Listening To Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman

by NA NA

Overview

Heloise, the twelfth-century French abbess and reformer, emerges from this book as one of history's most extraordinary women, a thinker-writer of profound insight and skill. Her supple and learned mind attracted the most radical philosopher of her time, Peter Abelard. He became her teacher, lover, husband, and finally monastic ally. That relationship has made her fame until now. But Heloise is far more important in her own right. Seventeen experts of international standing collaborate here to reveal and analyze how Heloise's daring achievements shaped normative issues of theology, rhetoric, rational argument, gender, and emotional authenticity. At last we are able to see her for herself, in her moment of history and human awareness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312213541
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	04/29/2000
Series:	The New Middle Ages
Edition description:	2000
Pages:	394
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.04(d)

About the Author

Bonnie Wheeler is Director of the Medieval Studies Program at Southern Methodist University.

Table of Contents

Heloise the Abbess--Mary Martin McLauhglin
• Authenticity Revisited--John Marenbon
• Philosophical Themes in the Epistolae duorum amantium --Constant J. Mews
• The Young Heloise and Latin Rhetoric--John O. Ward and Neville Chiavaroli
• Textual Strategies in the Abelard/Heloise Correspondence--Katharina Wilson and Glenda McLeod
• Heloise, Dialectic, and the Heroides--Phyllis R. Brown and John C. Peiffer II
• Classical Myth and Gender in the Letters of "Abelard" and "Heloise"--Jane Chance
• Heloise's Critique of Monastic Life--Linda Georgianna
• Female Bodies and Christian Bodies in Heloise’s Third Letter--Peggy McCracken
• Rhetorical Engagement and the Benedictine Rite of Initiation in Heloise’s Third Letter--Donna Alfano Bussell
• Negotiating Gender and the Religious Life at the Paraclete--Morgan Powell
• Heloise and the Question of Consolation--Alcuin Blamires
• Heloise and the Question of Friendship--Brian McGuire
• The Rhetorical Struggle over the Meaning of Motherhood in the Writings of Heloise and Abelard--Juanita Feros Ruys
• Pierre Bayle’s Reflections on a Much Talked About Woman--Deborah Fraoilli

Editorial Reviews

...the contributors to this volume have taken the discussion of the famous correspondence to a new level...
- Mediaevistik

From the Publisher