean de Meun to unify his continuation with Guillaume de Lorris' original poem, and to give meaning to that poetic structure. My introduction establishes the historical and economic context of the poem. The first two chapters examine the representation of wealth in Guillaume de Lorris' text, where vices related to wealth's acquisition and use are identified and condemned; poverty is excluded; and the gleaming hoard of treasure is regarded as static, decorative, and without intrinsic value. There, Guillaume de Lorris maintains the well-established opposition between those who love well and those who love money. The five chapters of my dissertation dedicated to Jean de Meun's continuation show that he frees wealth from Guillaume de Lorris' restrictive definition, cultivating its fluid and changeable nature. Each advisor counsels the lover about man's relationship to wealth and serves as a concrete, though often contradictory, example of that connection. The fixed opposition between love and money is transformed by wealth's development, into a vital and complex metaphor. The expanded discourse of wealth allows Jean de Meun to reflect upon his own writing, and on the dynamic of his spending the poetic treasure that is the original poem.