Boeces: De Consolacion (review)

120 Reviews transubstantiation), the author grounds the Passion narratives in a violent antiSemitism and misogyny. The sense of transcendence is lost in the particular, the sense of personal compunction in the anti-Semitism. The gruesome descriptions of Christ's suffering may be representative of the materialism and literalism of the period but the passion narratives, embedded within the economy of Incarnation and Judgement, drawing on the multi-layered and metaphorical interpretation of both Old and N e w Testament, also raise questions about their transcendent framework. However, as Bestul has so ably pointed out, texts should be seen within the context of broad cultural and personal interpretations, and so will always produce differing responses. The study concludes with a translation of Bernard's Meditation on the Lamentation of the Blessed Virgin, allowing readers to test his theories against the text, and with a useful catalogue of medieval passion narratives. Rosemary Dunn Department of English James Cook University Boeces: De Consolacion, edition critique d'apres le manuscrit Paris, Bibl. nationale fr. 1096 (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie 277), ed. J. Keith Atkinson, Tubingen, Niemeyer, 1996; cloth; pp. viii, 201; R.R.P. SFr76.00. Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae is probably one of the most influ source-works in the French Middle Ages. Its deep imprint is to be found in Jean de Meun's part of the Roman de la Rose, itself one of the most widelyread vernacular texts; and Jean de M e u n made the point in that poem that Boethius should be translated, so that it could reach a wider audience, seemingly unaware that a couple of translations, at least, already existed. True to his word, of course, he later made his o w n all-prose translation of it, one of some ten translations in all made between 1230 and 1400. The present edition is of a verse and prose translation, which follows therefore the stylistic pattern of alternating sections of verse and prose in Boethius's text, and this appears to be the earliest French version to do so. It dates from between 1320 and 1330, and Atkinson is the first to edit it, using the six surviving complete or partial MSS. A m o n g these the Paris M S (P), on which he bases his edition, is one of only two complete copies, and it dates from 1397. This makes P a much later M S than the other complete one, Berne, Burgerbibliothek, 365 (MS B), which dates from the early fourteenth century, but P is preferred to B because it presents a reading in which the author corrects in places the text represented by the B version, in order to take it back closer to the Latin. Although P is thought to present a version which, grosso Reviews 121 modo, is probably closer to the original translation, its reading is not always allowed to stand, but is sometimes replaced by that of one of the other MSS. One example of this is where the corrections of P have led to a metrical irregularity, when the scribe modernised 'ierent' to 'estoienf. The relationship between all the M S S is discussed and illustrated, while the language of them, especially that of P, is fully analysed. In particular the rhymes are all listed and scrutinised as a way of determining aspects of the original author's o w n language. This section on language analysis is extremely detailed and highly specialised, recalling as it does undergraduate memories of Bourciez and Pope et al., but it allows Atkinson to draw conclusions about the provenance not only of the MSS, but also of the author himself. H e considers that the author was probably a religious from the region of south Lorraine. In contrast to the linguistic study, there is relatively little space devoted to looking at the text as a translation. Atkinson is aware of this, and is happy to leave this task to others, which is perhaps a pity. H e nevertheless gives some indication of the translator's method: for instance, there are said to be few omissions, and the text is concisely rendered, without resort to the common rhetorical...