Personification and Didactic Approach: "The Romance of the Rose"

Abstract

Love for God is the first love, but in reality first love is sensual love, and in this way Nature tries to maintain the continuation of the species. The theme of love, the main doctrine of Christianity, has an important place in medieval poems. This study examines "The Romance of the Rose" in terms of the personification tradition and didactic approach. The aforementioned work is the most original and lyrical work of European courtly literature written by two separate poets mentioned below in 1230 and 1280. In order to explain the art of love, Guillaume de Lorris portrays in an imaginary narrative the eternal love of the hero who tries to reunite his lover embodied in a rare rose in the middle of a rose garden. Jean de Meun adds a continuation section and an ending to the poem with the addendum of 17723 lines. In the aforementioned work, while de Lorris gives the person in love the stages of seeing, speaking, touching and kissing, and the work ends with the complaints of the lover, de Meun gives the last stage of sensual intercourse. It is completely unique to Medieval Age in terms of its external form, and the personification of feelings and love situations has been taken to the extreme. Without these personifications, the mind would not be able to understand the movements of the soul, and they are used as a scientific psychology terminology. In this work, love remains, in theory, courtiers and nobles. Courtly love is deceptive because the woman has power and control while the man is obedient. However, once the rose has been acquired, the game will be over. What gives this work its soul is the brutal underestimation of women’s weakness in de Meun, and its origin lies in this transcendental character of being sensual.