The Romaunt of the Rose is a Middle English translation of roughly one third of the French allegorical dream-vision Le Roman de la Rose. It is preserved in three MS-Fragments: Fragment A and B comprise ll. 1-5810 corresponding to ll. 1-5154 of the French original by Guillaume de Lorris (4058 lines) and the beginning of Jean de Meun's continuation, Fragment C (ll. 5811-7696) gives us part of the speech of False Seeming (ll. 10679-12360 of the original).

There have been doubts about Chaucer's authorship of Fragments B and C, but the three fragments are printed together as the only Middle English translation of the Roman. The influence of the Roman on Chaucer's work though has never been questioned, as it can be felt throughout The Canterbury Tales, The Legend of Good Women, and other works.

There are several proofs that Chaucer has translated the Roman. First of all he has it mentioned in his Legend of Good Women by Cupid, though this is only a fictitious proof:
For in pleyn text, withouten nede of glose
Thou hast translated the Romaunce of the Rose.
(LGW , Vv. 328-29, Text F)
But then, there is another proof: Chaucer's French poet-friend Deschamps calls him "grant translateur, noble Geffroy Chaucer" in the repeated last line of his Ballade 285, that is dedicated to Chaucer and praising him as a great poet of his time and as a translator of Boethius and the Roman.

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