Abstract

The question of the epistemological status of poetic language is a central concern in the Roman de la Rose. The Rose itself is in fact conceived as an extended reflection on the ability of poetry to convey philosophical and transcendent truths. While Jean de Meun invokes this possibility, his poem finally foregrounds the fictional and fabricated nature of his own poetic vision, and highlights the poet’s role as an producer of counterfeit truths. This role is explored in particular through the character of Faux Semblant, who acts as an embodiment of the liar-paradox, and becomes an emblem for the elusive and paradoxical poetics of truth/deception that sustain the Roman de la Rose in its entirety. This exploration of the intrinsic deceptiveness of poetic art and the problematic role of the poet, crystallises in a series of recurrent motifs and concerns that haunt late medieval vernacular poetry more broadly, especially in France, Britain, and Italy. While the Franco-English tradition largely reproduces Jean de Meun’s own scepticism concerning the veridical status of poetic speech, the Italian tradition, especially in the Fiore and in Dante’s work, systematically seeks to suppress such scepticism, countering it with a stronger, more ambitious authorial model of the poet as vates.