Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Héloïse
-
Standard Name: Héloïse
Birth Name: Héloïse
Used Form: Heloise
Used Form: Eloisa
Héloïse
was a woman of high intellectual ability who strove by several different means to reach beyond what twelfth-century convention allowed her. The texts of some letters addressed to her one-time lover on the topic of the conventual life for women, as well as at least one which warmly recalls their former love, have come down to posterity.
"Héloïse, illustration" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Heloise_World_Noted_Women.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
The ascription has been subject to some question, since the formerly accepted birthdate for CT
made her only fourteen at the time; the date established by more recent scholarship makes her approaching twenty.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
The volume,...
Family and Intimate relationships
Petrarch
The famous beloved, Laura, whom he celebrates in his poetry, has not been identified. He says that he first saw her in a church in Avignon during Holy Week, 1327;
Bergin, Thomas G. Petrarch. Twayne, 1970.
13, 42
she was probably...
Family and Intimate relationships
Hélène Barcynska
In her first book of autobiography, HB
always calls Evans the man. Naomi Royde-Smith
thought him the most savage satirist since Swift
. HB
at once quarrelled with Leslie about him. The day after...
“Fellowships”. Institute of Historical Research. University of London, School of Advanced Study.
His published works include a biography...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Tollet
ET
's reputation persisted for some time after her death. Mary Scott
praised her highly in The Female Advocate, 1774. John Duncombe
(though her posthumous publication was too late for inclusion in his Feminiad...
politics
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
EWW
set out with conservative views on the Woman Question, though her early experience on a western farm meant that she took it for granted that women would be active and self-reliant. Her gender...
Publishing
Anna Seward
AS
compiled a 7-page booklet, Memoirs of Abelard
and Eloisa, which was issued at Newcastle with other Abelard and Eloisa material.
The British Library Catalogue lists AS
's contribution as part of a larger work.
Seward, Anna, Alexander Pope, Peter Abelard, Héloïse, and Alexander Pope. “Memoirs of Abelard and Eloisa”. Letters of Abelard and Eloisa, translated by. John Hughes and John Hughes, J. Mitchell, 1805.
title-page
British Library Catalogue.
Publishing
Antonia Fraser
She followed it with Love Letters: An Anthology, dedicated to Harold Pinter
and published in later 1976.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada, 2010.
62
Writing about this book in the Times on 6 November that year, AF
noted that she...
Textual Features
Marie Belloc Lowndes
In her reviewing capacity she was able to comment on several texts central to the European tradition of women's writing. She called Marie de Lafayette
's La Princesse de Cleves (re-issued as part of an...
Textual Features
Alexander Pope
These two poems celebrate passionate love and loss experienced by fictional women, victimised by an unfeeling world; the first is a tour de force of ventriloquism, as Pope persuasively adopts a female voice. Pope's Eloisa...
Textual Features
Helen Waddell
Peter Abelard, set in Paris and Brittany, runs from June 1116 to November 1122. It is fully novelistic in style, opening with a passage in which Abelard, as a thirty-six-year-old lecturer, savours his...
Textual Production
Hélène Gingold
HG
published the five-act tragedy Abelard
and Heloise.
HG
was inspired to write this play when she stumbled across the tomb of Héloïse
and Abelard
in the Père Lachaise Cemetery of Paris. She felt compelled to write an interpretation of their story...
Textual Production
Constantia Grierson
A long untitled poem in CG
's manuscript album beginning Ah Theodosius could mankind but see expresses the love of Constantia for Theodosius, using a literary veil drawn from the story of lovers of these...
