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GUILLAUME DE LORRIS (fl. 1230)

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 692 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GUILLAUME DE LORRIS (fl. 1230)  , the author of the earlier See also:section of the See also:Roman de la See also:rose, derives his surname from a small See also:town about equidistant from See also:Montargis and See also:Gien, in the See also:present See also:department of Loiret . This and the fact of his authorship may be said to be the only things positively known about him . The See also:rubric of the poem, where his own See also:part finishes, attributes See also:Jean de Meun's continuation to a See also:period See also:forty years later than See also:William's See also:death and the consequent interruption of the See also:romance . Arguing backwards, this death used to be put at about 126o; but Jean de Meun's own See also:work has recently been dated earlier, and so the See also:composition of the first part has been thrown back to a period before 1240 . The author represents himself as having dreamed the See also:dream which furnished the substance of the poem in his twentieth See also:year, and as having set to work to " See also:rhyme it " five years later . The later and longer part of the Roman shows signs of greater intellectual vigour and wider knowledge than the earlier and shorter, but See also:Guillaume de Lorris is to all See also:appearance more See also:original . The See also:great features of his four or five thousand lines are, in the first See also:place, the extraordinary vividness and beauty of his word-pictures, in which for See also:colour, freshness and individuality he has not many rivals except in the greatest masters, and, secondly, the See also:fashion of allegorical presentation, which, hackneyed and wearisome as it afterwards became, was evidently in his See also:time new and striking . There are of course traces of it before, as in some romances, such as those of Raoul de See also:Houdenc, in the troubadours, and in other writers; but it was unquestionably Guillaume de Lorris who fixed the See also:style . For an See also:attempt to identify Guillaume de Lorris see L . See also:Jarry, Guillaume de Lorris et le testament d'See also:Alphonse de See also:Poitiers (1881) . Also Paulin See also:Paris in the Hist. lift. de la See also:France, vol. See also:xxiii .

End of Article: GUILLAUME DE LORRIS (fl. 1230)
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