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Autobiography and the Changes in the Medieval Society: The Cases of Guibert de Nogent and of Pierre Abelard

  • Korean Review of French History
  • Abbr : KRFH
  • 2012, (27), pp.5~31
  • Publisher : KOREAN SOCIETY FOR FRENCH HISTORY
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

Yong-Jin PARK 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article attempts to show the growing self-consciousness expressed in the autobiographies and to reveal the changes of the medieval society and culture, by comparing two autobiographies of Guibert de Nogent and of Pierre Abelard. The twelfth century was a period of rapid and extensive economic, social, and cultural change, wherein the newly emerged urban life expanded but the traditional community became lesser important. So many people were confused in anxiety and discomfort, which led them to look into themselves more closely and to write the autobiography. The most conspicuous among them were Guibert de Nogent’s De vita sua and Pierre Abelard’s Historia calamitatum. Guibert’s autobiography was a sort of ‘confession(confessio)’, but abelard’s was a sort of ‘apology(apologia)’. Guibert confess his sin before God and ask to God or himself who he is, like St Augustine. Abelard talked to his friend his life, with explaining why he suffered misfortune. Both described their lives based on deep looking into themselves and their inner life. Two autobiographies also show the transition in medieval civilization. In Guibert’s De vita sua, the role of Guibert’s mother was a ‘wise man’ in a village, who had knowledge and wisdom, and told the future. It was a feature of the traditional rural society, based on oral tradition, which would give the place to the clerical society, based on literal tradition in the thirteenth century. In Abelard’s Historia calamitatum, he compare knowledge to labor and he made a living from only teaching and writing. So he might be called ‘new wise man’. The economic and social changes in the twelfth century result in the conflicts of old and new values, and consequent ambiguity in social and cultural roles. This situation compelled a monk, and a scholar, to reorder their lives and to explain those conflicts and ambiguity. In a word, the anxiety and the conflicts resulting from the rapid economic and social changes, functioned as a stimulus for autobiography in twelfth century.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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