Héloïse

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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.
Photograph of illustration of Héloïse from "World Noted Women", New York, 1883. She is imagined in the dress of a lay person, not of a nun, seated at a large table covered in books, apparently writing in a particularly large one. She wears a fairly low-cut dress with flowing sleeves, and has a veil over her hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Carson
More familiar medieval figures, Héloïse and Abelard , appear in this volume too, in a screenplay or dialogue.
Sampson, Fiona. “Symphony of sighs”. theguardian.com.
Family and Intimate relationships Kate Clanchy
KC 's father, Michael Clanchy , is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the Institute for Historical Research , which is a part of the University of London .
“Fellowships”. Institute of Historical Research. University of London, School of Advanced Study.
His published works include a biography...
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.
62
Writing about this book in the Times on 6 November that year, AF noted that she...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Monica Furlong
MF images these women, active between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, as a wave, slow and tentative at first, rising to a crescendo with Julian of Norwich , the one who speaks most clearly...
Textual Production Hélène Gingold
HG published the five-act tragedy Abelard and Heloise.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
247 (5 October 1906): 339
Textual Production Hélène Gingold
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...
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 Production Judith Cowper Madan
Abelard to Eloisa, an epistolary reply written in 1720 by Judith Cowper (who by now was Judith Madan) to Pope 's Eloisa to Abelard, was published in William Pattison 's posthumous works.
The...
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.
13, 42
she was probably...
Textual Production Alexander Pope
AP published his one-volume Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, including the previously unpublished epistle Eloisa to Abelard and Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.
Pope, Alexander. The Poems of Alexander Pope. Editor Butt, John, Methuen; Yale University Press.
2: 312
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...
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 et al. “Memoirs of Abelard and Eloisa”. Letters of Abelard and Eloisa, translated by. John Hughes and John Hughes, J. Mitchell.
title-page
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Ann Thicknesse
AT makes it clear she is no proto-feminist: If women are thought to possess minds less capable of solid reflection than men, they owe this conjecture entirely to their own vanity, and erroneous method of...

Timeline

January 1761: Jean-Jacques Rousseau published his epistolary...

Writing climate item

January 1761

Jean-Jacques Rousseau published his epistolarynovelJulie; ou, La nouvelle Héloïse; it was translated into English the same year by William Kenrick .

Texts

Abelard, Peter, and Héloïse. “Editorial Materials”. The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, translated by. Betty Radice, Penguin, 1974.
Abelard, Peter, and Héloïse. Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Translator Hughes, John, J. Watts, 1713.
Seward, Anna et al. “Memoirs of Abelard and Eloisa”. Letters of Abelard and Eloisa, translated by. John Hughes and John Hughes, J. Mitchell, 1805.
Abelard, Peter et al. Petri Abaelardi, Sancti Gildasii in Britannia abbatis, et Heloisae coniugis eius, quae postmodum prima coenobii paraclitensis abbatissa fuit, Opera. Editor Du Chesne, André, Nicolai Buon, 1616.