Eloisa to Abelard is a verse epistle by Alexander Pope that was published in 1717 and based on a well-known medieval story. Itself an imitation of a Latin poetic genre, its immediate fame resulted in a large number of English imitations throughout the rest of the century and other poems more loosely based on its themes thereafter. Translations of varying levels of faithfulness appeared across Europe, starting in the 1750s and reaching a peak towards the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th. These were in the vanguard of the shift away from Classicism and towards the primacy given emotion over reason that heralded Romanticism. Artistic depictions of the poem's themes were often reproduced as prints illustrating the poem; there were also paintings in France of the women readers of the amorous correspondence between the lovers.
The poem and its background Pope's poem was published in 1717 in a small volume titled The Works of Mr Alexander Pope. There were two other accompanying poems, the "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" and the original version of the "Ode on St Cecilia's Day". Such was the poem's popularity that it was reissued in 1720 along with the retitled "Verses to the memory of an unfortunate lady'" and several other elegiac poems by different authors.National library of Australia
"Eloisa to Abelard" is an Ovidian heroic epistle of which Pope had earlier published an example translated from the Latin in 1714, "Sappho to Phaon".Heroides XV His own original exercise in this genre was inspired by the 12th-century story of Héloïse d'Argenteuil's illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Peter Abelard, a famous Parisian philosopher some twenty years her senior. After their affair and marriage, her family took brutal vengeance on Abelard and castrated him, following which he entered a monastery and compelled Héloïse to become a nun. Both then led comparatively successful monastic careers. Years later, Abelard completed the Historia Calamitatum (History of misfortunes), cast as a letter of consolation to a friend. When it fell into Heloise's hands, her passion for him was reawakened and there was an exchange of four letters between them written in an ornate Latin style. In an effort to make sense of their personal tragedy, these explored the nature of human and divine love. However, their incompatible male and female perspectives made the dialogue painful for both.The Letters of Peter Abelard and Heloise, Augusta State University.
In Pope's poem, Eloisa confesses to the suppressed love that his letter has reawakened. She recalls their former life together and its violent aftermath, comparing the happy state of "the blameless Vestal" with her own reliving of past passion and sorrow. The memory of it turns the landscape gloomy "and breathes a browner horror on the woods" (line 170). It disturbs the performance of her religious offices, where Abelard's image "steals between my God and me" (line 267). But, since relations between them are now impossible, she advises him to distance himself from her memory and looks forward to the release of death when "one kind grave" will reunite them (line 343).
Pope was born a Roman Catholic and so might be assumed to have an insight into, and a special interest in, the story. He had, however, a recently published source to inspire him and guide his readers. This was The Letters of Abelard and Heloise: with a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortune by the poet John Hughes, which was first published in 1713 and was to go through many editions in the following century and more.Google Books There are several instances of Pope's direct dependence on Hughes’ version of the letters.Wright, p.519 As one example, where Heloise exclaims "Among those who are wedded to God I serve a man; among the heroic supporters of the cross I am a poor slave to a human passion; at the head of a religious community I am devoted to Abelard only",Hughes, p.91 Pope's Eloisa condenses this to the lines
Imitations and responses The final lines of Pope's poem almost seem to invite a response from others:
Whether this was deliberate or not, some seventeen imitations and parodies of his poem had been written by the end of the century, all but two of them cast as Abelard's reply to Eloisa and written in heroic couplets. Although Pope's poem provided the main inspiration, and was frequently mentioned by the authors in their prefaces, there was always Hughes' volume with its historical account in the background. In its later editions the dependency between the two was further underlined by the inclusion first of Pope's poem (from 1755) and then some of the principal responses in following editions.
The poems in question are as follows:
Abelard to Eloisa (1720) by Judith (Cowper) Madan, a disciple of Pope who published her poem anonymously before she was 20. Writing there from a male point of view, she matched Pope, who had adopted a female identity in his poem.The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse, (2005)p.154 For a while, the poem was misattributed to William Pattison,Hughes, p.172ff from the circumstance of its unaccountably appearing in his Poetical Works (1728). Beginning with the line "As in my Cell, low prostrate on the Ground," her poem appeared under one or other version of her names in some thirteen miscellanies published between 1747 and 1785. Often it accompanied Pope's poem there, or was even paired with his so as to make the correspondence clearer, as in the collection The Unfortunate Lovers, two admirable poems (1756). Fragment of an Epistle from Abelard to Eloisa (1721) by Charles Beckingham, a rebuke that recalls Eloisa to propriety.Fairer, pp.74-5 Abelard to Eloisa (1725) by "Petrus Abelardus" [Richard Barford], "wherein we may observe, how high we can raise the sentiments of our heart, when possess'd of a great deal of wit and learning, with a most violent love."Anonymous 1725, p. ii Abelard to Eloisa, in answer to Mr Pope's Eloisa to Abelard (1725) by James Delacour(t).Publishing information Abelard to Eloisa (1747) by James Cawthorn.Hughes, p.178ff A response with many echoes of Pope's original, it was frequently reprinted into the opening decades of the 19th century. Abelard to Eloisa by an unknown hand.Hughes, p.189ff Abelard to Eloisa, by a gentleman of Cambridge (1760).In the compilation A Small but Choice Collection of Curious Pieces Abelard to Eloisa by Oliver JaquesThe fictitious name of 'a newspaper poet' in The London Chronicle (October 19–22, 1765); Abelard is there depicted as having almost conquered his passion.Wright, p.524 In the unfavourably received collection Poems: Containing I. Semira, an elegy; II. Abelard to Eloisa; III. Ambition., (1778).The book was dismissed in The Monthly Review, Vol. 58, p.398 The epistle to Eloisa was later published separately as by Samuel Birch (1757–1841).Hughes, p.193ff; Abelard to Eloisa: a poetic epistle, newly attempted appeared anonymously in 1782, to be followed by a revised version claiming to be a "fourth edition" in about 1784. The latter was accompanied by two additional verse epistles, "Leonora to Tasso" and "Ovid to Julia", as well as other poems and translations.Online text Also mentioned there was that the poem was originally written in 1777; roughly the same text was reproduced in the 1787 edition of Hughes' The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, with the additional information that it had been written in 1777 by a "Mr Seymour".Hughes 1788, p.172ff Abelard to Eloisa: An Epistle by Thomas Warwick (1783).In a volume also containing fourteen sonnets and a "Rhapsody written at Stratford-upon-Avon" It was followed early in 1785 by an enlarged and recast version titled Abelard to Eloisa: An epistle, with a new account of their lives and references to their original correspondence.This too has the author’s name on the title page Abelard to Eloisa by Edward Jerningham (1792). Also a Catholic, Jerningham gives a greater sense of the historical setting, especially the quarrel with Bernard of Clairvaux and what Jerningham calls his 'sentence of excommunication', details available in Hughes but taken up by no other poet. A Struggle between Religion and Love, in an epistle from Abelard to Eloisa by Sarah Farrell (1792).In Charlotte and other poems, pp.29-38 Abelard to Eloisa by Lady Sophia Burrell (1753–1802), written in heroic couplets and published as "by a lady" in her Poems (1793). This showed itself hostile to monasticism and neglected to portray the setting as mediaeval.The Ways of Fiction: New Essays on the Literary Cultures of the Eighteenth Century, Nicholas J. Crowe (ed.), Cambridge Scholars, 2019, note 87, p.69 Abelard to Eloisa, in an early collection of poems by Walter Savage Landor (1795). In his preface, Landor discusses the difficulty of following Pope, but a commentator has suggested that he was also familiar with Hughes letters.William Bradley, The early poems of Walter Savage Landor, pp.20-23
Broadening the genre Over and above such direct imitations, Pope's poem inspired heroic epistles between other couples. Charles Augustine Lea declared on the title page that his "Eliza to Comus, an epistle" (1753) was written as an imitation. Noting its excess of redundant verbiage as compared to Pope's concise style, however, the Monthly Review chided the author for his indiscreet comparison.The Monthly Review, vol.8, p.151 The later Poetic epistles of Chrysostom and Marcella (Dublin 1777) likewise described itself as "dedicated to the memory of Abelard and Eloisa".Abelard bibliography, section 9 Then in 1785 the fourth edition of Seymour's imitation was accompanied by two other epistles, "Leonora to Tasso" and "Ovid to Julia".
The genre was to be broadened by two more imitations whose humorous success brought them frequent reprinting. The first was Richard Owen Cambridge's clever "Elegy Written in an Empty Assembly-Room" (1756).Internet archive Although its preface describes the poem as "being a Parody on the most remarkable Passages in the well-known Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard", its title also places it among the contemporary parodies of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard whose object was to give them an unlikely setting. Imitation of lines from Pope's epistle in this context adds a new level of subtlety.
A later work, Eloisa en deshabille, being a new version of that lady's celebrated epistle to Abelard (1780),Google Books was described at the time as "a profligate parody of Mr Pope's Epistle".The Monthly Review, 1781, vol.64, p.153 In this a burlesque and witty version matched Pope's original line for line and in later editions appeared opposite his poem. It was written in anapaestic measure with frequent disyllabic and trisyllabic rhymes, of which one of the most notorious was
The poem has been ascribed to several authors, of whom Richard Porson was once considered the most likely, although a strong case has also been made for John Matthews.
Where the parodies made fun of the passages they aped, the epistolary imitations echoed Pope's themes and language in order to demonstrate their kinship. Thus Richard Barford ends his poem with a similar sentiment to Pope's, that true lovers will express their kinship with Eloisa and Abelard in similar words:
And the third and fourth lines of Seymour's opening, "If cold my blood, my pulse inactive grown,/ I am indeed allied to lifeless stone",Hughes 1788, p. 205 is heavily dependent on Pope's "Tho' cold like you, unmov'd, and silent grown,/ I have not yet forgot my self to stone." (lines 23–24)Pope 1963, p.253
Samuel Birch compares the felicity of the blameless youth to the jealous perturbation of one who has experienced passion.Hughes, p.195-6 And, as Eloisa had experienced "twilight groves and dusky caves", so Barford's Abelard reports