The Politics of Chaucer's Boece
By focusing on the historicity and politics of translation, I discuss in this paper the political motive and functions of The Boece, Chaucer's translation from Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae. After examining the political implications of Boethius's work, I argue that the Latin source provides an insight into the nature of royal power, especially its perversion into tyranny. From the investigation of the history and politics in the early 1380s when the young Richard began to establish his sovereignty firmly, I suggest an educational motive of Chaucer's Boece for the king: the translation might have been aimed at giving the young king lessons about what constitutes a tyrant, thus warning him of the vices and dangers of aggregating excessive governing power. I also suggest that, during the period from the mid-1380s to 1399 when the king became more and more tyrannical, The Boece may have had potential resonance with the concerns of the king's opponents, his magnates, about the misuse of royal power. I conclude with the observation that, contrary to Chaucer's expectations of diverting the king from the dangerous road of excessive power, his Boece could have served as one of the tools of attack for the magnates to confront, and eventually depose, Richard Ⅱ.
Shaping The Nation: England, 1360-1461
PART 1: POLITICAL SOCIETY PART 2: WORK AND WORSHIP PART 3: MEN AND EVENTS CONCLUSION: THE EMERGING NATION
Nos Ipsi Principia Sumus : Boethius and the Basis of Contingency
Boethius’s two commentaries on Aristotle’s De interpretatione contain an account of the metaphysical foundations of contingency in their discussions of Chapter 9.1 For the countless medieval discussions of future contingents only De interpretatione 9 itself is of greater historical importance than Boethius’s discussions of it. In this chapter, however, my concern is with. the content of Boethius’s theory of contingency and not with its historical sources or influences. In order to give his theory the kind of consideration I think it deserves, I need to extract it from the other material in the commentaries and expound it in its own right; I also want to examine some of its consequences. Because those tasks are the only ones I can undertake in this paper, I am not now concerned with what the later medievals thought about Boethius or with what Boethius thought about Aristotle or with what Aristotle thought about contingency, but only (or as nearly as possible only) with what Boethius thought about contingency in his two commentaries on De interpretatione.2