Arguably the single most influential literary work of the European Middle Ages, the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun has traditionally posed a number of difficulties to modern critics, who have viewed its many interruptions and philosophical discussions as signs of a lack of formal organization and a characteristically medieval predilection for encyclopedic summation. In Fortune's Faces, Daniel Heller-Roazen calls into question these assessments, offering a new and compelling interpretation of the romance as a carefully constructed and far-reaching exploration of the place of fortune, chance, and contingency in literary writing. Situating the Romance of the Rose at the intersection of medieval literature and philosophy, Heller-Roazen shows how the thirteenth-century work invokes and radicalizes two classical and medieval traditions of reflection on language and contingency: that of the Provencal, French, and Italian love poets, who sought to compose their "verses of pure nothing"in a language Dante defined as "without grammar," and that of Aristotle's discussion of "future contingents" as it was received and refined in the logic, physics, theology, and epistemology of Boethius, Abelard, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas.Through a close analysis of the poetic text and a detailed reconstruction of the logical and metaphysical concept of contingency, Fortune's Faces charts the transformations that literary structures (such as subjectivity, autobiography, prosopopoeia, allegory, and self-reference) undergo in a work that defines itself as radically contingent. Considered in its full poetic and philosophical dimensions, the Romance of the Rose thus acquires an altogether new significance in the history of literature: it appears as a work that incessantly explores its own capacity to be other than it is.

Daniel Heller-Roazen's elegant book is a model of theoretical acumen and critical sensibility, and it demonstrates brilliantly how philosophy and philology can work together to offer an entirely new reading of a classic work. -- Giorgio Agamben, University of Verona

About the Author
Daniel Heller-Roazen is an assistant professor of comparative literature at Princeton University.

Reviews
Beautiful language... and an elegant, intricate presentation of argument. -- Susan Stakel Speculum 2006 A valuable asset to those interested in discovering fresh interpretations of one of the most remarkable literary works of the Middle Ages. -- Amy L. Ingram Vox Romanica 2005 A sustained and highly original philosophical tour de force. -- Catherine Attwood Medium Aevum 2006 Heller-Roazen's mastery of medieval philology and philosophy is impressive, and representative of a new generation of medieval studies. -- Sarah-Grace Heller French Review 2005



Book Information
ISBN 9780801871917
Author Daniel Heller-Roazen
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 431g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 19mm