Debate of the Romance of the Rose

The letters in which a woman told the king's secretaries that the most famous poem in France slandered her sex, and then sent the file to the queen.

by Christine de Pizan147 passages held

French, the original language

Original title: Les Epistres du débat sus le Roman de la Rose
First published: 1402(aged 38)
Original language: French

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Overview

Jean de Montreuil, provost of Lille and a secretary to the French king, read the Romance of the Rose around 1401 and wrote a treatise in its praise. The poem was a dream of love begun about 1230 and finished some forty-five years later by Jean de Meun, whose long continuation lets its characters coach lovers in deceit and speak of women with contempt. A copy of Montreuil's treatise reached Christine de Pizan, and she answered it that summer. Her letter argues that a book which teaches men to deceive women, and calls all women faithless, is not excused by the learning or the skill of its author. Gontier Col, another royal secretary, asked her for a copy of the letter on 13 September 1401 and two days later wrote again, telling her to retract. She refused. Then, on 1 February 1402, she had the letters copied together and sent the collection to Isabeau of Bavaria, queen of France, and to Guillaume de Tignonville, provost of Paris. With that, a dispute among a few men of letters was put before the court. Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, wrote against the Rose that May. Pierre Col, Gontier's brother and a canon of Paris, defended the poem against both of them; his case was that Jean de Meun's characters speak in character and their words are not the poet's. Christine's reply to him is dated 2 October 1402. She holds that a writer answers for what he puts in his characters' mouths, because readers are changed by what they read. The record is incomplete at both ends: Montreuil's treatise, which began the quarrel, has not survived, and the last document, a rejoinder from Pierre Col, survives only as a fragment.

Key concepts

What exactly did Christine object to in the Romance of the Rose?

Three things, named in her first letter. The character Reason calls the sexual organs by their plain names. Long speeches by the Old Woman, the Jealous Husband and the priest Genius teach deceit and describe all women as vicious. And the ending shows the lover taking the rose in thinly veiled sexual figures. She adds that she condemns these parts and not the whole poem, which has good things in it.

What does it mean to say a character speaks in character?

It means the words belong to the role and not to the author. Pierre Col uses the idea to defend Jean de Meun: a jealous man must talk like a jealous man. Christine does not deny that fiction works this way. Her point is that a poet chooses which roles to write and how long they speak, and the same abuse of women recurs in nearly all of them.

Who is the foolish lover the letters keep mentioning?

The foolish lover is the poem's hero, a young man who has given himself over to desire against the advice of Reason. Both sides use the phrase. For the defenders he is a warning: the poem shows foolish love so that readers will avoid it. For Christine a reader already in love finds in him an example and a method, and the poem's last pages reward him instead of correcting him.

Why does Christine judge a book by its ending?

Because, as the proverb she quotes has it, things are settled at their end. A work that means to teach should arrive somewhere useful, and the Rose arrives at a seduction described in figures no decent reader can hear without shame. She adds that it tells nothing new: everyone knows how men and women come together. A marvel would at least amuse, but this conclusion neither instructs nor surprises.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Does an author answer for his characters?

If a jealous husband rails against wives in a poem, who is speaking, the character or the poet? The quarrel turns on whether fiction excuses what it teaches.

Pierre Col's defence is that Jean de Meun's Jealous Husband, Old Woman and Reason each speak in character, so their words cannot be charged to the poet. Christine's answer looks at effect: readers remember the lesson, whoever speaks it, and a warning that names the forbidden fruit makes it more tempting. She grants the poem's skill and judges it by use. On the plain naming of the sexual organs she holds that the thing makes the word shameful, and she concludes that the book deserves a shroud of fire sooner than a laurel crown.

literary criticism
literary interpretation
interpretation
authorship
intention
moral education
literature
language
modesty
shame
sexual ethics
desire
vice

Enter a dialogue

A woman's testimony against the clerks

What standing does someone outside the university have to judge its favourite poet? Told to retract as a woman carried away by passion, she turns her sex into evidence.

Gontier Col writes twice, the second time ordering her to confess her error and offering mercy and a penance. She refuses, and makes two moves. Being a woman, she can testify to what women are, where Jean de Meun wrote of married women by guesswork, never having had the experience. And size proves nothing: a small knife point can pierce a great swollen sack. By sending the letters to the queen and the provost of Paris she asks for judges, since a quarrel over what is said of women is, for her, a public matter.

gender
misogyny
rhetoric
argumentation
experience
reputation
marriage
justice
truth
deception
reason
virtue

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 147
distinct concepts: 194
by passages held, corpus-wide: #421

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “language” and “sexual ethics”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 84 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
language	sexual ethics	9
literary criticism	rhetoric	8
interpretation	literary criticism	5
rhetoric	sexual ethics	5
argumentation	literary criticism	4
argumentation	rhetoric	4
deception	sexual ethics	4
gender	literary criticism	4
gender	rhetoric	4
interpretation	rhetoric	4
literary criticism	sexual ethics	4
argumentation	gender	3
argumentation	interpretation	2
argumentation	language	2
deception	literary criticism	2
interpretation	sexual ethics	2
argumentation	sexual ethics	1
deception	gender	1
deception	interpretation	1
gender	interpretation	1
gender	language	1
gender	sexual ethics	1
interpretation	language	1
language	literary criticism	1
language	rhetoric	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1399 The God of Love's Letter (Épître au dieu d'Amours)
Her first long poem and her first defence of women, written in 1399. Its complaint returns in her letters on the Romance of the Rose and again in The Book of the City of Ladies.
FR
1402 Debate of the Romance of the Rose (Les Epistres du débat sus le Roman de la Rose) you are here FR
1404 Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V
A duke ordered this biography of the king in 1404. Her prose books of advice to princes came after it.
FR
1405 The Book of the City of Ladies (Le Livre de la cité des dames)
The book she is most read for today, finished by 1405. It gathers the arguments of her earlier poem and letters against Jean de Meun into a single allegory, and its three ladies return in the sequel.
EN
1405 The Treasure of the City of Ladies (Le trésor de la cité des dames de degré en degré et de tous estatz)
The sequel to The Book of the City of Ladies, finished the same year, 1405: the first book defends women by example, and this one tells them what to do. It was the more often printed of the two in the century after her death.
FR
1405 The Vision of Christine de Pizan (L'avision de Christine)
One of three books dated 1405, with The Book of the City of Ladies and its sequel, and the last of her allegories. It is the one in which she tells her own story.
FR
1410 The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (Le Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie)
A manual in four parts, compiled around 1410 from Roman and recent authorities on war and its law. It belongs with her late books of political advice for the French court, and it stands furthest from the subjects she is now read for.
FR

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