Of William himself little is known, or rather nothing, except that he must have been, as his continuator certainly was, a native of the Loire district; so that the Rose is a product of Central, not, like Renart , of Northern France, and exhibits, especially in the [Pg 301] Lorris portion, an approximation to Provençal spirit and form.
— from The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) by George Saintsbury
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