Dartmouth Rose

The Dartmouth College Library is delighted to announce the addition of an important manuscript to its holdings: a richly illuminated copy of the Roman de la Rose created in Paris between 1300 and 1325.

The Roman de la Rose is arguably the most important literary text produced in France in the middle ages. Much more than just an allegory for the pursuit of carnal love, the Roman de la Rose very quickly became one of the most popular and far-reaching texts of the Middle Ages.  This particular manuscript was produced only a few decades after the completion of the poem making it an important source for medievalists at Dartmouth and elsewhere.

In recent years, Rauner Special Collections has added three significant medieval secular manuscripts to its collections: The Brut Chronicle (England, ca 1425) and a fragment of the Chronique anonyme universelle (France, 1461), and Boccaccio’s L’Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (Italy, ca 1450).  All three of these manuscripts have been heavily used in Dartmouth classes and have attracted world-renowned scholars to do work in Rauner Library.  They have helped to fill an important gap in Rauner’s holdings by adding secular historical manuscripts to the collections.  The Roman de la Rose adds a new literary text to the holdings and cements Rauner Library’s importance in the realm of medieval scholarship.  Most importantly, it now provide students, faculty, and visiting researcher at Dartmouth the opportunity to work with a truly remarkable set of manuscripts.

The manuscript has been scanned and is available digitally through the Roman de la Rose Digital Library