Background
Jean de Meun, also known as Jean Chopinel or Clopinel, was born in Meun-sur-Loire, the general region of Guillaume de Lorris.
Jean de Meun, also known as Jean Chopinel or Clopinel, was born in Meun-sur-Loire, the general region of Guillaume de Lorris.
Tradition asserts that he studied at the University of Paris.
He translated Vegetius's Military Art, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, the Letters of Abelard and Heloise, Ailred's Spiritual Friendship, and Giraldus's Topography of Ireland and wrote at least two original works in verse: The Testament of Jean de Meun and The Codicil of Master Jean de Meun.
In Jean's continuation of the Romance of the Rose, Reason tries to dissuade the lover, but the god of Love later reproaches the lover for lending an ear to Reason. A résumé of many pages would be hopelessly inadequate, for Jean discourses on innumerable matters and draws from a great variety of sources, including the Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, St. Augustine, Boethius, Roger Bacon, John of Salisbury, Alain de Lille, and Andreas Capellanus. Sometimes he reminds of the scholastics, sometimes of the humanists, and often, with his interest in mining and alchemy, of the medieval scientist-philosopher.
Jean's antifeminism shows a curious crossing of the traditions of the fabliaux and of St. Jerome; in fact, there are precious few aspects of medieval life and thought which are not found in Jean's part of the Romance of the Rose.
He died in a comfortable house near the University of Paris, where he may have had some academic connection.
He was a critic of the mendicant orders. Later he was then bestowed by a certain Adam d'Andely on the Dominicans.
In his work he reflected, among other things, that possessions are burdens, that charity and justice are by no means equal, that power and virtue never go together, and that, even in destroying, Nature carries on her struggle against death.
Jean is bourgeois, extremely learned, realistic, a satirist, and a representative of another generation. Anticlerical and antimilitary, he is clear and eloquent, with didactic instincts that keep him from being negative; it is not surprising that he has been called the "Voltaire of the Middle Ages. "