The significance of old French manuscript evidence for seeking all sources of The Romaunt of the Rose

The search for all sources of The Romaunt of the Rose, the fourteenth-century English version of Le roman de la Rose, focuses on Geoffrey Chaucer. The authorship controversy is so divisive that prominent medievalists like Huot, Hult, Robertson, and Badel write long volumes on the Roman's influence without mentioning the Romaunt. Comparing Geissman's list of rime-borrowings with both poems' concordances is the only way to end the debate, because Chaucer is the likeliest author and one must start with the most compatible French and English texts. At present, the best way to test Geoffrey Chaucer's authorship of the Middle English Romaunt is through close examination of the French rime-borrowings most orthoepically comparable in both languages that the Middle English writer occasionally chose to translate rather than borrow. This selective borrowing suggests the translator's attempt to bring each term slowly into the English mainstream, by using it at first only in its literal sense.