Conference organized by Marco Nievergelt, Paris IAS fellow, John Marenbon (Trinity College, Cambridge) and Jonathan Morton (King's College, London)

Presentation

The Roman de la Rose is not only the most influential late-medieval vernacular poem (with over 300 extant Manuscripts), along with Dante’s Commedia, but is also a uniquely challenging work. Jean de Meun’s continuation of the poem fuses themes from medieval satire and love-poetry with a wide range of philosophical questions that show a particular concern for contemporary controversies and issues. The speeches by central characters such as Reason, Nature and Genius are saturated with references to both ancient auctores and more recent, scholastic debates. But while there is widespread consensus about the encyclopaedic range of themes evoked by the poem, and about Jean’s presence in the cultural orbit of the University, little work has been done in assessing the intellectual and cultural significance of his engagement with philosophical materials. While in the 1940s Gérard Paré could still claim that Jean was merely ‘un vulgarisateur et un traducteur’ who ‘continue de mettre à la portée des laïcs les rudiments de sa science universitaire’, it is now clear that this is an unsatisfactory assessment. On the one hand, Jean’s understanding of philosophical problems debated in Paris during the 1260s and 70s appears to be far more precise and informed than Paré allowed for. On the other, Jean’s handling of such materials is often provocative, critical and creative, and the poem cannot be reduced to a patchwork of mere ‘allusions’ to scholastic theories and debates. Seeing the Roman de la Rose in terms of a passive ‘adoptions’ of philosophical positions elaborated by the scholastics is therefore inaccurate. Jean’s poem is a self-conscious, deeply informed, and intellectually challenging intervention in the intellectual debates of its time. Attempting to justify this claim raises a whole range of larger, more profound questions regarding the interface between poetry and philosophy as it is deployed in the Rose and as it influences later medieval poetry.

The Roman de la Rose has seen much recent critical attention from literary scholars but its engagements with medieval thought have not been explored as, for example, Dante’s have been. The conference will enrich our understanding of the Roman de la Rose itself and its cultural and intellectual significance in the history of philosophy as well as of literature by encouraging a sustained dialogue between philosophers, intellectual historians and literary historians. The Rose juxtaposes a whole range of different currents and debates in thirteenth-century thought and by reading it in the light of that thought, we also hope to reveal connections between different aspects of medieval philosophy as well as between philosophy and poetry. It is our hope that such collaboration will shed light on the complexity of the poem not least by allowing an understanding of the idiosyncratic poetico-philosophical method of the Rose, which challenges current disciplinary barriers as well as medieval ones.

Programme

Monday 20 June

9.00 Arrival and registration

9.15-9.30 Welcome

9.30-11 Session 1 — University Culture
Chair : Ian Wei (Bristol)

Olga Weijers (The Hague / IRHT Paris) : Jean de Meun et la Faculté des Arts de Paris                 

Alex Novikoff (Fordham University, NY) : Performing Scholasticism: The Poetics of Disputation in 13th-Century Vernacular Poetry

11-11.30 Coffee

11.30 -13.00 Session 2 — Knowledge and Truth
Chair : Aurélien Robert (CNRS)

Fabienne Pomel (Université de Rennes 2) : Expériences visuelles et fiction allégorique : lexique et paradigme de la fantasie chez Jean de Meun

Jonathan Morton (King’s College, London) : Sophisms and Sophistry in the ‘Roman de la Rose’

13.00-14.30 Lunch

14.30-16.00 Session 3 — Language
Chair: Irène Rosier (EPHE / CNRS / Paris 7)

Marco Nievergelt (IEA Paris / Université de Lausanne) : Impropriety, Equivocation, and Imposition: Jean de Meun and Parisian Grammar and Logic

Earl Jeffrey Richards (Bergische Universität Wuppertal) : Significatio ad placitum: The Virtue Ethics Context of Jean de Meun’s Discussion of Linguistic Referentiality

16.00-16.30 Coffee

16.30-18.00 Session 4 — Uncertainty and Negation
Chair: Amandine Mussou (Paris 7)

Alice Lamy (Univ. Paris-Sorbonne; Lycée Hélène Boucher) : Le roman de la non-rose : héritages et subversions de la théologie négative chez Jean de Meun

Christophe Grellard (EPHE-PSL Research University, CNRS-LEM) : Les mécanismes de la croyance. L’épistémologie implicite de Jean de Meun

Tuesday 21 June

9.30-11.00 Session 5 — Nature and Necessity
Chair: TBC

Philip Knox (New College Oxford) : Human Nature and the Natural Law in Jean de Meun’s ‘Roman de la rose’

Kellie Robertson (University of Maryland) : Horace’s Pitchfork and Nature’s Axe: Necessity in the ‘Rose’ Tradition

11-11.30 Coffee

11.30-13.00 Session 6 — Politics and Community
Chair: TBC

Juhana Toivanen (University of Jyväskylä) : La Rose: Themes in Political Philosophy

Antonio Montefusco (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia) : Une relecture politico-communale de la Rose: pour le ‘Fiore’ attribué à Dante Alighieri

13.00-14.30 Lunch

14.30-16.00 Session 7 — Forms of Philosophy
Chair: Christopher Lucken (Paris 8 / Genève)

John Marenbon (Trinity College Cambridge) : The ‘Roman de la Rose’ and Boethius

Kevin Brownlee (University of Pennsylvania) : Forme scholastique et interprétation ouverte dans le ‘Roman de la Rose’

16.00-16.30 Coffee

16.30-18.00 Session 8 — Reading the ‘whole’ Rose
Chair: TBC

Jean-Marc Mandosio (EPHE Paris) : Le ‘Roman de la Rose’ et le ‘Livre du Trésor’: deux usages de la classification des sciences en dehors du cadre universitaire

Luciano Rossi (Universität Zürich) : Métalepse et allégorie. L’unité du roman

18-18.30 Concluding Remarks