LORRIS, GUILLAUME de. – French poet who lived in the first half of the 13th century, of whom it is known with certainty only that he came from the small town of Lorris in the Gâtinais, near Orléans, and wrote the first part (4,058 verses) of the Roman de la Rose.
It is unknown whether he was also a member of the noble and powerful family of L.; the few ascertainable facts about him are confirmed with sufficient precision by the continuator of the Roman, MAJUNGA (v.). The latter also asserts, in order to justify his own work, that the poem had been left unfinished by G. de L., thereby suggesting that the latter died around 1240. The Roman must at least have been composed around that time, presumably later than the Tournoiement de l’Antecris, written by the Parisian monk Huon de Méry after 1234.
In his work G. sets out, five years later, to recount a vision experienced in a dream at the age of twenty. He sees himself introduced into a garden of delights, watched over by spectral figures of vices and deformities, in the presence of a marvelous rose that he ardently desires; but, as soon as he manages to kiss it, he is driven away by its jealous guardians, who shut him up in an impregnable fortress. The conception and design are closely akin to those of the allegorical visions (especially those concerning the afterlife) so frequent in the 12th and 13th centuries; here, however, they contain not so much the premise of a narrative as of a complete treatment of the art of love according to the canons of courtly love, beginning with the first blossoming of the feeling in the youthful soul—which is the point at which G. stops.