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STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER SETH LERER. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Methodin The Consolation ofPhilosophy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.Pp. xi, 264.$28.0 0. Although The Consolation ofPhilosophy may first attract us because ofits influence on Chaucer, it soon begins to move and challenge us on its own terms. Thus scholarly and critical work on Boethius interests us not only because ofour professionalresponsibility to know what we can about a text that was of great importance to Chaucer but also because ofour fascination with the Consolation itself. With important recent work on Boethius building on an already strong philological tradition, the time is ripe for readers skilled both in traditional philology and in the subtle analysis of complexliterary texts to approach the Consolation as the great literary work that it is. In Seth Lerer, Boethius has found such a reader.Boethius and Dialogue treats the Consolation neither as a repository of philosophical commonplaces nor as an influence on subsequent literature but as a work worth studying on its own terms.As Lerer defines it, his "central purpose is to demonstrate the thematic and methodological coherence of the Conso­ lation ofPhilosophy" (p. 3). Lerer's first chapter establishes the literary climate in which Boethius wrote, a "literary and linguistic environment in which educated pursuits became increasingly identified not with public recitation- either in Latin or Greek- but rather with private reading and commentary" (p.19).Lerer then explores the dialogue genre to which the Consolation belongs, de­ monstrating its connections with dialogues of Cicero, Augustine, and Fulgentius, and with Boethius's own earlier works in that form. Lerer's second chapter seeks to explain "the prisoner's silence and his subsequent efforts at dialogue" (p.94).His third chapter shows Boethius turning from "the search for a voice through which the prisoner may learn to argue," the main subject of books 1 and 2, to "the search for a place towards which he must direct his energies,...the soul's home in the heavens" (p. 125).Lerer is at his best in analyzing the meters, and this chapter concludes with an impressive reading ofBoethius's reworking ofthe Orpheus myth in book 3, metrum 12. His next chapter treats book 4 as "a book of rewritings, as Boethius adapts texts written by himself and others to chronicle the education of his prisoner and his audience" (p. 168). Lerer's readings of book 4, metrum 3 (Ulysses) and metrum 7 (Hercules) show how richly Boethius's meters reward close study.His attention to nuances of meaning and his exploration of intertextual relations demonstrate how well Lerer has 226 REVIEWS mastered that rare scholarly attribute: the ability to read. An excerpt from his analysis ofthe Hercules meter will give some idea ofhis approach.This meter completes the patterns ofmoral growth figured by the mythological, geographical, and historical allusions presented in the text. It is encyclopedic in scope, encom­ passing both Iliad and Odyssey, the canon of Hercules' earthly labors, and the cosmic movement from Hell, to Earth, to Heaven. It answers the poem on Orpheus structurally as a concluding myth to a book; mythographically, as the answer to Orpheus' pain and Hell; and poetically, as the synthesis ofSenecan source material already explored in the Orpheus poem. In turn, the metrum validates Philosophy's final authority: both comparatively, as a benign female divinity measured against Senecan harridans; and objectively, as an auctor ofphilosophical exempla. [P. 201J Lerer's last chapter sets out "to explain the prisoner's gradual disappearance in book 5 and the fact that the work conlcudes without a final, complemen­ tary poem" (p.204).Lerer's thesis that the proper response ofthe prisoner is "silence and prayer" (p.233) is very nearly persuasive, but I cannot entirely rid myselfofthe suspicion that Boethius may not expect us to overlook the fragility and vulnerability of Philosophy's final arguments. Lerer concludes with a briefappendix in which he explains in somewhat greater detail the role of Seneca's plays in the Consolation and places in parallel columns the key texts from Boethius and Seneca. He provides indices ofnames and subjects and ofLatin terms.The book is handsomely printed and bound...

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