Jean de Meung

Jean de Meun , Jean de Meung or Jean Chopinel , Jean Clopinel (v. 1240 with Meung - v. 1305 with Paris) is a French poet of the 13th century, known especially for its continuation of the Romance of the Rose .

Biography

It was born under the name of Jean Clopinel or Jean Chopinel with Meung-sur-Loire. The tradition affirms that he studied at the University of Paris. Like its contemporary, Rutebeuf, he was a defender of Guillaume of Saint-Love and a virulent criticism of the orders beggars. Most of its life seems to be last with Paris, where it had, street Saint-Jacob, a house with turn, court and garden, which was described in 1305 like house of the late Jean de Meung and was then allotted by certain Adam d' Andely to the Dominican ones. Jean de Meung tells that during his youth it composed of the songs which were sung in France on the public places and in the schools.

Romance of the Rose

Among its work, it places initially its continuation of the Romance of the Rose of Guillaume de Lorris. The date of this second part is generally fixed between 1268 and 1285 thanks to a reference in poetry to died of Manfred and Conradin, carried out in 1268 according to the order of Charles of Anjou (deceased in 1285) which would have been king de Sicile. Mr. F. Guillon ( Jean Clopinel , 1903), however, regarding poetry as primarily a political Satire, the place in the five last years of XIIIe century.

Jean de Meung probably published the work of his predecessor, Guillaume de Lorris, before using it like starting point of his own poetry, lengthening the considerable work of way since it carries it to 19000 worms.

The continuation of the Romance of the Rose is a satire against the monastic orders, the celibacy, the Noblesse, the Holy See, the excessive claims of the royalty but especially a satire of the women and marriage. Whereas Guillaume had put himself at the service of the love and had exposed the laws of the “courtesy”, Jean de Meung adds a “art of love”, by brutally exposing the defects of the women, their traps and the means of thwarting them. As a Jean de Meung incarnates the spirit of mockery and skepticism of the Fabliau X. It does not share the superstitions of its time, does not have any respect for the established institutions, scorns conventions of feudality and the romantic one.

Even if the plan of the work is loose, its poetry shows with the more high degree its acute sense of the observation, clearness in the reasoning and the exposure. It handled the French language with an ease and an unknown precision of its predecessors and the length of his poem is not an obstacle with its popularity in XIIIe and XIVe centuries.

Part of its vogue undoubtedly is due to the fact that the author, who had practically assimilated all the scientific knowledge and arts person of his contemporaries in France, cabin in his poetry a great quantity of useful informations and many quotations of classic authors. The book is attacked by Guillaume de Deguileville in his Pèlerinage of the human life (about 1330), work which was a long time sails about it in England and France, by Jean Gerson and Christine de Pisan in her Épître with the god of love . It also found defenders energetic.

Other works

Jean de Meung translated in 1284 in French the treaty Of Re Militari of Végèce under the title the book of Végèce of the art of knighthood . He created also a spiritual version, the first in French, letters of Abélard and Héloïse. A manuscript of XIVe century of this translation at the National library carries annotations of Pétrarque. Its translation of Of consolatione philosophiae of Boèce is preceded by a letter with Philippe Beautiful the where it enumerates his preceding work, of which two are lost: Of spiritual friendship drawn from Of spirituali amicitia of Aelred de Rievaulx (deceased in 1167) and the Book of the wonders of Hirlande drawn from the Topographia Hibernica , or De Mirabilibus Hiberniae of Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald de Barri). Its last poetries are undoubtedly its Testament and its Codicille . The Testament is written in quatrains monorimes and contains councils intended for the classes different from the company.

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