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Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

Producing books of original medieval and Byzantine texts with facing-page translations.

February 28, 2016 by jes5970

The Old English Boethius

With Verse Prologues and Epilogues Associated with King Alfred

Irvine, Susan and Malcolm R. Godden
Volume | 19
Publication | November 2012

The Old English Boethius boldly refashions in Anglo-Saxon guise a great literary monument of the late antique world, The Consolation of Philosophy. Writing from prison around 525 CE, Boethius turned to philosophy to transform his personal distress into a powerful meditation on fate, free will, and the human capacity for virtue in a flawed, fallen world. King Alfred and his hand-picked circle of scholars in ninth-century England recognized the perennial relevance of Boethius’s themes. They reshaped the Latin text into an Old English version that preserves the essence while accommodating a new audience: the Roman Fabricius, for example, becomes the Germanic weapon-smith Weland. The translation even replicated Boethius’s alternation of prose and verse—only in this case with Old English prose alternating with alliterative verse.

Filed Under: Old English

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