Jean de Meun, Abelard et les tensions internes a l'universite de Paris au XIIIe siecle: Pauvrete, chastete et hypocrisie

Jean de Meun presents us with a particular challenge. How do you situate this author in a broader intellectual context when we are so uninformed about the course of his life and, more precisely, about the academic debates he has more or less participated in? To better understand the evolution of Jean de Meun's career and his interest in Pierre Abelard and Heloise, I propose to follow them in parallel with internal conflicts at the university of the XIII century, through three phases. We must first try to evaluate the influence that has had on him the Orleans school heritage, marked by the tension between the literary traditions peculiar to the city of Liege and the analytic traditions of Paris, directed in addition to the study of theology. The second phase begins with the arrival of John in Paris, perhaps in the mid-1250s, at the time of the conflict which, in the bosom of the University, opposes the secular masters of the faculty of theology to the mendicant orders; it continues until his departure for Bologna, where John stays four years, from 1265 to 1269. It is during the third phase that he drafts the Roman de la Rose; it coincides with the episcopacy of Etienne Tempier, from 1268 to 1279. We can add a fourth phase, during which Jean de Meun gives himself to his translations from Latin to French, from 1280 to his death in 1305.
By an irony of history, the home of Jean, near Saint-Jacques in Paris, is bequeathed after his death to the Dominicans. How to explain this unfolding of the story?