Point of View

The tale is told mostly in the first person from the perspective of Amans (the Lover or the narrator), a young man from the middle to upper classes of Medieval French society. He narrates the process of how he fell in love, using an allegorical dream as a device to explain it.

The "straight" narrative is punctuated by several long discourses, where philosophical and moral points are argued. These discourses are put into the mouths of some of the characters that Amans meets. These particular discourses are mostly found in de Meun's continuation, where the various characters (such as Reason, Fals-Semblance, and Frend) act as mouthpieces for different points of view. These discussions are often lengthy and rambling.

However, both de Meun and de Lorris break away from the first-person narrative and report conversations that Amans could not have overheard. De Lorris reports a conversations between...