IN SEARCH OF LITERARY SOURCES OF DIALOGUE «DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE» BY SEVERIN BOETHIUS

The paper examines the literature basic of Severin Boethius work «The Consolation of Philosophy». The author starts with the historical context of the appearance of the text and then goes to consider its variety of literary genres and forms. Main of them are satura Menippea, consolation, protreptic, soliloquy and dialogue. Textual and conceptual analyses have relieved the connection between Boethius’s «The Consolation» and the works of other famous authors of Antiquity among them there are Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, and St. Augustine. As a connoisseur of Antiquity, Boethius uses literature to explain his philosophical ideas. In addition, the author of the article suggests an analytical review of the image of the Lade Philosophy in «Consolation». The genealogy of this literary character refers to the Greek mythology, Plato’s «Symposium» and «Crito» dialogues, Martianus Capella’s work «On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury» and Augustine’s the literary image of St. Monika. The article reconstructs an epistemological methodology of Boethius’s Neoplatonic dialogue that consists of five stages and describes a therapeutic role of philosophy in the traditions of Plato and Stoics. The essence of this role is a mind therapy. Philosophy teaches us to see the world as a whole, to describe it in clear notions and judgments. According to the text of «Consolation», Boethius takes us to make an intellectual Neoplatonic climbing from practical (ethic) to theoretical (metaphysic) philosophy – from vita activa to vita speculativa. The main aim or the top of this Neoplatonic meditation is a contemplative life or reminding own Ego. The great ideas of this work have the significant influence on Medieval and Renaissance philosophy and literature.

Some Boethian Themes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

There appear to be quite a few parallels between Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy (Consolatio Philosophiae), and they seem to concern particularly, though not only, the character drawing in Tolkien’s book. Those parallels are preeminently connected with the fact that both Boethius and Tolkien like to think of the most extreme situations that can befall a human. And both are attached to the idea of not giving in to despair, and of finding a source of hope in seemingly desperate straits. The idea that there is some link between Boethius and Tolkien is naturally not new. T.A. Shippey talks about it in his The Road to Middle Earth, but he concentrates on the Boethian conception of good and evil, which is also of course an important matter, but surely not the only one that links Tolkien and Boethius. On the other hand, it is not my intention to claim that there is something in Tolkien’s book of which it can be said that it would have been absolutely impossible without Boethius. Still, I think it may be supposed that just like Boethian motifs are natural in the medieval literature of the West, so they can be thought of as natural in the work of such dedicated a medievalist as J.R.R. Tolkien.

Tale and Parable: Theorizing Fictions in the Old English Boethius

Scholarship has often considered the concept of fiction a modern phenomenon. But the Old English Boethius teaches us that medieval people could certainly tell that a fictional story was a lie, although it was hard for them to explain why it was all right that it was a lie—this is the problem the Old English Boethius addresses for the first time in the history of the English language. In translating Boethius's sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy, the ninth-century Old English Boethius offers explanatory comments on its source's narrative exempla drawn from classical myth. While some of these comments explain stories unfamiliar to early medieval English audiences, others consider how such “false stories” may be read and experienced by those properly prepared to encounter them. In so doing, the Old English Boethius must adopt and adapt a terminology for fiction that is unique in the extant corpus of Old English writing.

The Crisis (Musical Staves)

This chapter begins with the musical stages that accompany Dante’s ballata in an early twentieth-century English translation. Although the music is a modern fabrication, it calls attention to the distinctive form of the ballata which Dante considers defective in the De vulgari eloquentia because it requires the kind of musical accompaniment these staves provide. This chapter examines how this formal defect also encodes a thematic problem of relying on Beatrice’s greeting. This chapter shows how Dante deals with this crisis through the praise style expressed in the self-sufficient (not defective) form of the canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto. While the canzone’s significance has been widely recognized, this chapter shows how Dante’s expression of this new idea of love by plotting these different poetic forms draws on the two books he read after Beatrice’s death, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and Cicero’s De amicitia. The final section discusses how several later readers transformed and even erased Dante’s innovative idea of love.

The Decameron: On the Possibility of Love During Self-Isolation

This article in the genre of the consolation of philosophy deals with the COVID-19 pandemic as a new superphenomenal experience marked by an extremely intense experience of one’s vulnerability and finiteness as well as by problematization of our previous ideas of a human being. The author offers a way to understand our situation and find solace by starting with the performative paradox of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, which contains one of the most famous descriptions of the plague and remains one of the most cheerful and life-enhancing texts in European literature. The article shows that, contrary to the common belief, the consolation offered in the The Decameron is not reduced merely to telling stories that entertain and distract us from tales of grief. Nor is it reduced to the invention of social practices for building a new and more perfect society, although all this, as the author shows, is undoubtedly there in the text and has a beneficial effect. The Decameron’s consolation ultimately consists of the assumption that man himself has metaphysical depths in his incomprehensible (although it is fully embodied in the Decameron) and impossible potential for lovingly accepting the reality of the world as a blessed Gift, to think of eventfulness itself as a gift. The article argues that the anthropology on which Boccaccio’s utopia is based is that of the feast or symposium understood in the spirit of the Platonic-Christian tradition. The author hopes that Boccaccio’s anthropological optics, designed to overcome the pessimism of reason and affirm the optimism of will and faith, can help the reader find meaning and joy in the midst of the suffering and death which are the irrevocable framework of life. This consolation can be heard in the cheerful voice of Boccaccio, which comes to us from faraway plague-ridden Florence and offers us his prescription for healing the “wounds of being.”

Philosophy, Logic, and Nominalism

This chapter attempts a reappraisal of the philosophical nature of Chaucer’s writings and sketches the philosophical currents that may have formed the intellectual background of his poetry, in particular medieval nominalism and realism. A brief outline of fourteenth-century English philosophy assesses the nature and content of contemporary debates, offering insights on the kind of philosophical knowledge that may have been accessible to Chaucer. An overview of nominalism and realism follows, exploring in particular the differing views these two currents had of the signification of singular and general terms, and of the status of scientific knowledge. This part also scrutinizes some of the traditional arguments for nominalism and realism in Chaucer’s poetry. Chaucer’s use of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is key to the last section, which focuses on the question, extensively debated during the fourteenth century, of human agency and more precisely the possible compatibility of human freedom and divine foreknowledge.

Logic and Mathematics

Chaucer is known as a philosophical poet. He translated Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy from Latin to English. Do his works reveal familiarity with what went on in philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge universities in the fourteenth century? The chapter summarizes typical features of the work of the so-called ‘Oxford Calculators’ (also known as the ‘Merton School’) and contemporary philosophers at the University of Paris (who, together, may be called the fourteenth-century ‘moderni’) and contrasts these features with the work of John Wyclif, which became influential later in the fourteenth century. Among the features considered are disputations on sophismata, use of the logica moderna and technical measure languages, demonstrative reasoning, and optimism about the capabilities of scientific disciplines. Resonating more with Wycliffites are negative images of clerics.