Eloisa to Abelard (1717). Eloisa to Abelard is a verse epistle by Alexander Pope that was published in 1717 and based on a well-known medieval story. Itself an imitation of a Latin poetic genre, its immediate fame resulted in a large number of English imitations throughout the rest of the century and other poems more loosely based on its themes thereafter. Translations of varying levels of faithfulness appeared across Europe, starting in the 1750s and reaching a peak towards the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th. These were in the vanguard of the shift away from Classicism and towards the primacy given emotion over reason that heralded Romanticism. Artistic depictions of the poem's themes were often reproduced as prints illustrating the poem; there were also paintings in France of the women readers of the amorous correspondence between the lovers. Pope's poem was published in 1717 in a small volume titled The Works of Mr Alexander Pope. There were two other accompanying poems, the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and the original version of the Ode on St Cecilia's Day. Such was the poem's popularity that it was reissued in 1720 along with the retitled Verses to the memory of an unfortunate lady' and several other elegiac poems by different authors. Eloisa to Abelard is an Ovidian heroic epistle of which Pope had earlier published an example translated from the Latin in 1714, Sappho to Phaon. His own original exercise in this genre was inspired by the 12th-century story of Heloise d'Argenteuil's illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Peter Abelard, a famous Parisian philosopher some twenty years her senior. After their affair and marriage, her family took brutal vengeance on Abelard and castrated him, following which he entered a monastery and compelled Heloese to become a nun. Both then led comparatively successful monastic careers. Years later, Abelard completed the Historia Calamitatum, cast as a letter of consolation to a friend. When it fell into Heloise's hands, her passion for him was reawakened and there was an exchange of four letters between them written in an ornate Latin style. In an effort to make sense of their personal tragedy, these explored the nature of human and divine love. However, their incompatible male and female perspectives made the dialogue painful for both. In Pope's poem, Eloisa confesses to the suppressed love that his letter has reawakened. She recalls their former life together and its violent aftermath, comparing the happy state of the blameless Vestal with her own reliving of past passion and sorrow. The memory of it turns the landscape gloomy and breathes a browner horror on the woods. It disturbs the performance of her religious offices, where Abelard's image steals between my God and me. But, since relations between them are now impossible, she advises him to distance himself from her memory and looks forward to the release of death when one kind grave will reunite them. Pope was born a Roman Catholic and so might be assumed to have an insight into, and a special interest in, the story. He had, however, a recently published source to inspire him and guide his readers. This was The Letters of Abelard and Heloise: with a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortune by the poet John Hughes, which was first published in 1713 and was to go through many editions in the following century and more. There are several instances of Pope's direct dependence on Hughes’ version of the letters.