The Old English Boethius boldly refashions in Anglo-Saxon guise a great literary monument of the late-antique world, The Consolation of Philosophy. Condemned to death for treason around 525 ce, the Ro
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, written in Latin around 525 A.D., was to become one of the most influential literary texts of the Middle Ages. The Old English prose translation and adaptation w
Shows how Alfred the Great's translations of Latin works exposed Anglo-Saxon elites to classical learning and Christian thought while bringing prestige to the king and his West Saxon dialect.
The forty-fifth volume of Anglo-Saxon England focusses on various aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and history from the seventh to the seventeenth century. In the field of Old English literature, contributions examine a ninth-century homily fragment, The Dream of the Rood, The Seafarer, and the Old English translation of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae. A contribution which explores references to the senses in a wide range of vernacular texts is complemented by another which reconsiders the iconography of the Fuller Brooch. The network of fortifications recorded in the Burghal Hidage is re-interpreted here as a product of political developments in the later 870s; and a new edition of the 'Ely memoranda' reminds us that the religious houses of the tenth and eleventh centuries functioned also as major agricultural estates. Finally, the contribution of seventeenth-century antiquaries to the development of Anglo-Saxon studies is remembered in a study of an early Anglo-Saxon Grammar.
