Women and Women's Writings from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages | Betty Radice (Essay Date 1974)
BETTY RADICE (ESSAY DATE 1974)
SOURCE: Radice, Betty. Introduction to The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated by Betty Radice, pp. 9-55. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1974.
In the following excerpt from her introduction to the collected letters of the twelfth-century lovers Heloise and Abelard, Radice outlines the principal events of their forbidden passion.
Nothing at all is known of Heloise's parentage, though much has been conjectured.1 She is thought to have been about seventeen at this time and born in 1100 or 1101. Fulbert's possessiveness has suggested to some that she was really his daughter, but taken with his brutal treatment of Abelard it would seem to have a strong sexual element, probably subconscious. Every credit is due to the nuns at Argenteuil for her early education, and to Fulbert for his encouragement of her remarkable gifts at a time when women were rarely educated...
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