Chaucer's Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius (Chaucer Studies, 18)

by Alastair J. Minnis (Editor)

Chaucer's translation of Boethius' work is related to medieval intellectual culture, with attention to Trevet's Boethius commentary.

This collection seeks to locate the Boece within the medievaltradition of the academic study and translation of the Consolatiophilosophiae, thereby relating the work to the intellectual culturewhich made it possible.It begins with the fullest study yet undertakenof the Boethius commentary of Nicholas Trevet, this being a majorsource of the Boece. There follow editions and translationsof the major passages in Trevet's commentary whereNeoplatonic issuesare confronted, then Chaucer's debt to Trevet is assessed in a detailedreview. The many choices which faced Chaucer as a translator are indicated and the Boeceis placed in a long line of interpreters of Boethius in which both Latin commentators and vernacular translators played their parts. Finally, a view is offered of the Boece as anexample of late-medieval `academic translation': if the Boeceis assigned to this genre, it may be judged a considerable success.

213 pages, Hardcover

First published June 24, 1993

About the author

Alastair J, Minnis, born in 1948, is a Northern Irish literary critic and historian of ideas who has written extensively about medieval literature, and contributed substantially to the study of late-medieval theology and philosophy.

Minnis has held the post of the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale University since 2008.

"Characteristically, my research methodology brings together reading strategies from literary criticism and the history of ideas, and an interest in medieval philosophy and theology has informed much of my work. My latest monograph is From Eden to Eternity: Creations of Paradise in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)"