<P> Later reactions suggested that it had a tenuous encyclopedic quality . The nineteenth century scholar and writer Gaston Paris wrote that it was "an encyclopedia in disorder" and British author C.S. Lewis described it as having an "encyclopedic character". One historian wrote that while Roman de la Rose is obviously not an encyclopedia, "it evokes one, represents one, dreams one, perhaps, with all its aspirations and limitations". </P> <P> About 300 manuscripts are extant, one of the highest figures for a secular work . Many of these are illustrated, most with fewer than ten remaining illustrations, but there are a number with twenty or more illustrations, and the exceptional Burgundian British Library Harley MS 4425 has 92 large and high quality miniatures, despite a date around 1500; the text was copied by hand from a printed edition . These are by the artist known as the Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500, commissioned by Count Engelbert II of Nassau The peak period of production was the 14th century, but manuscript versions continued to be produced until the advent of printing, and indeed afterwards - there are at least seven manuscripts dated after 1500 . There are also seven incunabula printed editions before 1500, the first from Geneva in about 1481, followed by two from Lyons in the 1480s and four from Paris in the 1490s . An edition from Lyons in 1503 is illustrated with 140 woodcuts . Digital images of more than 140 of these manuscripts are available for study in the Roman de la Rose Digital Library . </P> <P> Part of the story was translated from its original Old French into Middle English as The Romaunt of the Rose, which had a great influence on English literature . Chaucer was familiar with the original French text, and a portion of the Middle English translation is thought to be his work . Critics suggest that the character of "La Vieille" acted as source material for Chaucer's Wife of Bath . There were several other early translations into languages including Middle Dutch (Heinrik van Aken, c. 1280). Il Fiore is a "reduction" of the poem into 232 Italian sonnets by a "ser Durante", sometimes thought to have been Dante, although this is generally thought unlikely . Dante never mentions the Roman, but is often said to have been highly conscious of it in his own work . In 1900, the pre-Raphaelite F.S. Ellis translated the whole of the poem into English verse . C.S. Lewis's 1936 study The Allegory of Love renewed interest in the poem . </P> <Ul> <Li> <P> Miniature from a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 195), folio 1r, portrait of Guillaume de Lorris . </P> </Li> <Li> <P> Abélard and Héloïse in a 14th - century manuscript of the Roman de la Rose </P> </Li> <Li> <P> The God of Love locks the Lover's heart . f. 15r. b, Roman de la Rose MS NLW 5016D </P> </Li> </Ul>

Who translated romance of the rose into english