Varieties of the Self

Babette S. Hellemans, Ph.D. (2006), University of Utrecht and EHESS Paris, is lecturer in Medieval and Cultural History at the University of Groningen. She has published monographs, collected volumes, and articles on intellectual history, cultural history, and the history of religion.

1 Introduction



2 Anthropology and the Idea of the Paraclete

 1 About Rules and Individual Life

 2 The Foundation of the Paraclete and the Beginning of Faith

 3 The Myth of Institutions: About Systems and Collections

 4 Exemplum’s Perplexity



3 Diptych I: Bringing Abelard Home

 1 Living Together, or the Creation of the Monastic Myth

 2 When Earth and Heaven Meet

 3 Is Contempt for the World Possible?

 4 Peter the Venerable’s Compassion

 5 The Anthropology of Grace

 6 Abelard’s Last Years

 7 The Illusion of Permanence

 8 The Mental Architecture of the Paraclete

 9 Is Religion a Category?



4 Diptych II: Architecture of Songs

 1 Time, Space, and the Self in the Paraclete

 2 God hors jeu

 3 Collection and Chaos: The Paraclete Hymns

 4 A Changing Light

 5 Mary Magdalene’s Stones

 6 Jephthah’s Daughter

 7 The Child and the Stick, or Mirroring Measures

 8 Epilogue



5 Conclusion

Appendix

 Peter the Venerable, Letter 115

 Heloise of Argenteuil, Letter 167

 Selected Hymns from the Hymnarius Paraclitensis, Composed by Peter Abelard

Bibiliography

Index