Historia calamitatum: Consolation to a Friend: Edited from Troyes, Médiathèque du Grand Troyes, MS 802 Latin; English - Couverture souple

Peter Abelard; Andrée, Alexander

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0888444826 ISBN 13 : 9780888444820

Editeur : Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015

Synopsis

Peter Abelard's Letter to a Friend, frequently known as The Story of My Calamities, recounts the meteoric and disastrous career of one of the driving forces of the twelfth-century renaissance. The son of a minor Breton noble family, a public intellectual who turned the academic establishment on its head, lover of Heloise, and sometimes his own worst enemy, Abelard produced in elegant prose one of the signal works of medieval autobiography. This new edition presents the Latin text as it appears in the earliest manuscript--until recently misdated by a hundred years--studded with a commentary that explicates the circumstances of its composition, context, and language.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

The "Historia Calamitatum" of Peter Abélard is one of those human documents, out of the very heart of the Middle Ages, that illuminates by the glow of its ardour a shadowy period that has been made even more dusky and incomprehensible by unsympathetic commentators and the ill-digested matter of "source-books." Like the "Confessions" of St. Augustine it is an authentic revelation of personality and, like the latter, it seems to show how unchangeable is man, how consistent unto himself whether he is of the sixth century or the twelfth--or indeed of the twentieth century. "Evolution" may change the flora and fauna of the world, or modify its physical forms, but man is always the same and the unrolling of the centuries affects him not at all. If we can assume the vivid personality, the enormous intellectual power and the clear, keen mentality of Abélard and his contemporaries and immediate successors, there is no reason why "The Story of My Misfortunes" should not have been written within the last decade.

Biographie de l'auteur

Peter Abelard 1079-1142 was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. The story of his affair with and love for Heloise has become legendary. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary describes him as "the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century".

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
• Date d'édition: 2015
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0888444826
• ISBN 13: 9780888444820
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 118
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible