دانلود کتاب "Books Most Necessary": The Literary and Cultural Contexts of Alfred’s Boethius [thesis]

King Alfred’s Old English translation of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy) differs significantly from the original Latin text. Alfred omits much of Boethius’s text and includes material concerning natural history, classical mythology, Roman history, and Christian doctrine. Scholars historically have assumed that Alfred’s additions to his translation were drawn mainly from glosses in his copy of the Consolation, but this assumption is questioned in articles by Joseph Wittig and Janet Bately. Following the conclusions reached by Wittig and Bately, this study presents evidence that Alfred’s additions come from a small group of classical and patristic sources. Comparison of the additions with the most plausible sources identifies the texts Alfred most probably used: Bede’s De natura rerum, Ambrose’s Hexameron, Virgil’s Aeneid and Georgies along with Servius’s commentary on them, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Eutropius’s Breviarium ab urbe condita, Orosius’s Historiarum adversus paganos libri VII, Gregory’s Homilia XXXIV in Evangelia, and biblical wisdom literature. The final chapter argues that Alfred adapts Boethius’s text using these sources in order to celebrate divine wisdom rather than human philosophy and to compare the Anglo-Saxons favorably with the Romans. In doing so, Alfred consciously figures himself as a wise and effective ruler after the biblical example of King Solomon.