Narrative Sections

Citation practice for the Roman de la Rose and most medieval texts has traditionally referenced the currently accepted critical editions. Yet this scholarly protocol inhibits the cross-manuscript comparative study that the Roman de la Rose Digital Library promotes. Since the number of lines for the work varies from one manuscript to another, depending on interpolations or excisions, the narrative mapping of the Roman de la Rose divides the text into reading segments instead of lines. This means that comparable passages across different manuscript can be readily locatable, while number of lines for each section facilitate tracking variations in section length from one exemplar to another. The narrative mapping protocol borrows from that used for classical texts, where one cites not a page number or a given edition or translation but a segment of the text.

In the case of the Roman de la Rose, the letters G and J represent the authors Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun while Arabic numerals together with Roman letters indicate segments and shorter sub-segments within them. Interpolations have been given different numbering. You can view the spreadsheet of narrative sections below or in a Google Spreadsheet.

Currently, we cannot link directly to these narrative sections in the manuscript collection, however, we hope to restore this functionality in a future iteration of the project.