The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy

AbstractThis book argues that the metres of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy are arranged in patterns that have a therapeutic and liturgical purpose. The argument moves from an examination of the prosodical interplay of metre, meaning, and sound in the Consolation’s first seven poems; to a consideration of the therapeutic use of the same metre in different poems; to the discovery and exploration of an intricate system of metric repetition that comprehends every poem; and finally, to reflection on how this acoustic system shapes the listener’s memory to an intelligible design. It is argued that the metres enable a bodily mediation of the text’s consolation, in which, by repetition and meditation, the hearer comes to discern the eternal in the movement of time.