Publisher's Synopsis
Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy is a literary and philosophical masterpiece of late antiquity. In The Poetry of Boethius, the first extended study in English of the Consolation's poems, Gerard O'Daly shows that they form a vigorous and sophisticated sequence in their own right, reflecting and elaborating the Latin poetic tradition from Lucretius to Seneca's tragedies, and adapting that tradition's imagery, myth, and motifs to the work's overall structure.
O'Daly includes discussions of Boethius's career, his other writings, the generic affiliations of the Consolation, and its poetics. There are studies of the themes of tyranny, order and disorder in nature, and Boethius's uses of myth. All Latin quotations are accompanied by translations. This book is addressed to anyone interested in the literature and thought of classical and late antiquity, as well as those concerned with Boethius's considerable influence in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
