Love's Greeting

Alternately titled: Lines from the Roman de la Rose

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

General Description

Date: 1850
Date: 1861, 1864
Rhyme: couplets
Meter: iambic tetrameter
Genre: translation

Bibliography

◦ Marillier, DGR: An Illustrated Memorial, 107, 136

◦ Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné, 79-80 (no. 126).

Annotations

Editorial glosses and textual notes are available in a pop-up window. Line numbering reflects the structure of the Duke University manuscript.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

The text and the related pictures translate, in a double sense, the first six and last five lines of a passage in Guillaume de Lorris's part of the Roman de la Rose (lines 1019-1031)—the description of the lady Beauty (lines 999ff.). The pictorial treatments build themselves from the drawing that DGR made as a frontispiece for his book of translations The Early Italian Poets. The relation is important, showing DGR's effort to illustrate, in several senses, the integrity of the transnational courtly love tradition.

Textual History: Composition

The translation was composed in 1850 and first published posthumously by WMR (see 1911). WMR published his text from the fair copy manuscript now in the Duke University library, which contains both the French text and the translation. DGR's partial draft translation is in a manuscript of working notes he used at an early stage of his work on The Early Italian Poets project.

Production History

Illustrating a central text from the courtly love tradition, the oil painting was probably first executed sometime late in 1861, perhaps 1862. The watercolour in the Tate was executed in ten days in April 1864 (see DGR's letter to Ernest Gambart, 26 April 1864, Fredeman, Correspondence, 64. 55 ). It varies the composition of the oil into a greater state of abstractness.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 9-1850.s126.raw.xml