Re-Contextualising the Romaunt of the Rose: Glasgow, University Library MS Hunter 409 and the Roman De La Rose

Abstract

This article examines in detail certain aspects of the mise-en-page of Glasgow, University Library MS Hunter 409, the most complete surviving manuscript copy of the Middle English Romaunt of the Rose, a translation of the Roman de la rose. It explores the way in which, since the nineteenth-century work of Skeat and his contemporaries, critical focus has been directed overwhelmingly towards splitting the text into discrete 'fragments', with the principal purpose of discerning which was by Chaucer. It then argues that the Glasgow manuscript's presentation of the Romaunt does not support these readings of the text, and suggests that this manuscript in fact provides evidence of engagement with much broader scribal and decorative traditions of transmitting the Roman de la rose through its layout and decoration. The article concludes by arguing for a more integrated and less divisive approach to the Romaunt, and a move away from a scholarly model which focuses on its supposed 'fragmentary' state and its relationship to Chaucer, in favour of an exploration of its relationship to the Rose itself.--This article presents one part of a much larger study, which investigates Middle English translation from French, focusing on translation as broad cultural and bibliographical transfer as well as precise linguistic exercise, and discussing the contribution of Middle English translations both to important debates surrounding their French 'sources', and to critical formations of an English Chaucer canon. One of the central texts within this study is the thirteenth-century medieval 'bestseller' Le Roman de la rose, and its Middle English translation The Romaunt of the Rose. 1 As is well known, the Romaunt has, traditionally, been critically situated within the canon of Chaucer's early or marginal works. Almost all critical debate about the text has centred on the vexed question of Chaucer attribution, and has (both implicitly and explicitly) situated the Romaunt in a category of largely derivative, early works by a writer whose mature genius far outstrips these rather uncomfortable beginnings, once it has fully come into its own. 2The fact that the Romaunt has been shown to be by more than one translator has complicated the situation further as regards attribution. Since the late nineteenth century, the Romaunt has been divided into three so-called 'fragments'(A, B and C), according to these