HELOISE AND ABELARD

In book form, a series of lectures given at the College de France in 1937 which analyse the doctrinal convictions of the two lovers and the ""moral labyrinth"" of accepted concepts in which they were lost. For Heloise, who recognized that as a philosopher and a cleric given to the Church Abelard had no right to marry, there was the feeling that she was contributing to his fall, that she not against a moral code--but against Abelard; for Abelard, lacking the courage to avoid marriage and keeping it secret, there was the sense of shame in assuming the status of the husband- ""a domesticated beast of burden"" and forfeiting the superiority of the clerical state. The mystery of this almost legendary romance, its meaning in terms of inherited ideological and intellectual tenets, is given an informed and sympathetic interpretation here- primarily for a scholars' market.