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.
