  jean de meun (or de meung, ) (c. 1240 â c. 1305) was a french author best known for his continuation of the roman de la rose. ==life== he was born jean clopinel or jean chopinel at meung-sur-loire. tradition asserts that he studied at the university of paris. he was, like his contemporary, rutebeuf, a defender of guillaume de saint-amour and a bitter critic of the mendicant orders. most of his life seems to have been spent in paris, where he possessed, in the rue saint-jacques, a house with a tower, court and garden, which was described in 1305 as the house of the late jean de meung, and was then bestowed by a certain adam d'andely on the dominicans. jean de meung says that in his youth he composed songs that were sung in every public place and school in france. ==roman de la rose== in the enumeration of his own works he places first his continuation of the roman de la rose of guillaume de lorris. the date of this second part (lines 4089â21780charles dahlberg, the romance of the rose, princeton university press, 1995.) is generally fixed between 1268 and 1285 by a reference in the poem to the death of manfred and conradin, executed in 1268 by order of charles of anjou (d. 1285) who is described as the present king of sicily. m. f. guillon (jean clopinel, 1903), however, considering the poem primarily as a political satire, places it in the last five years of the 13th century. jean de meun doubtless edited the work of his predecessor, guillaume de lorris, before using it as the starting-point of his own vast poem, running to 19,000 lines. the continuation of jean de meun is a satire on the monastic orders, on celibacy, on the nobility, the papal see, the excessive pretensions of royalty, and especially on women and marriage. guillaume had been the servant of love, and the exponent of the laws of "courtoisie"; jean de meun added an "art of love," exposing with brutality the vices of women, their arts of deception, and the means by which men may outwit them. jean de meun embodied the mocking, sceptical spirit of the fabliaux. he did not share in current superstitions, he had no respect for established institutions, and he scorned the conventions of feudalism and romance. his poem shows in the highest degree, in spite of the looseness of its plan, the faculty of keen observation, of lucid reasoning and exposition, and it entitles him to be considered the greatest of french medieval poets. he handled the french language with an ease and precision unknown to his predecessors, and the length of his poem was no bar to its popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries. part of its vogue was no doubt because the autho
1240_births 1305_deaths 13th-century_French_writers French_fantasy_writers French_novelists French_poets Medieval_poets People_from_Loiret