Book Description

In these poems, King Alfred re-built the Latin verses from Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae (`On the Consolation of Philosophy') into new alliterative poems, via an Old English prose intermediary. The stirring images and stories of Boethius' original are retained - streams, legends, animals, volcanoes - and developed for an Anglo-Saxon audience to include the Gothic invasion of Italy (Metre 1), the figure of Welland the Smith (Metre 10), and the hugely disconcerting image of Death's hunt for Mankind (Metre 27). In this new edition clarity of text, informative notes and a helpful glossary have been a priority, for this is one of the most approachable of Old English verse texts; its relative neglect by specialists will mean this text will come as a new experience to many practised students of the language.