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Exemplarity and Authority in Abelard’s Historia calamitatum

2019; Brepols; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1484/j.tmj.5.119912

2033-5393

R. Jacob McDonie,

Augustinian Studies and Theology

A tradition of medieval scholarship has slowly been building resistance to the once-held consensus that exemplarity implies authority and thus an author’s always being in control of his or her text, which teaches an ostensible moral. Such new scholarship focuses largely on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English literature, but I would argue that the phenomenon of problematic exemplarity was well underway in the Latin literature of the twelfth century, as is evident in Abelard’s Historia calamitatum. This essay argues that Abelard foregrounds his life as exemplary and uses exempla and auctores to do so, but he fails on several fronts that involve conflicting authorities; his own ego, which obviates successful exemplarity; his problematic voicing of Heloise in her dissuasio nuptiarum; his vexed relationship with sympathy, a hallmark of exemplary figures; and his failure to live up to models to which he aspires. The essay finally considers audience reception of the Historia and our frustrated moral reading in the inscribed figures of the hypothetical friend to whom the Historia is addressed, in Heloise herself, and in ourselves as readers.