Rethinking Abelard flyer (original) (raw)
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The enduring love story of Abelard and Heloise, captured in their famed series of so-called love letters from the twelfth century, has been a favorite topic for scholars since it was published in 1615. But in his revelatory debut, Abelard-Heloise Correspondence, author Roland Denise Oberson sheds a new—and shocking—light on this beloved masterwork. In the first literal English translation of Heloise and Abelard’s letters to each other, Oberson reveals a radically different account of the events that took place between these two academics. Through painstaking study of their letters dealing with the love affair, the author has been more and more convinced of the need of a translation word for word. What he discovered runs in complete opposition to the prevailing opinion that Heloise and Abelard had an illicit sexual liaison that resulted in a child, and whose aftermath eventually led them to enter the regular monastic life. Oberson reveals that the Latin text, so often indisputably translated, is not a collection of love letters, but a clandestine account of what actually happened. Heloise was a young raped in all likelihood by her tutor, resulting in the birth of a bastard, Astrolabius, whom most of the previous texts identified as having been fathered by Abelard. Thus translated, the letters act as a testimony to the enduring friendship and love between two true friends. Abelard was in actuality a dedicated monk, determined to help his pupil through her pain and suffering. His only weakness has been to fall in love with her. A love more akin to charity of a true Good Samaritan. Their correspondence highlights the wisdom and peace that each gained during their misfortunes. Anyone whose life has been touched by the pathetic story of Abelard and Heloise will find Oberson’s debut a must-read. It is a historical update to a long-beloved story, a “critical, scholarly examination of official or orthodox history,” that will set right the many faulty and tendentious interpretations that have endured for years.
Letters of Peter Abelard, beyond the personal
2008
"The romantic tale of Peter Abelard and Heloise has been widely known for centuries. The legend relates in part to the letters exchanged between the two, years after Abelard had been castrated at the behest of Heloise's vindictive uncle, Fulbert. These "personal" letters form the basis for bestselling compilations of works by Abelard and Heloise in translation, such as the recently revised Penguin The Letters of Abelard and Heloise or the new Hackett Abelard and Heloise, The Letters and Other Writings. They hold fascination for the light they shed on the relationship between the man and woman, as teacher and student, lovers, husband and wife, monk and nun, abbot and mother superior, and much more. The popularity of the "personal" letters has generated considerable fanfare for the publication of another set of correspondence printed under the title The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard. The authorship of all these letters has been contested repeatedly, with the last-mentioned collection being the center of a present firestorm. Generally ignored have been nearly a dozen other letters or letter-like texts, unassailably the work of Peter Abelard. Jan M. Ziolkowski's comprehensive and learned translation of these texts affords insight into Abelard's thinking over a much longer sweep of time and offers snapshots of the great twelfth-century philosopher and theologian in a variety of contexts. One group shows him engaging with Heloise and nuns of the Paraclete, another with Bernard of Clairvaux, and a third with four entirely different addressees on four entirely different topics. Broadening our panorama of the twelfth-century Renaissance, the picture presented by these texts complements, complicates, and enriches Abelard's autobiographical letter of consolation and his personal letters to Heloise."
This is a genuine literal translation of Abelard's and Heloise's famous Correspondence. The English version is confronted with the first printed Latin text of 1615. Both texts are divided in 4542 items, numbered and juxtaposed for ease of reading, understanding and criticizing. This work provides proofs that the common reception of the life of those so-called lovers is incorrect and unscrupulous. With such a tool in the hands, everybody may interfere in the interpretation of one or another sentence or word. He has the capacity to indicate what part of the discourse is disputable...
Abelard and Heloise: A Marriage of Minds
Winthrop University, 2021
The scandal surrounding Peter Abelard and Heloise’s love story has eclipsed the depth of their individual intellects resulting in many scholars devoting their writings to the couple’s overly eroticized narrative. After the condemnation of Peter Abelard and after Heloise commissioned herself into a convent, the relationship between tutor and tutee remained alive through written correspondence. Through an examination of their personal writings, this is paper will suggest that though their story has been adopted under the genre of a romance, this categorization falls short in conveying the highbrow substance of Abelard and Heloise, whose promiscuous beginnings have distracted historians from the intellectual wealth that was the foundation of their longstanding relationship.