Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
1030147601
Link(s) to full text
LAC copy
Author
Gilchrist, Bruce D,
Title
An earlier axis of transmission for Boethius's Consolatio in Anglo-Saxon England : the evidence of the Cotton Vespasian D.xiv Metra in a diplomatic edition
Degree
Ph. D. -- McGill University, 2018
Publisher
[Montreal] : McGill University Libraries, [2018]
Description
1 online resource
Notes
Thesis supervisor: Dorothy A Bray (Supervisor).
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
"The consensus concerning the reception and study of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae in early England is that as no complete surviving manuscript of Anglo-Saxon provenance dates from earlier than the second half of the tenth century scholars are therefore profoundly limited in positing earlier knowledge of the text. This stricture co-exists, jarringly, with the attribution to King Alfred (d. 899) of two complete translations of the Consolatio into Old English, one entirely in prose, the second prosimetric, as is the original; the attribution is both built into the translations in the form of proems and held by later historians such as Æthelweard and William of Malmesbury. There is thus a scholarly impasse in having an attributed translation exist before a surviving source-text copy available for that same translation; Malcolm Godden has also sought, determ-inedly, to sever the Old English translation of the Consolatio from Alfred's authorship on logical and thematic grounds, thereby indirectly placing it in accord with the later manuscript evidence. Moreover, the Anglo-Saxonist treatment of the Consolatio has largely been filtered through the source-study of the Alfredian translation, particularly in trying to find where the Carolingian commentaries of Auxerre and Sankt Gallen could explain the deviations and expansions present in the Old English versions. This has resulted in a backwards way of looking at the reception of the Consolatio reception in Anglo-Saxon England, and has restricted it to minute and tendentious philosophical argumentation based on glosses and secondary commentary. This thesis, however, aligns the reception of the Consolatio in England with an earlier axis of transmission on the continent, one not of whole copies of the Consolatio studied at the highest level of scholastic interrogation, but one of excerpted metra used for the teaching of metre and for devotional study. This alternate axis, deeply researched by Sam Barrett, is therefore not prima facie philosophical but rather musical and contemplative, treating the metra as holy song in themselves. Yet, Barrett's study, while enormous and diachronic in scope, overlooks a particular manuscript witness in an early tenth-century insular hand because its excerpted metra do not contain musical notation in the form of neumes. Nevertheless, the four Cotton Vespasian D.xiv metra inscribed as an envelope to an early ninth century copy of Isidore's Synonyma, itself a philosophical dialogue as is the Consolatio, should be considered as continuous with this earlier tradition because while their layout on the leaves is varied and appears puzzling, it indeed registers a scribe (or two scribes) who is aware of the individual metrical form of each verse, and who lays each out correspondingly, perhaps even experimentally. This presentation is markedly different from typical continental and later insular manuscripts that level all the metra to a single continuous design, however ornamental or functional it be. The four D.xiv metra should thus be recognized not only as the earliest insular witness of the Consolatio in England, and indeed possibly within the date range of the Alfredian translations (s.ixex/xin) and the king's authorship of the Boethius, but also as song in themselves, for they are verse written as verse. In order to prove these claims, the thesis presents a type facsimile of the D.xiv metra based on eyewitness study and digital photography that reproduces, as faithfully as possible given the partial damage to the leaves, the manuscript context of these previously neglected metres. Though no correspondence is found in terms of shared errors or layout with an earlier or contemporaneous manuscript, thereby limiting claims of common ancestry, the evidence points to these four metra in D.xiv belonging to a particular tradition of reception, one arguing for a metrical--if not philosophical--knowledge of the Consolatio in the post-Alfredian court."--
Other link(s)
digitool.Library.McGill.CA
escholarship.mcgill.ca
escholarship.mcgill.ca
Subject
English