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The metrical sections of the Old English Boethius have traditionally been regarded as little more than mechanical versifications of the relevant portions of the entirely prose version. This article, however, argues that The Metres of Boethius present an ambitious psychological discourse. The adaptations made during the versification process allow the poet to expand upon the prose source and place greater emphasis on the care of the inner mind. The model of the mind in the Metres owes much to the tradition of vernacular poetry, in which the mind is a separate, wilful part of the self, in need of restraint. Yet the Metres are also indebted to the tradition of their ultimate Latin source, in which the mind has the ability and, indeed, the responsibility, to monitor its own inner depths. This article demonstrates that the Metres-poet engages with both traditions, crafting a strikingly original model of the mind.

The Advent Lyrics, a group of Old English religious antiphons (formerly called Christ I) dating from about the 9th century, are presented in this edition as an independent group of poems disengaged, for the first time, from Cynewulf's Christ. Professor Campbell’s study focuses on the significance of the antiphons as lyrics rather than as philological documents. The book includes a full critical introduction, a new text and modern English translation (on facing pages), critical notes, and a glossary.Originally published in 1959.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The central theme in both versions of the Old English Boethius is the Christian conversion of the soul. In the prosimetrical version, this theme is highlighted further in the metra through the poetic trope of the human soul figured as a star to reinforce the teaching in the prose passages. In the course of the metra, the trope increasingly focuses on the inner life of the man engaged in earthly affairs as he strengthens his moral resolve and his divine affiliation through meditation. Repetition and variations of the trope in Metres 5, 10, 20, 22 and 23 represent the soul's shift from despair to understanding.

‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’: T. S. Eliot's metaphor in The Waste Land evokes the evanescent frailty of human existence and worldly endeavour with a poignancy that the Anglo-Saxons would surely have appreciated. Such a concept lies at the heart of Boethius's De consolatione Philosophiae, and perhaps prompted King Alfred to include this work amongst those which he considered most necessary for all men to know. Written in the early sixth century, Boethius's work was translated from Latin into Old English at the end of the ninth century, possibly by Alfred himself. It survives in two versions, one in prose (probably composed first) and the other in prose and verse, containing versifications of Boethius's Latin metres which had originally been rendered as Old English prose. It is the latter of these versions which will be the focus of my discussion here. Damaged beyond repair by fire and water, the set of fragments which contains this copy will be seen to epitomize the ideas imparted by the work in ways that Alfred could never have envisaged.

The metrical grammar of Beo 665a cwen to gebeddan is, for that poem, strikingly irregular: the verse is of Sievers Type A with a preposition and prefix in the first dip and yet displays single - rather than the expected double - alliteration. The Metres of Boethius, a text whose metrical grammar (unlike that of Beowulf) generates a number of similar examples of this licence, allows a better understanding of the structure and rhetoric of the Beowulf verse. In particular, these analogous exceptions show that the absence of the expected alliteration accentuates the semantic contrast of the two stressed elements of the verse.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Construction of the Tenth‐Century Renaissance Debunking the Macedonian Renaissance Why Iphigeneia in the Tenth Century? Towards a Rereading of Revival Further Reading