The Walk through the Garden of Love in Medieval Literature, with a Focus on Le Roman de la rose by Guillaume de Lorris. Dreamful Trailing and Awakening with Surprises

The more we engage with medieval courtly love poetry, the more we recognize how much the trail matters as the central metaphor because it represents the longing, striving, desiring, and all the consequential efforts by the lovers to get together, such as in Konrad Fleck’s Flore und Blanscheflur, but also in various tales by Boccaccio in his Decameron. The emphasis of this chapter, however, rests on the way how Guillaume de Lorris, to some extent also his successor, Jean de Meun, employed the lover’s pursuit of the trail in the Roman de la rose in order to win access to the rose, his love.