{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect90_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect90_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect90_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/eng/mect/mect90.htm","summary":"This is a passage from Fragment B of *The Romaunt of the Rose*, a Middle English translation (attributed partly to Chaucer) of the 13th-century French allegorical poem *Roman de la Rose* by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. The work belongs to the tradition of courtly love allegory, in which abstract concepts\u2014desire, beauty, courtesy\u2014are personified and enacted as a narrative. In this excerpt, the dreamer-narrator is struck by a series of arrows fired by the God of Love as he gazes at a rosebud (representing the idealized beloved), with each arrow named for a quality such as Beauty, Simplicity, Courtesy, Company, and Fair Seeming; each wound drives him further into helpless longing. The passage culminates in the narrator formally surrendering to Love as a feudal vassal, kneeling, kissing Love's mouth, and swearing homage\u2014framing erotic obsession as a chivalric bond with reciprocal obligations. A distinctive feature is the extended paradox of pleasurable suffering: the wounds bleed no blood, the arrows leave barbed heads lodged permanently in the heart, and an ointment soothes while the pain persists, capturing the medieval literary convention that love is simultaneously torment and transcendence. Readers interested in medieval allegory, the psychology of desire rendered through personification, or the literary roots of courtly love poetry will find this a foundational and vividly dramatized example of the genre.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":26336}