The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France

by Mews, Constant J.; Chiavaroli, Neville; Mew, Constant

• ISBN13: 9780230608139
• ISBN10: 0230608132
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This new edition of The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard offers fresh insight into one of the most celebrated love affairs of the Middle Ages. Mews provides an in-depth analysis of a long-neglected set of love letters, rich in emotion and expression, with a new chapter that discusses the debate about the letters and offers further evidence to attribute them to Abelard and Heloise. Mews looks at the ways their relationship has been perceived over the centuries and explores the political, literary, and religious contexts in which the two figures conducted their affair. In doing so, he offers new insights into Heloise as an astonishingly gifted writer. The complete Latin text of the love letters as edited by Konsgen is reproduced in the volume, along with an annotated translation by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Constant Mews teaches in the Department of History at Monash University in Australia, where he is also Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion. Neville Chiavaroli, a classicist and Italian translator, is a doctoral student in the Department of History at Monash University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xiii
Abbreviations	p. xix
Perceptions of Dialogue
The Discovery of a Manuscript	p. 3
Memories of an Affair	p. 29
Paris, the Schools, and the Politics of Sex	p. 57
Traditions of Dialogue	p. 87
The Language of the Love Letters	p. 115
The Voice of Heloise	p. 145
New Discoveries and Insights (1999-2007)	p. 179
From the Letters of Two Lovers
The Edition	p. 205
Ex epistolis duorum amantium (From the Letters of Two Lovers)	p. 215
Notes	p. 315
Select Bibliography	p. 401
Bibliography since 1999	p. 407
Index	p. 411
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