The Language of the Love Letters

Abstract

The opening lines of Sappho to Phaon provoke the question of female authorship in acute form. How do we ever really know that we are listening to a woman’s voice? The same question could be posed of the letters copied by Johannes de Vepria. While twelfth-century readers were fascinated by the literature of dialogue, whether it be Cicero’s discussions about friendship or Augustine’s philosophical conversations about truth, happiness and God, women’s voices were rarely encountered except as imagined in scripture or in poems like Ovid’s Heroides. The exchange copied by Johannes de Vepria is unusual in recording such a lengthy dialogue between a woman and a man. The controversy surrounding the authenticity of the famous Abelard-Heloise correspondence may have had the effect of discouraging scholars from exploring these anonymous love letters. It seems astonishingly bold to suggest that a copy of the intimate correspondence of two famous lovers could survive unnoticed in a municipal library in France without its significance being recognized. The only way to establish whether Johannes de Vepria did come across a copy of their intimate correspondence is to compare the language of these letters with that of other known writings of Abelard and Heloise.

When you saw these letters from my eager hand could your eye recognize the sender or did you fail to recognize their author until you could read my name, “Sappho”?¹