author
de Lorris Guillaume
Known almost entirely through a single, hugely influential poem, this medieval French writer helped shape the language of courtly love for centuries. His part of The Romance of the Rose is admired for its dreamlike garden setting, graceful allegory, and lyrical style.
4 Audiobooks
Le roman de la rose - Tome I
by de Lorris Guillaume, de Meun Jean
Le roman de la rose - Tome II
by de Lorris Guillaume, de Meun Jean
Le roman de la rose - Tome IV
by de Lorris Guillaume, de Meun Jean
Le roman de la rose - Tome III
by de Lorris Guillaume, de Meun Jean
About the author
Guillaume de Lorris was a 13th-century French poet, probably from Lorris in north-central France. Very little about his life is securely known, which is common for medieval authors, but he is remembered as the writer of the first part of The Romance of the Rose (Roman de la Rose), one of the best-known poems of the later Middle Ages.
He is generally thought to have written his section around the 1230s. In roughly 4,000 lines, he created an allegorical dream vision about love, set in an enclosed garden and shaped by the ideals of courtly romance. Decades later, Jean de Meun continued and greatly expanded the poem, but Guillaume's opening portion remained famous for its elegance, clarity, and poetic charm.
Because the historical record is so thin, his reputation rests almost entirely on this work. Even so, that single contribution was enough to give him a lasting place in French literary history, and The Romance of the Rose went on to influence readers and writers for generations.