Eloisa to Abelard

“Eloisa to Abelard” is a poem published in 1717 by Alexander Pope. The poem discusses the ill-fated love affair of a real-life couple from 12th-century France: Heloïse d’Argenteuil, a gifted 18-year-old student, and Peter Abelard, a renowned French scholar, philosopher, and poet of the Medieval era who was 20 years older than Heloïse. The poem is a heroic verse epistle, which is a genre first made famous in Ovid’s Heroides. Pope adopts Eloisa’s persona and writes a letter to Abelard from her perspective. In this letter, Pope explores Eloisa’s conflict between spiritual love and romantic love, considering the fundamental incompatibility between her love for God and her love for Abelard. After being forced into a convent by her disapproving family after she and Abelard have a child together, Eloisa writes a letter expressing her longing for Abelard even years later. Convent life has brought her little relief from her heartbreak, and Pope shows Eloisa’s inability to commit herself either to the path of romantic love or that of repentance and piety. This poem is one of Pope’s earlier works and was inspired by a translation of the story from French into English by his friend John Hughes.