Jean de Meun’s Translation of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise

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Heloise’s personal reply to Abelard’s ‘letter to a friend’, the very public Historia calamitatum, began an exchange of epistles between the former lovers, by turns tender, practical and theological, and which only began to be circulated in the late thirteenth century, eventually attracting the attention of the accomplished translator and poet, Jean de Meun. Leslie Brook’s edition of this French translation provides a reading text through a comparison with the Latin original and correction of obvious errors of the single manuscript witness.

Leslie Brook was formerly senior lecturer in French at the University of Birmingham.