Abstract
This article is a re-assessment of the role of notional gender in Old English poetry and prose, specifically in a poem known today as “The Wanderer” and in King Alfred’s translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. By examining the glossary evidence and the portrayal of the figures of Fortune and Lady Philosophy in Boethius’ text, we see that Alfred’s translation and the Old English poem have adapted certain ideas about the conventionalized figures of Fortune and Philosophy, both traditionally figured as women, that have made their way into the Old English poetic and philosophical discourses. The term Wyrd is scrutinized for its possible gender valences, and we see that both Alfred’s text and the “The Wanderer” invoke ideas from Boethius: that Fortune (Wyrd) is fickle, hostile, and unstable, causing the individual to lose stoic virtue. Contemporary scholars tend to reject the idea that Wyrd in Old English poetry and prose carried any gender significations; this study argues that in certain instances, such as in “The Wanderer” and Alfred’s Boethius, Wyrd carried certain structures of notional gender that should inflect our understanding of this much-discussed word and Old English poetic and philosophical writing.
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