The Old English Boethius: Text and Interpretation

我的研究重点是古英语博伊提乌斯，这是一部9世纪末改编和解释的博伊提乌斯的《哲学统一》，这部作品被认为是阿尔弗雷德国王本人的作品。它对当时的文化背景和政治意识形态的洞察，加上其丰富而复杂的文学风格，使其成为古英语经典的开创性文本之一。它可能是唯一最重要的古英语文本，仍然缺乏准确和学术的版本。这部作品有两个幸存的版本：一个是散文和诗句，另一个都是散文。唯一幸存的散文和诗句版本是在1731年的棉花大火中严重损坏的10世纪手稿中发现的。尽管现在肉眼很难辨认，但创新的紫外光数字技术使人们能够破译的远远超过了迄今为止的可能。在我的研究假期间，我完成了为这部作品建立一个权威的批评文本的工作，这部作品以前从未以适当的交替散文和诗句结构发表过。在我的研究假期间，我还完成了对这部作品的散文和诗句版本与全散文版本之间的语言关系的分析，这部作品保存在牛津Bodleian图书馆12世纪早期的手稿中。两个版本的确切关系是有争议的：Bodley版本，虽然保存在后来的副本中，但很可能是比Cotton版本更早的作品；Cotton版本的诗句部分显然代表了Bodley版本中保存的散文文本的诗句。我用专门的软件对两个版本进行了详细的比较。出现的相似之处和不同之处对方言、语言发展、作者身份和诗歌创作的性质等问题具有重要影响。在这些问题上的新视角不仅提高了我们对一部重要的古英语作品的了解，而且还允许我们对古英语写作的文化语境进行比以前更广泛的评估。

My research has focused on the Old English Boethius, a late ninth-century adaptation and interpretation of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae, whose composition has been attributed to King Alfred himself. The insights it offers into the cultural context and political ideology of the period, together with its rich and complex literary style, make it one of the seminal texts of the Old English canon. It is perhaps the single most important Old English text still lacking an accurate and scholarly edition. There are two surviving versions of the work: one in prose and verse and the other all in prose. The only surviving copy of the prose and verse version is found in a tenth-century manuscript badly damaged in the Cotton fire of 1731. Although it is now largely illegible to the naked eye, innovative ultraviolet digital technology allows far more of it to be deciphered than has hitherto been possible. During my Research Leave period I completed my work on establishing an authoritative critical text of this version of the work, which has never previously been published in its proper alternating prose and verse structure. During my Research Leave period, I also completed an analysis of the linguistic relationships between this prose and verse version and the all-prose version of the work, which survives in an early twelfth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The exact relationship of the two versions is controversial: the Bodley version, although preserved in a later copy, was probably composed earlier than the Cotton one; the verse parts of the Cotton version apparently represent versifications of the prose text preserved in the Bodley one. I employed specialised software to make a detailed comparison of the two versions. The parallels and differences that emerged have important implications for issues such as dialect, linguistic development, authorship, and the nature of poetic composition. New perspectives on these issues not only improve our knowledge of a major Old English work, but also allow for a more wide-ranging assessment of the cultural context of Old English writing than has previously been possible.