In the Roman de la Rose we find a depiction of Earthly Paradise under one of its medieval disguises: the Garden of Delights. The first part of the poem, composed by Guillaume de Lorris circa 1230, takes place within a walled garden:
High was the wall, and neatly built and squared.
Its bulk, in place of hedge, a garden fenced.
To which no low-born man had ever come,
For it was quite too fine a place for such.
Willingly, would I have found a guide
Who by means of ladder or of stile,
Might bring me therewithin;
for so great joy and such delight
as in that place might be
Where seldom known to man,
as I believe.1
Upon entering the garden, the lover—the central character of the poem—finds all the classical traits of the locus amoenus: there are exotic trees with fragrant flowers and plenty of fruit and groups of people playing and dancing in circles. The animals, the very embodiment of the other, wander freely around the garden. Interestingly enough, the poem speaks of streams of crystalline waters running in the shade in channels, but states that they have no frogs or water insects, thus confirming the aversion to liminal creatures such as amphibians and reptiles (0.24).
As in Biblical Eden, in the garden of delights there is also an enemy lurking about, but this time in the sweetest of disguises. As the lover walks quietly through the garden admiring its beauty and that of its inhabitants, the God of Love lurks from afar, armed with his bow and arrow. Once the lover has found the fountain of Narcissus and has seen reflected in it the rose that becomes the object of his love, Cupid drew his bow, which was
marvelously strong, and good his aim,
And when he shot at me
the arrow pierced my very heart,
though entering by my eye.2
While the idea of Love as an enemy is alien to the poem, its role as a hunter is clear and Love becomes hostile as soon as we become prey to its machinations. We should recall here that the word for hunter in Latin, venator, comes from the root wen, which expresses desire and gives rise to the name of Venus, goddess of love and beauty (0.26). As we will see on chapter 9, this type of hunting, a stalking via the desires of the individual, is one of the most important varieties of harassment in our contemporary paradeisos.
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