Talk:Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise

The first sentence should be something like: "The Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise refers to the letters between John-Paul Abelard and his lover Heloise Smith over a period of years in 17th-century Italy...." or whatnot. "They are renowned because...." And so forth.

Or so I think -- I could easily be wrong.... Hayford Peirce 10:49, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Yeah, I appreciate the desire to get the title of the article in the first sentence. (And upon reflection, the title "Letters of Abelard and Heloise" might fit better with CZ naming conventions; if anyone wants to move the page, it's fine by me) If anyone wants to have a go at rewriting the first sentence, that's perfectly alright by me (and I can help with factual stuff). The only thing is that the 'Correspondence of A & H' or 'Letters of A & H' isn't really a technical term, it's just a phrase which refers to this well-known group of letters. Because of that, it seems weird to start the article with an explanation of the phrase, and difficult to fit the title of the article in the first sentence. Brian P. Long 12:25, 17 February 2008 (CST)

I've long forgotten whatever I once knew about this celebrated couple, but isn't the easy answer simply to Move everything to Abelard and Heloise (or Heloise and Abelard), and then put the correspondence stuff into the article? I think that most searches for their writings will merely begin with "+Abelard +Heloise" or something similar. Hayford Peirce 12:38, 17 February 2008 (CST)

It's funny how hard it is to say Heloise and Abelard, isn't it? Much as you feel like you ought to (considering that she was the cleverer one). No, I think we should keep this article where it is. I'm not going to say that there shouldn't be an article on Abelard and Heloise (or whatever) that would incorporate a certain amount of this information (and a brief mention of the forgery debate), but the advantage of an internet encyclopedia is that there's no overall page limit we're going to run up against. Furthermore, a search for +Abelard +Heloise will hopefully bring up Abelard and Heloise first, and Letters of Abelard and Heloise second, and interested readers can make the determination for themselves.

The bigger reason is that I'm unconvinced about the move is that I doubt someone looking for general information on Abelard and Heloise really wants to hear about the minutiae of the forgery debate, whereas that is very pertinent information for someone slogging through the actual texts. I envision the "Letters..." page to be an encyclopedia article-cum-readers guide which sketches the interpretive history of the texts and, briefly, some of the actual debate about the texts themselves. Thanks, Brian P. Long 13:33, 17 February 2008 (CST)