“Juanita Feros Ruys’s study is massively learned and erudite. Peter Abelard is reintroduced to medievalists as a figure beyond the heady days of his public life and Ruys sheds new and important light on other dimensions of this complex and fascinating personality. The text produced by Ruys is noteworthy and stands without antecedent or peer both for originality and interpretation. ... Read more… The study is supplemented by an international, up-to-date bibliography.” (Thomas A. Fudge, Parergon, Vol. 32 (2), 2015) “This important book shows how questioning the meaning of family might lead to a new understanding of human connections between men and women, brothers and sisters, or parents and children, about what bound them and how they dealt with loss, transforming grief into songs that reflected somehow the utterly ordinariness of being human.” (Babette Hellemans,Speculum, Vol. 94 (2), April, 2019) Show Less