front cover of Boethius and Aquinas
Boethius and Aquinas
Ralph McInerny
Catholic University of America Press, 2012
In this study of the relationship between Boethius and Thomas Aquinas, Ralph McInerny dispels the notion that Aquinas misunderstood the early philosopher and argues instead that he learned from Boethius, assimilated his ideas, and proved to be a reliable interpreter of his thought.
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front cover of An Exposition of the On the Hebdomads of Boethius (Thomas Aquinas in Translation)
An Exposition of the On the Hebdomads of Boethius (Thomas Aquinas in Translation)
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Catholic University of America Press, 2001
The English translation itself, in facing-page format with the 1992 Leonine critical edition of Aquinas's Latin text, remains faithful to the text and at the same time clear and readable.
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The Legacy of Boethius in Medieval England
The Consolation and its Afterlives
A. Joseph McMullen
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018
The study of Boethius’s medieval reception has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in recent years, with the publication of new editions, translations, databases, and research reshaping our understanding of his profound influence. This study offers the first holistic survey of the reworkings of the Consolation in medieval England, surveying the Old English Boethius together with Chaucer’s Boece and a host of understudied interlocutors for the first time in a volume of this kind. Arranged into sections on “earlier” and “later” periods, The Legacy of Boethius argues for a reassessment of the medieval English Boethian tradition as a 600-year continuum in vernacular reading and readership.
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The Old English Boethius
with Verse Prologues and Epilogues Associated with King Alfred
Susan Irvine
Harvard University Press, 2012

The Old English Boethius boldly refashions in Anglo-Saxon guise a great literary monument of the late-antique world, The Consolation of Philosophy. Condemned to death for treason around 525 ce, the Roman scholar 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. Boethius's Latin dialogues found a receptive audience in Anglo-Saxon England, where they were translated into Old English some time around 900. The translator (traditionally identified with King Alfred) freely adapts the Latin for a new audience: the Roman Fabricius, for example, becomes the Germanic weapon-smith Weland. The translation replicates Boethius’s alternation of prose and verse—only in this case Old English prose alternates with alliterative verse.

In later centuries Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth each turned The Consolation of Philosophy into English, but the Old English translation was the first to bring it to a wider vernacular audience. Verse prologues and epilogues for works traditionally associated with King Alfred fill out the volume, offering readers a fascinating glimpse of the moment when English confidently claimed its birthright as a literature capable of anything, from sublime ideas to subtle poetry.

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front cover of Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages
Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages
Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve
Eleanor Johnson
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Literary scholars often avoid the category of the aesthetic in discussions of ethics, believing that purely aesthetic judgments can vitiate analyses of a literary work’s sociopolitical heft and meaning. In Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages, Eleanor Johnson reveals that aesthetics—the formal aspects of literary language that make it sense-perceptible—are indeed inextricable from ethics in the writing of medieval literature.
 
Johnson brings a keen formalist eye to bear on the prosimetric form: the mixing of prose with lyrical poetry. This form descends from the writings of the sixth-century Christian philosopher Boethius—specifically his famous prison text, Consolation of Philosophy—to the late medieval English tradition. Johnson argues that Boethius’s text had a broad influence not simply on the thematic and philosophical content of subsequent literary writing, but also on the specific aesthetic construction of several vernacular traditions. She demonstrates the underlying prosimetric structures in a variety of Middle English texts—including Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and portions of the Canterbury Tales, Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love, John Gower’s Confessio amantis, and Thomas Hoccleve’s autobiographical poetry—and asks how particular formal choices work, how they resonate with medieval literary-theoretical ideas, and how particular poems and prose works mediate the tricky business of modeling ethical transformation for a readership.
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Theological Tractates. The Consolation of Philosophy
Translated by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester
Harvard University Press

A Christian polymath embraces reason against misfortune in poetry and prose.

Boethius (Boetius)—Anicius Manlius Severinus—Roman statesman and philosopher (ca. AD 480–524), was son of Flavius Manlius Boetius, after whose death he was looked after by several men, especially Memmius Symmachus. He married Symmachus’ daughter, Rusticiana, by whom he had two sons. All three men rose to high honors under Theodoric the Ostrogoth, but Boethius fell from favor, was tried for treason, wrongly condemned, and imprisoned at Ticinum (Pavia), where he wrote his renowned Consolation of Philosophy. He was put to death in 524, to the great remorse of Theodoric. Boethius was revered as if he were a saint and his bones were removed in 996 to the Church of S. Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, and later to the Cathedral. The tower in Pavia where he was imprisoned is still venerated.

Boethius was author of Latin translations of Aristotle, commentaries on various philosophical works, original works on logic, five books on music, and other works. His Consolation of Philosophy is the last example of purely literary Latin of ancient times—a mingling of alternate dialogue and poems. His Theological Tractates are also included in this volume.

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front cover of Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent
Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent
Augustine, Anselm, Boethius and Dante
Robert McMahon
Catholic University of America Press, 2006
Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent uses literary analysis to discover new philosophical meanings in these works. Clearly written in nontechnical language, its account of their literary structures and of the hidden meanings they generate will inform nonspecialist and specialist alike.
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