Main Menu | List of entries | finished

ROSEMOUNDE. Chaucer addresses a poem to this lady, whose identity is unknown. Edith Rickert suggests Lady Alice de Bryenne, betrothed to Richard II while they were both children. Rossell H. Robbins suggests Princess Isabella of Valois, the seven-year-old bride of Richard II. He posits that one of the dresses in her trousseau, embroidered with pearl roses, may have inspired the name Rosemound. The lady addressed in the poem seems to have been very young. There is no way of knowing her identity for certain.

Rosemounde, a variant of Rosa mundi, rose of the world, appears in final rhyming position, Rosemounde 15.

Chaucer, The Minor Poems, Part One, ed. G. Pace and A. David, 161-162; E. Rickert, "A Leaf from a Fourteenth-Century Letter Book." MP 25 (1927): 249-255; R.H. Robbins, "Chaucer's 'To Rosemounde.'" Studies in the Literary Imagination 4 (1971): 73-81.
From CHAUCER NAME DICTIONARY
Copyright © 1988, 1996 Jacqueline de Weever
Published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London.
Main Menu | List of entries | finished