Consolation Of Philosophy Research Articles

Chaucer’s Fortune: A Necessary Invention

ABSTRACT Chaucer’s Boethian lyrics repay a critical approach that views them not only as court poetry but also as sophisticated responses to their source, The Consolation of Philosophy. This article demonstrates how the lyric Fortune engages ambitiously with Boethius’s central arguments about randomness, providence, and human moral action. Spoken by two voices, the poem dramatizes a conflict not between its speakers, but between rational knowledge and emotional experience, building to a climax in which Fortune declares herself nonexistent. This paradoxical moment captures the Boethian insight that although Fortune is not real, it is necessary for humans to invent her. Chaucer’s approach in this poem is to heighten the subtle tensions he found in the Consolation between the rational apprehension of higher truth and the emotional experience of life in a contingent world. Fortune thus illustrates Chaucer’s approach to Boethius as a source not of otherworldly consolation but of this-worldly wisdom.

Research on Boethius’s Views on the Nature of Good and Evil

This inquiry delves into the nuanced perspectives of Boethius on the existence of evil, placing a particular emphasis on its ontological dimensions within the overarching framework of absolute good. The primary focus of this analysis centers around Boethius’s seminal works, The Consolation of Philosophy and Hebdomads which serve as the key repositories of his philosophical reflections. In the former, Boethius conducts a profound exploration of the problem of evil and good, with a specific focus on the ontological realm. The latter work, Hebdomads contributes a metaphysical foundation for a more profound comprehension of these philosophical concepts. This study bifurcates the thematic exploration into two core aspects: the ontological–metaphysical dimension, scrutinizing the concepts of good and bad beyond the realm of human action, and the ethical– moral dimension, acknowledging its importance for a comprehensive understanding of the metaphysical. This dualistic approach enriches the hermeneutic perspective, facilitating a more holistic understanding of Boethius’s intricate thoughts on the nature of good and evil. The synthesis of these levels not only illuminates Boethius’s intellectual journey but also contributes to the broader discourse on the philosophical exploration of ontological dimensions within the context of absolute good.

Boethius and (Post-)Traumatic Historical Theology: The Processing of Trauma and Theologizing in The Consolation of Philosophy

Contemporary discussions about the theology of trauma include a very limited array of texts from the history of Christian theology. In order to broaden and deepen the scope of theological reflections on the traumatic experience, the article proposes to analyze Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy (с. 475–c. 526) from the perspective of (post)traumatic theology and to consider the work through the prism of the key question: how and about what does Boethius theologize in the context of his traumatic experience, which was the prerequisite and motivation for his writing this treatise?
 Boethius’s thoughts are considered as a step-by-step processing of the traumatic experience (verbalization, rationalization, and theologization), which is carried out through different genres he employs (poetry, narrative, and philosophical prose). In this way, he integrates a number of philosophical and theological ideas in his reflection on trauma and considers the process of rethinking his experience in intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and practical dimensions.

Out of Time: Ekphrasis, Narration, and Temporal Experience in Twelfth-Century Romances of Antiquity

This article considers the affective and conceptual work demanded in sophisticated moments of ekphrasis that abound in twelfth-century Old French romances, with particular attention to Alexandre de Paris's Roman d'Alexandre (1180s) and to two of the trio of romans d'antiquité, composed in French at the court of Henry II in England: the Roman de Thebes (c. 1150) and Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie (1165). Of concern is the description of mechanical artefacts or tents that are depicted with representations of temporal progression, in the light of Virgil, Aeneid 8, and Homer, Iliad 18, available to twelfth-century Latins via Baebius's abbreviated Latin epitome. Narrative time stops for these ekphrastic moments which describe the pictorial representation of time. Henri Bergson's concept of duration (durée) and Boethius's representation of human and divine time in Consolation of Philosophy, 4 are used to think through the productive tension between time as forward movement, as represented through narration, and time as juxtaposed stasis, by which events all happen simultaneously, as represented through pictorial representation. Beyond that, the cosmic implications of these temporal questions bring out the relationship between twelfth-century literary ekphrasis and the medieval reception of the cosmogony of Plato's Timaeus. Particular attention is paid to the marvellous tents of Adrastus in the Thebes and of Alexander the Great in the Alexandre; to the chariot of Amphiaraus in the Thebes with its depiction of Ovidian myth and Macrobian cosmos; and to the astonishing cosmogrammatical automaton in the Troie's Chamber of Beauties. Ekphrases of artefacts representing time and the world clearly resonated with medieval audiences; rather than being superfluous to the action, they appear as fundamental to the composition and performance of historical narrative in French romance.

Shakespeare’s Bookish Rulers: Philosophy and Nature Poetry in the Henry VI Trilogy and The Tempest

Shakespeare’s early Henry VI trilogy and late The Tempest both feature reclusive, bookish rulers who are deposed because their rivals perceive an opportunity in the rulers’ trustingness and lack of interest in political affairs. Furthermore, the deposed rulers also share an interest in Platonic philosophies of the Renaissance; they differ, however, in their respective preferences for particular Platonist authors and writings. Henry VI is devoted to Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy. While Prospero, the protagonist of The Tempest, may have focused on Boethius and similar authors when he was in Milan, by the time we meet him on his island, he prefers Neoplatonic magic, bequeathed to the Renaissance by Ficino. While the two stories are not often read together, I argue that doing so yields a fascinating contrast in the modes of existence dictated by different streams of Renaissance philosophical thought. While Henry VI’s credulity and Boethianism lead him to express a preference for a contemplative life and to adopt an attitude of extreme passivity and surrender, Prospero’s suspicion and powerful use of magic associate him with the active life. The ultimate expressions of Henry’s preference for the contemplative life and of Prospero’s association with the active life both involve nature poetry. Henry expresses yearning for the peaceful lifestyle of a shepherd in a pastoral lyric he delivers in 3 Henry VI, while Prospero celebrates human labor and achievement in a georgic masque which he produces.

Circe's beasts and cowardly harts: a comparison of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and Thomas More's A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation

Circe's beasts and cowardly harts: a comparison of Boethius’ <i>Consolation of Philosophy</i> and Thomas More's <i>A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation</i>

Boethius's Definition of the Person in Context: Chalcedon, Tradition, and Consolation

AbstractAbstract: While Boethius's definition of the person, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’, plays a significant role in Christian theology and anthropology, its reception is by no means uncritical. In the last hundred years, virtually every element in it has been critiqued by theologians and secular scholars. Nevertheless, its context suggests that his understanding of the person is potentially far richer than supposed. This paper places Boethius's definition of the person in its historical framework and in the context of his own thought, especially Contra Eutyches and Consolation of Philosophy, in order to demonstrate that despite shortcomings, it represents a dynamic and holistic characterisation of the person.

Glossing Boethius Through Dante: Auctoritas and Philosophical Poetry in BML MS Plut. 78.20 and the Dante Commentary Tradition

ABSTRACT The article examines the function and the significance of a quotation of Purgatorio xix, 7–73 on the margins of a copy of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy which belonged to Bartolomeo Nerucci, a Tuscan grammar teacher who copied several Dante commentaries. The quotation attests to the slow but steady establishment of Dante’s vernacular authority among fifteenth-century readers, especially in scholastic circles; and the appreciation of Boethius’s as well as Dante’s philosophical poetry in Renaissance Tuscany. The study also considers Nerucci’s own contribution to the exegesis of the Commedia as well as of the Consolation and concludes that he was, to some extent, an original interpreter, offering an uncommon reading of Dante and Boethius among Renaissance readers of the Commedia.

Deus sine nomine: Dialectic as a Tool for the Christian Interpretation of Boethius’s Consolatio III, m. 9, by Adalbold of Utrecht

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius was not only widely read during the Middle Ages, but it was also frequently glossed, commented on, and discussed. The ninth poem of the third book, which offers a Platonic image of the creation of the cosmos and the governance over it, had a specific place in the reception of this Boethius’s work. Today we know of numerous debates about the possible interpretations of this poem and its Christian understanding, dating back at least to the 9th century. This paper deals with the commentary on this poem written by Adalbold of Utrecht († 1026). Attention is focused in particular on the role of dialectic in selected passages of this Adalbold’s text and on the inspirational sources of his dialectical knowledge. Specifically, the paper deals with the possibility of definition or description of God (Deus sine nomine), and arguments explaining the appropriateness or inappropriateness of conceptualizing God as the form of the highest good (forma summi boni).

John Walton’s Invention of the Iambic Pentameter

ABSTRACT When Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400, the decasyllable he invented in the late 1370s and raised to prominence in the 1380s and 1390s lay precariously in the hands of scribes and rivals. Of the poets to reform Chaucer’s meter in the first decade of the fifteenth century, John Walton devised the subtlest and most successful alternative to the inherited decasyllable, capitalizing on the full range of formal and grammatical ambiguities in Chaucer’s line and turning them from bugs into features, in an expanding program of new candidate meters. His revision of the decasyllable in De Consolatione Philosophiae (ca. 1410), a verse translation of Boethius and veiled satire on Chaucer’s Boece, uses the decasyllabic resource to fill several vacancies in the scramble for authority following Chaucer’s death.

HAPPINESS ACCORDING TO BOETHIUS’ CONSOLATIO PHILOSOPHIAE

As a philosopher or a lover of philosophy, one wonders whether this area can also be useful in everyday life; whether philosophy also has a reason that leads to happiness. Boethius tried to find the answer to this question in the 6th century through his writing Consolatio Philosophiae. The Lady Philosophy helps the prisoner Boethius see true goodness and choose authentic happiness. In this essay we try to analyze the text of the Consolatio Philosophiae and show how a happy life is possible through philosophy. We go through all the books and analyze the key passages of the Consolatio. At the same time, we follow the state of mind of Boethius and see how far he understands the prospect of happiness. From diagnosing Boethius (as established by Lady Philosophy) as banished in his existence, through understanding Fortuna as an ever-changing goddess, to true happiness, we accompany Boethius in his sorrows and doubts. The last questions of books four and five, the questions of the theodicy, refer to the justification of the philosopher to believe in a God who allows evil in the world and who supposedly does not predestine creation in his foreknowledge. The conclusions are partially redundant. It is up to the individual to decide whether philosophy can be a good companion on the way to eternal happiness. Some prerequisites of Boethian philosophy and theology could be established here.

Flesh Side: Reading Bodies and Boethius in the Yale Girdle Book

ABSTRACT How does the parchment codex inform a text’s meditations on what it is to be bound by and to one’s body? The Yale Girdle Book (New Haven, Beinecke MS 84) contains Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy; it is bound with a soft leather wrapper that, shroud-like, envelops the codex and reveals that it was meant to be worn. Enabled by the material and affective turns and the field of skin studies, I argue that the binding and parchment alter the text in a synergistic, reciprocal relationship that speaks back to the Consolation’s explicit derision of the body. As a girdle book, the manuscript had the first and last word in the reader’s experience of its text. Every step with which it swung and pulled, every slap against its wearer’s thigh, every turn of the page between the reader’s fingers encouraged a process of cooperative unbinding of both the manuscript and the reader’s self, revealing the Consolation’s debt to embodied sensation. The marks left by MS 84’s medieval readers confirm that it exerted interpretive control over its text and that the affective power of the meeting and merging bodies of manuscript and reader is not a figment of modern theory’s imagination.

ІМПЛІЦИТНА КОНЦЕПЦІЯ МУЗИКИ В "DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE" БОЕЦІЯ

The paper is an attempt to demonstrate the possibility and necessity of an implicit conception of music in Boethius. An explicit conception is something that is obviously present in a text. That is what is usually studied within the 'history of ideas'. Contrary to this, an implicit conception is an unconscious picture of the author's world, in which the basic concepts of explicit conception are grounded. Therefore, the implicit conception is a condition for the possibility of any explicit text. So, the well-known text of Boethius' "De institutione musica", which but replicates mostly Pythagorean views of music, is an explicit conception. We chose "De consolatione philosophiae" as the most representative and semantically loaded text by Boethius to look for his implicit conception of music. It is based on different but unconscious grounds. We read this text to look for unconscious semantics associated with the concept. Thus, the unconscious semantics of music should be studied using the psychoanalytic approach in its broadest sense. The approach asks for the cues of connotations of the terms used by Boethius. The history of reception of the text, including different translations, can show the way. We should bear in mind, too, that the text we read is the record of an internal dialogue, which brings forth a different ontological horizon. Besides, we should see the text as a texture of signs and symptoms, pointing to unconscious notions Boethius had developed. The necessity of such an approach and the relevance of the results obtained within it are discussed in the article. The guidelines for the reconstruction of the implicit conception of music in Boethius are outlined and the elements of this conception are proposed. By further development of the method demonstrated and applied in this paper we shall be able not only to understand Boethius better, but we can reveal the intrinsic contents of the basic concepts describing the realities culture scholars are working with.

A New Fragment of Pacuvius in the comparatio Platonis et Plauti and its Reverberation in the Commentary of Remigius of Auxerre on Boethius’ consolatio Philosophiae

A New Fragment of Pacuvius in the comparatio Platonis et Plauti and its Reverberation in the Commentary of Remigius of Auxerre on Boethius’ consolatio Philosophiae

The Consolation of the Topics: Boethius, Dialectic, and a Christian Rhetorical Theory

In response to an era defined by narrative contention and polarized communication, an increasing number of scholars have called for renewed attention to a Christian rhetorical theory. Such a theory would have to enable the Christian rhetor to articulate the definitive goods and values promoted by a Christian narrative, to identify points of difference with competing narratives, and to ground argument within philosophical reasoning that engages universal and transcendent truths. Therefore, this article suggests that a vibrant Christian rhetorical theory must be complemented by dialectic. Through an analysis of the dialectical topics of Boethius in De topicis differentiis alongside his “masterpiece of rhetorical philosophy” (Verene 2020, 333), The Consolation of Philosophy, dialectic is revealed as a valuable aid to the Christian rhetor seeking to ground argument in philosophical reasoning while being responsive to context, contingency, and difference in the current historical moment.

Boethius the Anchorite: The Significance of Place in Consolation of Philosophy

Boethius the Anchorite: The Significance of Place in Consolation of Philosophy

Management of Stress through Philosophical Reflections: Teachings by Boethius (d. 524) for Our Modern Life

While many scholars in the medical and psychological profession offer specific suggestions about how to handle stress and to overcome its negative impact, very few have ever considered philosophical reflections as a critical tool for this problem. One of the greatest moments of stress would certainly be when an individual has to face his/her death penalty and subsequent execution, especially if s/he feels innocent. Already ca. 1.500 years ago, the late antique philosopher Boethius (d. ca. 524) had to answer for himself how to cope with this situation, being imprisoned and waiting for his last terrible moment. When he composed his treatise, The Consolation of Philosophy, he created one of the most influential philosophical reflections on life’s burning issues. This treatise continues to offer fundamental insights into how to come to terms with the conflicts and stresses of human existence, and it is discussed here as a profoundly philosophical answer to stress in universal terms.

Light and Divine Wisdom: An Alternative Interpretation of the Iconography of the Fuller Brooch

AbstractThe Fuller Brooch is considered the earliest English representation of the five senses. The central character, representing sight, is thought to also hold one or more figurative meanings, linked to ideas and concepts that were current in King Alfred’s cultural context. These figurative meanings were presumably meant to be emphasised and clarified by the two objects this figure is holding. So far, however, these have not been satisfactorily interpreted, with most scholars tentatively identifying them as plants or cornucopias. This study makes a case for these objects to be torches, embodying the concept of light, so central in the theme of theoculi mentis‘eyes of the mind’ and in Alfred’s ideas of wisdom and learning. The relevance of divine light in the Alfredian cultural framework emerges clearly from the translations into English of theSoliloquia, of theConsolatio Philosophiaeand of theRegula pastoralis. Evidence also emerges from the iconography of theinluminatio‘illumination’ of theoculi mentisfor the acquisition of divine wisdom featuring in the Utrecht Psalter (and its later copies), and from the iconographical connection between torches, light and God that can be seen in the historiated initial of one of the hymns of the Durham Hymnal.

Foundations for a Humanitarian Economy: Re-thinking Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, written by William D. Bishop

Foundations for a Humanitarian Economy: Re-thinking Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, written by William D. Bishop

Gothic leiþu, “strong drink; fruit wine?” and its Cognates in the Germanic Languages

Gothic <i>leiþu</i>, “strong drink; fruit wine?” and its Cognates in the Germanic Languages