De Consolatione Research Articles

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.

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.

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

The Ordeal of a Sixth-Century Josef K: Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae as a Modernist Drama

In recent scholarship, several views have been propounded on the argumentative inconsistencies in Boethius’ De consolatione Philosophiae&amp;nbsp;and the inconclusiveness of its ending. In this article, it is argued that modern scholars still, perhaps unconsciously, adhere to aristotelian concepts of unity, coherence, and closure, which may not be helpful in assessing what Boethius is really trying to say. When analysed from a perspective usually associated with modernist literature, it becomes clear that Boethius’ swan song is neither a deconstruction of “pagan” philosophy nor an implicit plea for Christian spirituality but a an existential drama in which religion and philosophy do not provide any consolation.

Boecjusza idea duszy i poznania Boga na podstawie dzieła De consolatione filosofiae

Boecjusza idea duszy i poznania Boga na podstawie dzieła De consolatione filosofiae

Peculiarità cristiana della nozione di male in Boezio

This article proposes the philosophical analysis of the concept of evil in Boethius, and the identification of its Christian distinctiveness. Which does not constitute a break with the Platonic tradition; it was precisely the constant confrontation with Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophers that allowed Boethius to realise an original model of Christian philosophy. The text will proceed with the identification of the sources, both Neo-Platonic and Christian, and among the latter especially the Augustinian ones. The comparison with Augustine will be addressed in the last paragraph. The result will be an understanding of evil dialectically elaborated with Neo-Platonic material, but respectful of the precipitous demands of Christian doctrine, and augmented by the reflection of evangelical ideals, as a moment of the broad and original synthesis of philosophy and Christianity offered by the De Consolatione Philosophiae.

The ‘Ventriloquism’ of Logoi in the Old English Prose Psalms and ‘Boethius’

ABSTRACT In Old English literature, the actual presence of classical lore is relatively limited. The major conduit of Greek and Roman thought was transmitted to Anglo-Saxon England via Boethius' De Consolatione philosophiae. I will read the Old English Boethius (an Old English translation/adaptation of the sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius) as a piece of early English theology and address the polyphony of the divine voice in the light of patristic ideas about theosis. The presence of integumentum is enveloping the text in mystery and providing a clue to the interpretation. It is Heavenly Wisdom that teaches her best pupil Boethius dispassion towards both worldly sorrows and worldly felicities. In the allegorical dialogue between Wisdom and Boethius/Mod, the background ‘chorus of voices' suggests the possibility of a ‘demonstrably Alfredian' heteroglossia, whilst the Alfred-persona himself becomes the vehicle of the Logos, inviting the reader to mediate ‘the drops of the night’.

Un volgarizzamento in terza rima del colloquio tra Didone e Anna (Aen. IV, 1-55).

These pages contain the first published edition of La reina, con grave fiamma incesa, a vernacular dialogue in Dantesque terza rima between Dido and her sister Anna based on Book IV of the Aeneid (vv. 1-55). The work exists in just one late-14th century manuscript (MS II.IV.248) housed at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence, and it is the first in a series of four texts present in the manuscript that comprise four distinct moments in the broader context of deprecatio amoris. The decision made by this anonymous author to reinterpret the tragic story of Dido and Aeneas using the vernacular and terza rima reflects a choice previously implemented by Alberto della Piagentina for his vernacular edition of Boethius’ De consolatione (1322-1332), the highest auctoritas on the elegiac style. Thus, the text in question is of particular interest in relation to developments in the 14th century vernacular elegy before it came to be codified as a genre in its own right.

The Past, the Present, and the Future: Memory and Literature as Gateways from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century With a focus on Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival

The Past, the Present, and the Future: Memory and Literature as Gateways from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century With a focus on Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival

Jerome’s Contra Johannem and ps.-Basil’s De consolatione in adversis on resurrection and disability

Jerome’s Contra Johannem and ps.-Basil’s De consolatione in adversis on resurrection and disability

Chaucer’s Amoral Lyrics

Abstract Scholarship on Chaucer’s “Boethian lyrics” continues to show the discrepancy between their moral and political ambiguities on one hand and the fixed precepts of their source text, De consolatione philosophiae, by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (d. 524), on the other. While Chaucer’s “The Former Age,” “Fortune,” “Truth,” “Gentilesse,” and “Lak of Stedfastnesse” revive topics first raised in the sixth-century treatise, they trade philosophy’s universalist consolations for a contingent morality suitable for the political instability of Ricardian England. Recent treatments of the lyrics have read in the poems a resistance to the external and oppressive moral and political systems for which Philosophy and Fortune stand. Another option remains, however, for functioning within Fortune’s world order. This essay explores how the lyrics’ contradictions of form and content undermine their own calls for polite behavior and just rule. In doing so, they artfully imagine bolder subversions of Fortune’s regime by willfully embracing her tactics.

Aspetti della subordinazione completiva nel De consolatione philosophiae di Boezio*

Summary:This paper aims at describing some of the main structural and functional characteristics of completive clauses governed by verba dicendi et sentiendi in Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae. The characteristics of the use of the Accusativus cum Infinitivo (AcI) will be analysed in comparison with the uses of other Latin authors. The data will be described on the basis of two main aspects: constituent order, and the coreferentiality of the subject of the AcI with elements in the main clause. Compared to the predominance of AcI constructions, quod-clauses show a consistent pattern and are limited to well- defined contexts. Some aspects of the use of quin and ut will also be described. Special attention will be given to the problems of syntactic and semantic interpretation of the governing verbs, which can be difficult to define clearly. This study will also set the ground for further research on the influence of Boethius's Latin model on Italo-Romance literary texts in the Middle Ages, both on the syntactic and the stilistic level.

Primi cenni sul fondo degli incunaboli della Biblioteca Diocesana di Aosta: con una precisazione bibliografica su un’edizione lionese e il ritrovamento di una cinquecentina italiana sconosciuta

Aosta’s Biblioteca Diocesana owns a collection of about 150 incunabula wich have been cataloged in the middle of the last century. The section has been recently reexamined and all the provenance informations are now available in Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) database. The activity has made possible to identify ancient owners of incunbula now in the library and helped the study about the circulation of book in Aosta Valley. The research also led to discovery a unknown sixteenth-century edition, which is here described and assigned to the typography of Johann Besicken. A bibliographical revision of the description of a fifteenth-century edition of De consolatione philosophiae printed in Lyons by Guillaume Le Roy is also given.

АНАТОМІЯ ЕМОЦІЙ І ПОЧУТТІВ У ТЕКСТІ "DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE" БОЕЦІЯ

The article analyses a number of the locations of emotions and related to them emotional words and feelings using the philosophical text of Boethius, a prominent philosopher and translator of Late Antiquity, "De consolatione philosophiae". The declared work has a significant informative potential in relation to the emotional sphere, due to the circumstances of its creation, accompanied by a significant number of emotional reflections made by Boethius, and the chosen genre (the combination of consolatio and protreptics). The ancient emotional tradition left its mark on the Boethius' perception of emotional locations, directing it to the non-monocentric localisation of feelings in different parts of the human physical, spiritual and mental system. The main seats of the emotions are: mind (mens), animus, soul (anima), heart (cor), body (corpus). Among the above-mentioned emotional localisations, the dominant role is played by the mind (mens) both in quantitative (10) and semantic indicators. In the Boethius's worldview, the mind is associated, firstly, with the philosopher's mental health, his ability to maintain calm behaviour in the face of life's disasters, and, secondly, with the concept of the similarity of the human beings to God by their minds. There are both negative (passionate desire, hope, joy, anger, etc.) and positive (joy of heaven, desire for good) feelings in the mind. The second most important emotional location is animus (7), in which the central positive feelings (love and positive hope) are inspired, meeting only in pair with animus. We hypothesise that the latter is perceived by Boethius as an analogue of the Platonic and Christian "soul", the leading centre of spiritual human potentials. Similarly, positive and negative (anger, sorrow, passions, etc.) emotions arise and influence it. The last two locations indicate the physical nature of human – body and heart – and concentrate only on negative emotions – pleasure and passionate desire. Conclusions are made that most emotions have the external nature in relation to men, which correlates to the Stoic emotional tradition.

Creative Practice and the Limits of Knowledge in Reconstructing Lost Songs from Boethius’s On the Consolation of Philosophy

This study seeks to reconstruct the music for Boethius’s final and most widely read work, On the Consolation of Philosophy. Although a handful of neumations for Boethius’s thirty-nine poems have long been known, the almost complete absence of surviving pitched versions of the melodies has hindered the task of reconstruction. Following a systematic study of neumed manuscripts dating from the ninth to the eleventh centuries and identification of underlying principles of melodic design, it is now possible to attempt informed reconstructions. Even so, the leap from scholarship to modern performance remains substantial, involving a preliminary need to recreate melodies through experimentation. Collaboration with members of the ensemble Sequentia over a four-year period (2014–17) provided an opportunity to explore ways in which creative practice might supplement scholarly knowledge, whether through posing new research questions, the formation and exploration of hypotheses, or recourse to memorized practices built up through sustained engagement with early medieval repertories and instruments. Taking a recovered mid eleventh-century leaf of the Cambridge Songs as a focus for investigation, songs from the first book of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae were newly reconstructed. Although debate continues to surround the status of results obtained through creative practice, comparison with the way other disciplines have proceeded under similar conditions reveals acceptance of experimentation as a mode of inquiry. This essay proposes that performance can fruitfully supplement philology in seeking to reconstruct lost songs from notated traces.

Nowe wydania – stare podręczniki. Kilka uwag o akademickim Sępie

Autor, nawiązując do obecności myśli Boecjusza („O pocieszeniu, jakie daje filozofia”) w poezji Sępa-Szarzyńskiego (ok. 1550–ok 1581), wskazuje na obecność Modelu (C.S. Lewis), arystotelesowskiej wizji kosmosu (E. Grant) w jego twórczości, konsekwentnie pomijanego w podręczniki akademickim Czesława Hernasa, wcześniej zaś w książce Jana Błońskiego. Nieobecność ta prowadzi do mylących interpretacji, zwłaszcza w kontekście teologicznego wymiaru tej poezji. Prowadziła także do kontrowersyjnego statusu poety w historii dawnej literatury polskiej. Sęp podejmuje tradycję korzystania z wyobrażeń Modelu, jeszcze pogańskich, w interesie treści religijnych, swej wiary. Model oparty na doktrynie Arystotelesa przynosi pewność, wzmacnia, nie osłabia wiarę.

Johann Scheffler (Angelus Silesius): The Silesian Mystic as a Boethian Thinker. Universal Insights, Ancient Wisdom, and Baroque Perspectives

This paper offers an analysis of a number of the fascinating, thought-provoking, and yet often deeply puzzling epigrams by the German Baroque poet Johann Scheffler (Angelus Silesius), and illustrates how his enigmatic mystical concepts were influenced, to some extent, by the philosophical thoughts offered by the late antique statesman and thinker Boethius (d. 525). While recent research has already reached new insights into the long-term reception history of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae well into the modern age, including by Scheffler, we still face the critical desideratum to determine the meaning of Scheffler’s spiritual insights in direct correlation with Boethius’s fundamental teachings, and hence, to answer the intriguing and challenging question of why Scheffler, along with Boethius, continues to speak to us today, and this perhaps more than ever before. Even though Scheffler pursued deeply religious questions typical of his time, he obviously greatly profited from Boethius’s musings about the meaning of the absolute Goodness, the vagaries of fortune, and the instability of all material existence in the quest for happiness. Many times we observe that Scheffler offers paradoxical and also apophatic statements, but those make surprisingly astounding sense if we read them, especially in light of Boethius’s teachings, as perceived in the seventeenth century. The epigrams thus prove to be the prolific outcome of universal cross-fertilizations and demonstrate the continued impact of antiquity on the modern world and the growing need today to accept the notion of “world literature” not only in a contemporary, transcultural perspectives, but also in terms of universal interactions throughout time.

Boethius and No End in Sight

Previous scholarship has not considered the continued interest in the philosophical teachings by Boethius (d. 525) by early modern thinkers and poets. This article traces the continued flood of translations and editions of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae in Germany far into the seventeenth century and then unearths links between his philosophy and the sonnets by Andreas Gryphius and the epigrams by Johann Scheffler (Angelus Silesius). At first sight, we might not even recognize Boethian ideas in their poems, but the close analysis of images and concepts formulated in these German Baroque texts demonstrate strong similarities. Considering that Boethius was one of the important school authors even in the seventeenth century, it does not surprise us to discover direct echoes of his ideas in these literary reflections.

Intimacy, Interdependence, and Interiority in the Old English Prose Boethius

This article explores voice in the prose (B Text) version of the Old English Boethius. It argues that the Old English Boethius transforms the Socratic dialogue of its main Latin source, Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, into an interdependent dialogue focused on the inner life. This transformation of the Old English Boethius fits into two categories: first, the initial split of voices that refocuses the first two-thirds of the text on Boethius’s mod; and second, the expansion of direct address to the audience by Wisdom. The Old English Boethius can, therefore, be read as a distinctly Anglo-Saxon philosophical pursuit, where the path to God is through the development of interdependent relationships.

Francisco de Castilla, Boethius and the Search for True Happiness

Abstract Francisco de Castilla published his treatise on the virtues, Teórica de virtudes, in 1518. The influence of Boethius' most famous work, De consolatione philosophiae, on medieval literature and imagery is well known. The connection of the four poems in Teórica to Boethius has not been studied. This lack of attention may be due solely to an ignorance of Castilla's poetic output. Castilla's case is noteworthy because he mentions Boethius by name several times, recreates De consolatione philosophiae in “Diálogo entre la Miseria humana y el Consuelo” and includes Lady Philosophy as a character in “Inquisición de la felicidad.” This work investigates the relationship between De consolatione and Teórica and how Castilla learns to express the finding of true happiness in Boethian terms.