The Dumbarton Oaks edition of the Old English Boethius is, in its presentation and major editorial choices, true to the series’ mission, shared by the long-running Loeb Classical series, to make available important texts from the ancient world to a wide English-speaking audience. The present volume presents the prosimetrical reworking of the all-prose Old English translation of the De consolatione philosophiae in a facing-page format with a readable Modern English translation and limited apparatus.
Printed after the prosimetrical text are verse prologues and epilogues associated with King Alfred and his translation scheme: the prologue to the Old English Dialogues of Gregory the Great, the prologue and epilogue to the Old English Pastoral Care (also of Gregory the Great), and the epilogue to the Old English Bede. These materials are of definite interest in relation to the Old English Boethius, as they provide more insight into how the various translations were framed by translators or compilers and thus placed within the larger project of Old English translation. They shed light on the attitudes of the Anglo-Saxons toward their Latin materials and toward the process of translation itself.
Tiffany Beechy
The Medieval Review
