A new English translation, the first to be based on the definitive French Pléiade edition.

New Revelations about One of the Greatest Romances in History Peter Abelard was arguably the greatest poet, philosopher, and religious teacher in all of twelfth-century Europe. In an age when women were rarely educated, Heloise was his most gifted young student. Their private tutoring sessions inevitably turned to passion, and their moments apart were spent writing love letters. Astoundingly, a few years ago a young scholar identified 113 new love letters between the pair which, combined with the latest scholarship, present us with the richest telling yet of the couple's clandestine passion -- a story that is erotic, poignant, and at times even funny.

What happens when the 12th century’s most famous French lovers are caught in the crossfire of factions, religious reform and blind ambition? Heloise is a determined young woman with an exceptional mind, longing to pursue learning rather than marriage or life as a cloistered nun. Her path inevitably crosses with Peter Abelard, the celebrity philosopher, theologian and master at Paris’ famed Cathedral School. When two such brilliant minds meet and engage, sparks are likely to ignite. But theirs is an impossible love. This is a time when the Gregorian Reforms are starting to bite and celibacy among the clergy and church officials is being rigorously imposed. Based on meticulous up-to-date research and the pair’s own writings, this novel offers a plausible interpretation of the known facts and a vivid imagining of the gaps in this legendary story. It shines a light on a changing world whose attitudes and politics are not so very different from our own.

Romanticism and Civilization examines romantic alternatives to modern life in Rousseau’s foundational novel Julie. It argues that Julie is a response to the ills of modern civilization, and that Rousseau saw that the Enlightenment’s combination of science and of democracy degraded human life by making it bourgeois. The bourgeois is man uprooted by science and attached to nothing but himself. He lives a commercial life and his materialism and calculations penetrate all aspects of his existence. He is neither citizen, nor family man, nor lover in any serious sense: his life is meaningless. Rousseau’s romanticism in Julie is an attempt to find connectedness through the sentiments of private life and wholeness through love, marriage, and family.

Cambridge paperback library. First published 1969. Includes bibliographical references. 5.

In this book, Constant Mews and Neville Chiavaroli examine a medieval text long neglected by most scholars. The Lost Letters of Heloise and Abelard looks at the earlier correspondence between these two famous individuals, revealing the emotions and intimate exchanges that occurred between them. The perspectives presented here are very different from the view related by Abelard in his "History of my Calamities," an account which provoked a much more famous exchange of letters between Heloise and Abelard after they had both entered religious life. Offering a full translation of the love letters along with a copy of the actual Latin text, Mews and Chiavaroli provide an in-depth analysis of the debate concerning the authenticity of the letters and look at the way in which the relationship between Heloise and Abelard has been perceived over the centuries.

This charmingly inventive, deliciously improbable seriocomic novel opens at eleven o'clock in the morning of July 14 in the year 2000 on the Avenue d'Angleterre in Beirut. Private George Smith of the American Peace-Keeping Forces in Lebanon is breathlessly chasing a hand grenade--which he threw in the line of duty--down the street. It seems he forgot to pull the pin. At that very moment, one Heloise Svejk is crossing the street from east to west, bearing an empty coffin on her shoulder. From this unlikely encounter is born one of the great love stories of the first year of the twenty-first century, not completely unworthy of that of Heloise's namesake nine centuries earlier. Private Smith is a reasonably sane soldier, as sane at least as any oversized American of mixed Swedish and Austro-Hungarian descent from Alabama who has not been with a beautiful for two years can be. Now Smith knows, inevitably and irrevocably, why fate has posted him to this godforsaken city. He disappears with Heloise for all the right reasons, but for General Custer, Private Smith's commanding officer, when you're gone for five days you're gone for good, fellow, and Washington is so informed. When news spreads that Smith is not dead but only hopelessly in love, the plot does not merely thicken but gets downright sticky. What will Custer tell the President? What will he tell George's next of kin, and how will he get back the posthumous award for unusual bravery he sent her? And yes, what about this Heloise they are all drooling over? In page after page, chapter after chapter, these and countless other cosmic questions are discussed and dealt with--with mixed results, as the author is quick to point out. Interspersed with the chapters are intermezzi in which the author muses and comments on George, Heloise, life, love, Harry's Bar, his father Giuseppe, peach nectar and champagne cocktails (aka "bellinis"), and Cousin Wanda--not to mention Abelard himself, the inquisitive, inflexible, and highly unimaginative friend of the author to whom the intermezzi are addressed.

The story of Abelard and Heloise remains one of the world's most celebrated and tragic love affairs. Through their letters, we follow the path of their romance from its reckless and ecstatic beginnings when Heloise became Abelard's pupil, through the suffering of public scandal and enforced secret marriage, to their eventual separation.

'Melvyn Bragg's account of the passionate and painful love affair between the 12th century radical theologian, Peter Abelard, and the brilliant young convent-educated Eloise springs magnificently to life . . . Thrilling.' Piers Plowright, Tablet Within the Cloisters of Notre-Dame, a charismatic philosopher and a young woman renowned for her scholarship embark on an ardent, secret affair. It will send shockwaves through Paris, incur savage retribution and lead to years of separation, though nothing will break the bond between them. Bringing the true story of Heloise and Abelard to vivid life, this engrossing novel conveys the powerful emotions and beliefs that drove them. It captures a couple who defied the conventions and religious orthodoxies of their times with striking audacity, and illuminates why their extraordinary tale still resonates today.