The French poet Guillaume de Lorris (ca. 1210-ca. 1237) was the author of the first part of the "Romance of the Rose," the most popular work in medieval French literature.

The only place in the Romance of the Rose in which the name of Guillaume de Lorris appears is in the continuation of Jean de Meun, which indicates that Guillaume died some 40 years earlier. Since Guillaume refers to a dream in his twentieth year 5 or 6 years earlier, the date of his birth can be assumed to be about 1210. He was probably born in Lorris, a small town some 30 miles east of Orléans. Just as death prevented Chrestien de Troyes from completing the Perceval, so Guillaume died before he finished the Romance of the Rose; he stops at line 4,058 (4,028 in Lecoy's edition). Nothing more is known of Guillaume.

The age of the Arthurian romance, with its pageantry, adventures...