Lady Nature in Word and Image in Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose

Despite the encyclopedic nature of Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose, there are two topics that have been accorded a central place in the quagmire of debates, discussions, and digressions that make up the second Rose. They are the successful and guaranteed regeneration of the human species and the proper use of one's (sexual) tools. At the center of both these topics is the allegorical figure of Lady Nature. The comparative analysis of iconographic depictions of Lady Nature in two fourteenth-century manuscripts, Chicago, University of Chicago Library, 1380 and Paris, Sainte-Geneviève, 1126, and in the fifteenth-century manuscript, Paris, BnF, fr. 23492 reveal new interpretative textual linkages, such as the rapprochement of Lady Nature's confession with Pygmalion's creation of his female statue.