Power, skill and virtue in the Old English Boethius

Anglo-Saxon England

Volumn 26, Issue , 1997, Pages 81-108

  Discenza, Nicole Guenther ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 63149110922     PISSN: 14740532     EISSN: 14740532     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s026367510000212x     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. 'sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense': King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet, 2 vols. EETS os 45 and 50 (London, 1871)
2. King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius De consolatione Philosophiae, ed. W. J. Sedgefield (Oxford, 1899). Abbreviations have been expanded and brackets and italics omitted
3. For a good summary of these issues, with bibliography, see S. Bassnett, Translation Studies (London, 1980)
4. Polysystems Theory proved very fruitful in this study; see G. Toury's In Search of a Theory of Translation (Tel Aviv, 1980)
5. See G. Toury, 'Translational Solutions and Translational Relations: Towards a Description of Translated Texts', in his In Search of a Theory of Translation, pp. 102-6
6. These works have long been attributed to Alfred, except the psalms; for those, see J. M. Bately, 'Lexical Evidence for the Authorship of the Prose Psalms in the Paris Psalter', ASE 10 (1982), 69-95
7. Bede and Or, once thought Alfred's, are now ascribed to anonymous translators; see Bately's 'Old English Prose before and during the Reign of Alfred', ASE 17 (1988), 93-138. The translations were probably composed in the order given above, although the date of the psalms is less certain. See below, p. 91, n. 52
8. See O. Fischer, 'A Comparative Study of the Philosophical Terms in the Alfredian and Chaucerian Boethius', Neophilologus 63 (1979), 622-39
9. J. M. Bately, 'An Alfredian Legacy? On the Fortunes and Fate of Some Items of Boethian Vocabulary in Old English', From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies presented to E. G. Stanley, ed. M. Godden, D. Gray and T. Hoad (Oxford, 1994), pp. 8-32
10. M. R. Godden, 'Anglo-Saxons on the Mind', Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 271-98
11. and K. Otten, König Alfreds Boethius, Studien zur englischen Philologie ns 3 (Tübingen, 1964), esp. 158-86
12. S. Kroesch, 'The Semantic Development of OE Cræft', MP 26 (1928-9), 433-41, sketches its development briefly
13. O. Fischer mentions it in 'A Comparative Study' at pp. 636-7
14. S. J. Hitch treats it briefly in 'Alfred's Cræft: Imagery in Alfred's Version of Augustine's Soliloquies', Jnl of the Dept of Eng., Univ. of Calcutta (1986-7), pp. 130-47 but concentrates on other images
15. A. C. Amos concludes, in Linguistic Means of Determining the Dates of Old English Literary Texts (Cambridge, MA, 1980), that very few linguistic tests accurately date poems and most of the corpus must remain undated
16. R. D. Fulk argues in his History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia, PA, 1992) that while individual tests may not be conclusive, a combination of tests can date many poetic texts with precision and accuracy. Fulk's work remains controversial, however, and the dates which he assigns to poems have not been universally accepted. Moreover, he does not date many texts in which the word cræft occurs because they offer too small a sample for his tests or because they are prose. Thus this study does not use linguistic dating methods
17. The Dictionary of Old English, Fascicle C (Toronto, 1988), p. 837
18. Clemoes, 'King Alfred's Debt', p. 231
19. 'It seemed to him that he had more strength and power of war-companions than the holy God might have': The Junius Manuscript, ed. G. P. Krapp, ASPR 1 (New York, 1931), 11. Unless noted otherwise, citations of poetry are from ASPR. All translations are my own
20. See also the discussion by P. P. O'Neill, below, pp. 139-68
21. Dictionary, p. 837
22. Ælfric's Colloquy, ed. G. N. Garmonsway (London, 1939)
23. The Concordance includes: Die angelsächsischen Prosabearbeitungen der Benediktinerregel, ed. A. Schröer, repr. with appendix by H. Gneuss, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 2 (Darmstadt, 1964)
24. and Bischof Warferths von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, ed. H. Hecht (Leipzig, 1900-7)
25. see Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892-9) I, 118-20
26. The Dictionary, pp. 843-4
27. See Girsch, 'A Semantic Analysis', esp. pp. 262-311, on Ælfric
28. Byrhtferth's Enchiridion, ed. P. S. Baker and M. Lapidge, EETS ss 15 (Oxford, 1995)
29. Käsmann, Studien zum kirchlichen Wortschatz p. 243
30. H. Gneuss, Lehnbildungen und Lehnbedeutungen im Altenglischen (Berlin, 1955) offers megen, mægen as the usual translation for virtus and does not mention cræft (p. 72)
31. See also M. Gretsch, Die Regula Sancti Benedicti in England (Munich, 1973), pp. 347-9
32. Bosworth-Toller, mægen, p. 655
33. The Vespasian Psalter, ed. S. M. Kuhn (Ann Arbor, MI, 1965)
34. N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), no. 203
35. 'Alas, how happy was that former age of the earth, when the produce of the earth seemed enough for each.'
36. see Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth (Ithaca, NY, 1994), p. 43
37. and C.J. Starnes, 'Boethius and the Development of Christian Humanism: The Theology of the Consolation', in Congresso internazionale di studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980), ed. L. Obertello (Rome, 1981), pp. 27-38
38. G. O'Daly lists some possible Christian influences on Boethius, particularly the psalms, in The Poetry of Boethius (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), p. 59
39. O'Daly, The Poetry of Boethius, p. 44
40. Hitch, 'Alfred's Craft, p. 144
41. See H. Gneuss, 'A Preliminary List of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1100', ASE 9 (1981), 1-60. Gneuss lists a handful of works or fragments by Martianus Capella and Porphyry and glosses on them (nos. 48, 67, 96, 127 and 795) that are of tenth-century date or earlier; there is no evidence for use or general knowledge of them. Nothing in any form by Aristotle or Plato, the two philosophers named in the De consolatione, are among Gneuss's items
42. J. D. A. Ogilvy finds two references to Aristotle (Books Known to the English, 597-1066 (Cambridge, MA, 1967), p. 77) but concludes that Alcuin's mention of Aristotle probably refers to the pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae Decem and that the Worcester booklist's Kategoriae is probably Boethian
43. See, for example, B. Tierney and S. Painter, 'Carolingian Culture', Western Europe in the Middle Ages 300-1475 (New York, 1983), pp. 141-5
44. For the Carolinginan Reform and education in particular, see P. Riché, Education et culture dans l'Occident barbare (Paris, 1962)
45. J. L. Nelson, 'The Political Ideas of Alfred of Wessex', Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (London, 1993), pp. 125-58, at 129
46. For Alfred's use of Carolingian precedents, see Frantzen, King
47. For his recruitment of continental scholars, see S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, Alfred the Great: Asset's Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 26-8
48. W. F. Bolton, 'How Boethian is Alfred's Boethius?', Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. P. E. Szarmach (Albany, NY, 1986), pp. 153-68, argues that Alfred was well aware of the details of the programme and particularly Alcuin's role in it, and specifically imitated the thinking of his expatriate countryman. One need not accept all his points to see that Bolton does argue convincingly for a conscious imitation at least of parts of the Carolingian plan
49. D. P. Kirby, 'Asser and His Life of King Alfred', Studia Celtica 6 (1971), 12-35
50. and M. Schütt, 'The Literary Form of Asser's "Vita Alfredi"', EHR 72 (1957), 209-30
51. See especially A. Lefevere, 'Why Waste Our Time on Rewrites? The Trouble with Interpretation and the Role of Rewriting in an Alternative Paradigm', The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, ed. T Hermans (New York, 1985), pp. 215-43
52. Hitch, 'Alfred's Cræft', p. 144