Abelard and Heloise: The Letters and Other Writings

Peter Abelard, Heloise, Stanley Lombardo, William Levitan

• Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780872208759
• eBook ISBN: 9781603849678
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Medieval & Renaissance Philosophy

The most comprehensive compilation of the works of Abelard and Heloise ever presented in a single volume in English, The Letters and Other Writings features an accurate and stylistically faithful new translation of both The Calamities of Peter Abelard and the remarkable letters it sparked between the ill-fated twelfth-century philosopher and his brilliant former student and lover—an exchange whose intellectual passion, formal virtuosity, and psychological drama distinguish it as one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Thanks to this edition, Latin-less readers will be better placed than ever to see why this undisputed milestone in the intellectual life of medieval France is also a masterpiece of Western literature.

In addition to the The Calamities and the letters--the first complete English translation of all seven in more than eighty years--this volume includes an Introduction, a map, and a chronology, Abelard's Confession of Faith, letters between Heloise and Peter the Venerable, the Introduction to The Questions of Heloise, and selected songs and poems by Abelard, among them a previously untranslated shaped poem, Open Wide Your Eyes. Extracts of lost letters sometimes ascribed to Abelard and Heloise are given in appendixes.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Suggestions for Further Resources
• Map of Northern France in the Time of Abelard and Heloise
• Chronology
• The Calamities of Peter Abelard
• Letters of Abelard and Heloise
• The Questions of Heloise: Introductory Letter
• Abelard’s Confession of Faith
• Letters of Heloise and Peter the Venerable
• Selected Songs and Poems of Peter Abelard
• Appendix A: From “The Letter to Philintus”
• Appendix B: From The Letters of Two Lovers
• Works Cited and Select Bibliography
• Index of Passages Quoted, Cited, and Discussed
• General Index
• Back Cover