JEAN DE MEUN,

born c. 1240, Meung-sur-Loire, France died before 1305 de Meun also spelled De Meung French poet famous for his continuation of the /a>Roman de la rose (q.v.), an allegorical poem in the courtly love tradition begun by Guillaume de Lorris about 1230. De Meun's original name was Clopinel, or Chopinel, but he became known by the name of his birthplace. He probably owned a home in Paris and may have been archdeacon of the Beauce, a region between Paris and Orlans. Little is known of his life. His poems are satiric, coarse, at times immoral, but fearless and outspoken in attacking the abuses of the age. His strong antifeminism and censures on the vices of the church were bitterly resented. De Meun used the plot of the Roman de la rose (c. 1280) as a means of conveying a mass of encyclopaedic information and opinions on every topic likely to interest his contemporaries, especially the increasingly important bourgeois class. At various times he relates the history of classical heroes, attacks the hoarding of money, and theorizes about astronomy and about the duty of mankind to increase and multiply. Many of his views were hotly contested, but they held the attention of the age. The allegory itself was of little importance to him; the famous Confession of Nature (one of the characters in the poem) digressed from the narrative for some 3,500 verses, yet it was such digressions that secured the poem's fame and success. Nearly a century later Geoffrey Chaucer translated a segment of the poem, and some scholars have maintained that it influenced his work more than any other French or Italian poetry in the vernacular.