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 author, who had mastered practically all the scientific and literary knowledge of his contemporaries in France, had found room in his poem for a great amount of useful information and for numerous citations from classical authors. The book was attacked by Guillaume de Deguileville in his Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (), long a favorite work both in England and France, by Jean Gerson, and by Christine de Pisan in her Épître au dieu d'amour. It also found energetic defenders. Part of Jean's poem was translated into Middle English verse by Chaucer as The Romaunt of the Rose. The whole poem was translated into Modern English verse by F. S. Ellis and later by Charles Dahlberg. Other works Jean de Meun translated in 1284 the treatise De re militari of Vegetius into French as Le livre de Végèce de l'art de chevalerie. He also produced a spirited version, the first in French, of the letters of Abélard and Héloïse. A 14th-century manuscript of this translation in the Bibliothèque Nationale has annotations by Petrarch. His translation of the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius is preceded by a letter to Philip IV in which he enumerates his earlier works, two of which are lost: De spirituelle amitié from the De spirituali amicitia of Aelred of Rievaulx (d. 1166), and the Livre des merveilles d'Hirlande from the Topographia Hibernica, or De Mirabilibus Hiberniae of Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald de Barri). His last poems are doubtless his Testament and Codicille. The Testament is written in quatrains in monorhyme, and contains advice to the different classes of the community. Notes References Comprehensive bibliography on Arlima (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge) Fyler, John, Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Pp. cii, 306. External links Roman de la Rose Digital Library Othmer MS 9 Le petit rosaire; Extract on Alchemy from the Roman de la Rose at OPenn 1240 births 1305 deaths People from Loiret