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

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. This article analyzes only the prose B Text, primarily due to spatial considerations. While Weaver (2016) has convincingly argued that the two versions of the Old English Boethius conceptually function as a whole (two interdependent parts of an opus geminatum), the separate reception history of the two versions allows such a concentrated analysis. All references to the B Text are from Godden and Irvine (2009), hereafter referred to as the OEB. All references from the edition will be given with volume number and page number (e.g. I. 25), and all translations come from this text. All references to Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae are taken from Moreschini (2000), though compared with Bieler (1984) when relevant, and will hereafter be referred to as the DCP. References to the DCP will follow standard convention, with book number followed by chapter, designation of prose or verse, and line number (e.g. 1p2.5 or 3m3). All translations are taken from Walsh (1999, reissue 2008), and will be given by page number, unless otherwise indicated.

  2. See, for example, Discenza (2005, 70): ‘the phrasing becomes consistently more personal in the Old English: instead of having objective, logical relationships, the steps in the argument exist in relation to the speakers. When the Latin argues in the third person or in impersonal terms, the Old English often employs the second person’; see also Waterhouse (1986, 47–48), Payne (1968, 116), Discenza (2015, 205), and Pavlinich (2016).

  3. See Lenz (2012, 67–92), for a discussion of interiority in the Old English Metres of Boethius. See also Thomas (1988), for a discussion of the importance of friendship as an ideal in the prosimetric OEB. She highlights how the interpolations in the Old English text connect to notions of false and true friendship, and the way in which God orders the world through friendship.

  4. See also Mize (2006, 57–90) for a discussion of the representation of mind in Old English poetry, and Low (2001, 11–22), who highlights the polysemous nature of these mental terms.

  5. For a recent study of the close relationship between translation and glossing in the OEB, see Hobson (2017).

  6. See Lockett (2011, 315–326), for further discussion of these terms.

  7. See Godden and Irvine (2009, II. 248–249).

  8. See Crawford (1999, 123–138) for discussion of fosterage in Anglo-Saxon England. I am here taking the term at its most expansive, including all forms of fosterage, but focusing on the intimate nature of the bond created in such situations. Crawford gives the example of St Cuthbert from the anonymous Vita S. Cuthberti, where the saint still calls his foster-mother ‘mother’ in his adulthood, and saves her house from a fire. Irvine (2018, 202–221) argues convincingly for the central role of fostering in the OEB, and how the text explores the benefits and dangers in foster-relationships. While there is clear tension between Wisdom and mod, she argues that mod does gradually ‘come to acknowledge the sympathy and mutuality of interests that define the ideal foster-relationship’ (217). What is relevant to this study, is that the foster-relationship is figured as a powerful and intimate one, whose ideal realization points to the interdependent relationship between Wisdom and mod.

  9. Discenza (2015, 205) also notes how Philosophy ‘appears unmoved by his [Boethius’s] laments […] even saying that she cannot bear his complaints’.

  10. See Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus.

  11. Moreschini (2000, 2p7.1).

  12. See Godden (2003, 145).

  13. Godden and Irvine (2009, II. 333, nt. 22.1–3). Lerer (1985; repr. 2014, 123) highlights a change in the Boethius figure’s vocal status in 3p1 of the DCP: ‘By the opening of Book three, still in silence, the prisoner finds a voice which can successfully initiate dialogue […] For the first time in the Consolation it is the prisoner who willingly breaks a silence without waiting for Philosophy’s goad’. This change in vocal status is, however, distinct from the OEB’s reunification of mod and the Boethius figure.

  14. Mod still speaks in Chs. 22 and 24; see Godden and Irvine (2009, I. 287–89). Discenza (2015, 207) notes ten uses of Boethius’s name in the body of the text, excluding ‘references to Boethius as author at book breaks’. The only other instance, however, in which Wisdom addresses Boethius by his own name occurs in Ch. 27; see Godden and Irvine (2009).

  15. OE, 262, ll. 56–59 = DCP, 2p4.23; OE, 265, ll. 7–9 = DCP 2p5.2, 6–11; OE, 268, ll. 61–67, and 268–69, ll. 68–90 = DCP, 2p5.23–29; OE, 272–73, ll. 38–52 = DCP, 2p6.4–5; OE, 294, ll. 1–8 = DCP, 3p3.1; OE, 296, ll. 74–76 = DCP, 3p3.19; OE, 301, ll. 16–19 = DCP, 3p5.3; OE, 308–10, ll. 34–76 = DCP, 3p8.8–12 (line numbers from Godden and Irvine 2009).

  16. For different passages, see the following (line numbers from Godden and Irvine 2009): OE, 271–72, ll. 1–8 = DCP, 2p6.1; OE, 272, ll. 33–38 = not in DCP, see Godden and Irvine 2009, II. 309–10; OE, 281, ll. 103–8 = DCP, 2p7.19; OE, 305, ll. 45–50 = DCP, 3m6.7–9; OE, 330, ll. 8–11 = DCP, 3m11.7–8 (see also Godden and Irvine 2009, II. 402, nt. to 221); OE, 358, ll. 1–7 = DCP, 4m4.1–6 (see also Godden and Irvine 2009, II. 455–56); OE, 372, ll. 61–71 = DCP 4m7; OE, 381–82, ll. 46–55 = DCP, 5p6.47–48.

  17. There is also a clear echo here to the second half of Romans 12:9, ‘odientes malum, adhaerentes bono’ (‘hating that which is evil, and clinging to that which is good’).

  18. Godden and Irvine (2009, II. 481, commentary for Ch. 40).

  19. See Godden and Irvine (2009, II. 480, commentary for Ch. 40). See further Hobson (2017).

  20. See Godden and Irvine (2009, II. 309–10, commentary for Ch. 16).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Malcolm Godden, Susan Irvine, Francis Leneghan, Winfried Rudolf, Daniel Thomas, Hannah Bailey, Stefany Wragg, and Helen Appleton for their helpful comments in the development of this paper.

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  1. English Department, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Kuykendall Hall 402, 1733 Donaggho Road, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Britton Brooks

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Brooks, B. Intimacy, Interdependence, and Interiority in the Old English Prose Boethius. Neophilologus 102, 525–542 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-018-9559-7

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