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If Zeus had willed it soThat o'er the flowersOne flower should reign a queenI know, ah, well I know,The rose, the rose, that royal flower had been.
Universally and throughout history, in literature and art, the rose has been admired and revered for its beauty, regality, and fragrance. As such it has become a truly classical symbol. In order to examine the multidetermined nature of the rose and its symbolism. I shall discuss the meanings of the rose within the framework of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. Barchilon1 traces this fairy tale back to the myth Cupid and Psyche, written in the second century, into the fairy tale “La Belle et la Bete” by Madame le Prince de Beaumont.
In the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty asks her father to pick for her a rose, on his travels back home. It is the picking of this rose, from the Beast's private garden, which causes the Beast to tell the father that he must die and which brings about the relationship between Beauty and the Beast. Why is the rose the specific flower mentioned? Why not just any flower? To learn why, we must review what has been said about the rose. All sorts of religious, mythological and romantic themes intertwine about the rose.
Religion linked itself with the rose,13 probably because of its regality and unsurpassed beauty, but originally the rose was used by the Greeks and the Romans as a symbol of pleasure, and was