Acknowledgments
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like every student of Abelard and Heloise, I am indebted to a large number of critics and scholars, many of whose names appear in the select bibliography at the end of this volume. There is a smaller group, however, whose work I have found especially useful and continually stimulating throughout the course of this project:
Michael Clanchy, Peter Dronke, David Luscombe, John Marenbon, the late Mary Martin McLaughlin, T. P. McLaughlin, and J. T.
Muckle. In the absence of standard commentaries, I have freely consulted earlier translations for a community of opinion on many specific points; even when our interpretations and approaches differ, I have learned a great deal as a reader and translator from, in particular, the clarity of J. T. Muckle, the learned grace of Betty Radice, the wry idiosyncrasy of C. K. Scott Moncrieff (if the verb "perpend" has never been restored to common English usage, it was not for the lack of his example), and the vivacity of Jean de Meun.
I count it as my privilege to have carried on this work in the company of collaborators, students, and colleagues, so many of whom are also friends. I am especially grateful to Stanley Lombardo and Barbara Thorburn not only for their brilliant translations of Abelard's poetry but also for their encouragement and perceptive criticism of my own translations of Abelard and Heloise's prose.
Roger Gilles, Sue Stauffacher, Adam Thorburn, and David Thorburn read large sections of the book in draft with empathy and careful discrimination. Bruce O'Brien discussed problems of translation with me and provided essential guidance on many historical points.
Lloyd Gerson kindly lent his advice and suggestions on questions of medieval dialectic. Ben Lockerd and Micheline Lockerd were crucially helpful on matters of Church liturgy. They have my deepest thanks. I also thank many others whose interest, insight, and support proved invaluable at various junctures throughout the work, in particular, Kathleen Blumreich, Patricia Clark, Coeli Fitzpatrick,
Asli Gocer, Ginny Klingenberg, Herb Levitan, Jim Muehlemann, Kathy Muehlemann, Mark Pestana, Soula Proxenos, Jerilyn Perrine, and Lois Tyson.
Audiences at Grand Valley State University, Michigan State University, and the University of Kansas provided important sounding ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
boards for much of the material in the book. For their suggestions and stimulating discussion, I particularly thank the members of the MSU seminar on women and the problem of agency in the pre-modern era, especially Katie Dubois, Julia Holderness, Emily Klockenkemper, and Katharyn Lowerre. My friends at Middlebury College provided both a warm welcome and a congenial nest for the incubation of the earliest parts of the book; Grand Valley State University provided support in the form of a sabbatical leave, during which the latter parts were completed. I am grateful, too, for the friendship and conversation of Stephen Donadio, editor of New England Review, where earlier versions of the Calamities and the First and Third Letters have appeared.
From its first conception, this book has been for Debra Nails, who has also played a profound role in its development. Sometime collaborator, assiduous reader, trenchant critic, and constant inspiration, she has left marks of her judgment and example on nearly every page. If the tones of authentic moral passion and devotion ring true at any point in these translations, it is because I heard them in her voice. For all of this, the dedication of a volume can be only the merest shadow of my thanks.