DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
INTERNAL ASSESSMENT ASSIGNMENT
COVER SHEET
SEMESTER I

NAME OF THE STUDENT: LAVISHA TANEJA

COLLEGE: SRI VENKATESWARA COLLEGE DELHI UNIVERSITY

EXAM ROLL NO: 2121002

PAPER CODE: 120351101

PAPER NAME: MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

TITLE OF PAPER: Pr incipal themes of " Histor ia Calamitar um" in The Letter s
of Abelar d and Heloise.

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 28th MARCH 2022

DECLARATION: I certify that this is my own unaided work, and does not contain
unreferenced material copied from any other source. I understand that plagiarism is a
serious offence and may result in a drastic reduction of marks awarded for the term
paper. This assignment has not been submitted, or any part of it, in connection with
any other assessment.
“Historia Calamintatum” was written in 1132 when Abelard was 53 years old and was
residing at the monastery of St. Gildas de Rhuys. The Story of His Misfortunes, by
Abelard, is a unique work of autobiographical writing written in the form of a
consolation letter (influenced by Augustine’s Confessions) to an anonymous friend
that covers Abelard's early days of dialectic study. It chronicles Abelard's tragedies as
a scholastic philosopher and theologian, as well as the calamities he faced later in his
relationship with Heloise, whose teaching he was entrusted by her uncle, and its
aftermath when he was subjected to irreparable mutilation. The narrative also recounts
how Abelard drove his teachers to change their teaching methods in the early 12th
century, which helped to shape the development of philosophy. In this paper, I intend
to explore how these letters emphasize the core argument about the difficulty of
renunciation and persistent sexual desire within the walls of a cloister.

Critics have argued about the authenticity of correspondence between Abelard and
Heloise, considering Abelard’s first letter as a forgery fabricated to create a
background and offer a justification for the rest the of work. In an autobiography, the
readers interpret the self represented in the narrative through the author describing
himself that is highly influenced by his ideological position and memory of his past.
Abelard writes this letter when religion was the primal aspect of his life and sexual
passion was considered debased. Hence it is probable that he is writing with a
knowledge of a wide readership that the letters would form a part of public discourse
and with an intention to exonerate himself and restoring his reputed position in the
theological domain. But it becomes problematic for the readers in trying to define
Abelard’s true self from his writing. The public eye present in Abelard’s letter distorts
the expected privacy of letter writing, that modifies his representation of himself and
reader’s search for the ‘real self’ becomes futile.

His life was dominated by his unwavering resolve to apply the principles of logic
to all existing disciplines.Abelard mentions that “It was not my custom to progress by
practice (usum), but by my own intelligence (ingenium)”. As a wandering scholar,
conscious of his intellectual superiority to his teachers, Abelard appears to be
establishing a new technique of disputing, rather than just a rudimentary lecture that
was supposed to be a selected passage of scripture read aloud with commentaries
drawn from writings of early Fathers of the church. “Abelard’s brilliant expositions of
classical authorities, especially Aristotle, his subtle re-formulations of logic, his
slashing refutations of rivals, his insistence that rational understanding could never
tolerate inconsistency had begun to detach learning from revelation and establish a
style of disputation that would become the accept form of academic learning.”(2)

Abelard describes himself in the Historia as constantly at war in his unflinching

search for truth as opposed to the facile complacency of his opponents’ view and as a
victim, battling to displace complacent masters of logic and theology, to expose
accepted but incoherent logical and theological beliefs, and to reform corrupt religious
communities. He outlines his rejection of both William of Champeaux dialectic and
rhetorical theories and Anselm's traditional approach and authority in theology, as
well as his new-found independence in the study of scripture. His presumptuousness
and disputatious attitude led to condemnation of his book at council of Soissons, his
persecution by the monks of St Denis because of his refusal to accept their beliefs and
his sufferings at St Gildas. Abelard struggled at St Gildas among the fellow Bretons
whose manner of life was absolutely abhorrent to him, he found himself defenceless
against the blatant hostility of monks who were willing to go to any length to get rid
of him. He confesses that having overcome William and Anselm, he became
impressed by his own self-generated intelligence and complacency that weakened his
inner resolution and provoked his humiliating castration and theological
condemnation.

He takes the blame of his liaison with Heloise solely upon himself whereas
Heloise adamantly contests this in her letters. Perhaps as an abbot he owes her the
responsibility and guardianship or to maintain the purity of her reputation as an
abbess or as a means to justify his later punishment. As a preamble to the epistolary
text, the detailed description of their secret marriage leading up to their impending
separation when they fled to separate cloisters is extremely important, as it is based on
this underlying sensation of distance and loss. Abelard sees their relationship as a
result of his carnal urges, which earned him the brutal penalty of castration and
compelled him to enter the monastic life. He was torn by an impossible conflict
between his desire for Heloise and his belief that his duty was to realize himself as a
philosopher and to preserve his intention towards that ideal. Abelard’s desire for her
has been characterised as driven by his selfish craving for genital satisfaction. Abelard
claims that God's will encompasses his physical afflictions and suffering but not his
sexual desire and the castration of Abelard is viewed as God's grace and glory in
releasing him from his lust. Abelard becomes an ‘androgyne’ losing his mascunity
and sexual power, implicating the recurring theme of victimization as representative
of his ‘feminine otherness’ . It seems probable that Abelard intended the letter for
circulation in order to win sympathy for his predicament, to pave the way for release
from St Gildas so that he could return to his true vocation of teaching and to
legitimize his controversial actions.

Heloise was reluctant that public marriage could be a potential bar to Abelard’s
advancement and she argued (as mentioned in Historia) that marriage is incompatible
not only with contemporary society's idea of an acceptable life for a clerk with church
ambitions, but also with the nature of the life Abelard truly seeks—not one of high
office and worldly power, but one of a philosopher who rejects the world of
appearances pointing out the petty distractions and hindrances of domestic life.
Marriage, Heloise claims, conflicts with the profound rather than the surface
principles of a life committed to philosophy and God. The purity and strength of her
love for Abelard could only be mirrored by a form in which she gives her love totally
freely, receiving nothing in exchange. She prefers love to wedlock and freedom to
chains, to be, as she puts it, Abelard’s whore rather than his wife.

Despite claiming to have sacrificed all for Abelard's sake, Heloise shows concern
about her spiritual salvation. She hopes that God will grant her a small "corner of
heaven" in her war against her own body and subjectivity. Many critics have
emphasised on Heloise's incapability to relinquish her sexual desires for Abelard
while discussing her turbulent "inner life" as an abbess of Paraclete. Her desire has
been interpreted as a kind of transgression in certain circumstances, relegating her to
the role of the unruly woman forced to accept the "bridle of the [monastic]
injunction." Her predicament stems from a desire expressly forbidden by traditional
monastic profession compounded by the hegemony of Medieval Church: a desire to
let her past mould and influence her current and future religious life, as well as a
desire to build a new order that would allow her to maintain her treasured concepts of
secular love. Entry into the monastery was marked by periods of constant adjustment
between the past secular life and the present strictly religious one, between the
demand for conformity and the desire for individuality. One of the most common
reasons used to disprove Heloise's authorship of the letters is that as the virtuous
abbess of a famous oratory, she simply could not have experienced, much less spoken
about, her sexual fantasies and steadfast adherence to the secular life.

WORKS CITED:

(1) Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum and Letters: Self as Search and Struggle
Eileen C. Sweeney

(2)A Woman's Thought or a Man's Discipline? The Letters of Abelard and Heloise,
Andrea Nye
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3809870

(3)The Letters of Abelard and Heloise Introduction

(4)