Texte remanié de: Thèse--Lettres--Paris, 1890. / Bibliogr. p. I-III.

In his Roman de la Rose, Guillaume de Lorris promises several times the revelation of the significance of his work, the senefiance. If the use of allegory by Guillaume does not elucidate the mystery of this senefiance, symbolic interpretation opens a gate in accordance with the time and the text. / The dream as a framework signals a symbolic content and provides unity. In an orchard of geometrical proportions, truly edenic garden, the fountain of Narcisus, transformed in a fountain of Love by Cupido, is a mirror perilous, where the Rose will appear. It will confront the dreamer, the future Lover who happens to be the poet himself, to the myth of self-knowledge, sparing him, however, the faith of Narcisus. After a kiss stolen from the Rose too soon by the Lover, Jealousy will command the construction of a castle and a tower to protect the Rose. All these adventures, in this magical setting, will confirm a highly symbolic content and will contribute in enhancing and throwing light on the work of Guillaume de Lorris, although never exhausting its senefiance. / The symbolism and the senefiance we deduce from it, will help in understanding the didactic reach of this work, its universal character and in refuting the incompletion of the poem while accepting the incompletion of a quest always renewed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1936. / Bibliography: p. 227-228.

No description available.

Texte remanié de Diss. Literature Princeton 1978, soutenue sous le titre " Dante's " Commedia " and its vernacular narrative context. / Bibliogr. p. 109-116.

Jean de Meun's continuation of the Roman de la rose (The Romance of the Rose), written in Paris in the 1270s, presents a vast amount of philosophy and natural science in vernacular poetry, while engaging thoroughly with contemporary, local philosophical and institutional debates. Taking this into consideration, this study investigates how the Rose depends for its meaning on questions around human nature, natural philosophy, and the philosophy of language that were being discussed and debated in the University of Paris at the time of its composition. It suggests a reading of the poem as a work of philosophy that uses Aristotelian ideas of nature and what is natural to present a moral framework – at times explicitly, at times implicitly – within which to assess and critique human behaviour. The concepts of the unnatural and the artificial are used to discuss sin and its effects on sexuality – a key concern of the Rose – and on language. The Rose is shown to present itself as artificial and compromised, yet nevertheless capable of leading imperfect and compromised humans to moral behaviour and towards knowledge which can only ever be imperfect. It is read as a presenting a rhetorical kind of philosophy that is sui generis and that appeals to human desire as well as to the intellect. The specific issue of usury and its relation to avarice is examined, studying contemporary theological and philosophical treatments of the question, in order to illustrate similarities and contrasts in the Rose's theoretical methodology to more orthodox modes of philosophical enquiry. Finally, the poem's valorisation of pleasure and of the perversity inherent in artificial productions is explored to show how poetry, though deviating from the strictures of dialectical language, is nevertheless productive and generative.