I love that cover, dask. Especially the way our heroine is frocked up in flapper dress, but with the addition of space-agey shiny metal accoutrements!
As long as you're paying I'm all ears....Good buys, but you still need that Experiment in Criticism.
Thanks for those insights. I did have some knowledge of Boethius and knew this was an important work, so when I spotted a copy recently I grabbed it. I find it amazing in a way when you consider the circumstances under which he wrote this facing death. He has influenced a number of prominent writers including Dante. I believe he was first translated into English (at least what is referred to as 'middle English' for that period) by Chaucer who was also greatly influenced by Boethius.This week my Literature of Late Antiquity students conclude the weeks on Boethius, Gollum. This really is an essential book for anyone interested in the thought-world of medieval culture (and more). Most readers in today's "Whatever" milieu will not possess the seriousness of thought-life needed to give Boethius much time. Some readers will read it but just check off "influences": "Ah, Plato... ah, Proclus," etc. -- which is a convenient way of keeping ideas at arm's length. This is a short book and, for the most part, not a very hard book to read. It's a perennial resource of wisdom, very much a living book. NB it is discussed briefly but significantly in the section on images of evil, in Tom Shippey's essential study The Road to Middle-earth, a good book for people to take up who somehow have come to assume that LOTR is "twee." I suppose such objectors also find Plato's Socratic dialogues, y'know, to be "yadda-yadda."
Thanks for those insights. I did have some knowledge of Boethius and knew this was an important work, so when I spotted a copy recently I grabbed it. I find it amazing in a way when you consider the circumstances under which he wrote this facing death. He has influenced a number of prominent writers including Dante. I believe he was first translated into English (at least what is referred to as 'middle English' for that period) by Chaucer who was also greatly influenced by Boethius.Centuries earlier, King Edward translated Boethius into OE. But I think the book is of much more than merely historical interest.
Also I moved the Jones thread as requested.