Dialectics and Courtly Love: Abelard and Heloise, Andreas Capellanus, and the Carmina Burana

Abstract

When Peter Abelard developed the principal ideas of dialectics, he did not only redirect the theological and philosophical discourse in a most critical fashion, but also provided a fundamental basis for much of the subsequent culture of courtly love. This finds powerful confirmation both in Andreas Capellanus’s De amore and in the collection of Latin and Middle High German poems contained in the Carmina Burana. But Abelard appears to have had the most important impact of his own thinking on the relationship with his beloved mistress, later wife, Heloise. In light of the Abelardian dialectics, the old question regarding the authenticity of the correspondence between these two people can be laid to rest as moot. What matters most proves to be that the letters reflect on two critically opposed positions vis-à-vis courtly love and illustrate how love can or must be viewed through the lens of dialectics.