Astonishing Heloise
Barbara Newman, 23 January 2014
The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise
edited by David Luscombe.
Oxford, 654 pp., £165, August 2013,978 0 19 822248 4 Show More
edited by David Luscombe.
Oxford, 654 pp., £165, August 2013,
“... Nine hundred years ago, a celebrity philosopher fell in love with his star student and seduced her. Peter Abelard’s once brilliant lectures grew tepid, while his love songs placed the name of Heloise on every tongue. Passionate letters flew, and the Parisian gossip mill went into overdrive – until pregnancy, as so often, betrayed the secret ... ”