Although not a household name, The Romance of the Rose is arguably one of the most influential poems ever written in French, especially because it was so adored by poets such as Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer.
The poem is very old, written in 13th century France, and the remnant of Roman and Greek imagery is still obvious. So one good interpretive method for a poem of this type might be the mythological reading, and another good reason to treat the poem as a mythic allegory is that it occurs in a dream, which is a big deal. By saying that it all happened in his dream, there is a sense in which the entire narrative of the story is merely a young man coming to terms with all of his various impulses and 'spiritual energies.' This is certainly an opinion the second author, Jean de Meun, might agree with, since he discusses the meanings of the godly images in his second half for the novel.
In terms of imagery, the poem reads something like this: there is a boy trapped in a mythic garden, and he stumbles onto the Fountain of Narcissus, meaning that he is asking the question of his self worth, since Narcissus is the self-adoring god. He is questioning himself and trying to find the center of his worth as a human, but this reflex leaves him vulnerable to other temptations, many of which he manages to thwart, but one of which he could not defeat—the impulse to chase the rose that cupid pinned him to. That rose is the central image of the story. As a mythic image, it is very reminiscent of Adam and Eve's temptation to eat the forbidden fruit. In that way, perhaps the rose means a kind of knowledge forbidden to the boy. This is all very sexual imagery, and it's no mistake that it happens in a dream.
The last bit of meaning that needs to be mentioned is that the narrator claims that the dream was a prophecy that has come to be fulfilled in his own life. This seems to indicate that he fell in love for the first time, and lost her because of his self-interested obsession. Instead of loving a woman, the young man of the poem falls into the trap of using a woman to validate his own self-esteem. That's why this story happens in the type of Narcissus, because in attempting to work out his masculinity and femininity (finding the roses in the fountain), he merely chooses one girl as a representation for the feminine within himself, causing him to objectify her as a tool for his own progress. He thinks he is in love with her, but really, he's trying to find his own love for himself.
