It is hard to overstate the influence that Boethiusâs Consolation of Philosophy had on Chaucer as a poet because Boethian concepts, passages, and phrasings echo throughout Chaucerâs works: one of Chaucerâs shorter poems, âThe Former Age,â draw heavily in both topic and wording on Book II, Meter 5, of Boece just as Troilus and Criseydeâs protagonist gives voice to concepts from Boece, Book II, Meter 8, in his âsong,â and Book V, Prose 2, in his soliloquy on Free Will and divine Providence. In addition to major echoes such as these, half-lines of text from Chaucerâs later works also echo phrasings from Chaucerâs translation of The Consolation.
These echoesâwhether as specific phrasing or influencing ideasâare one of the principal reasons for engaging with Chaucerâs Boece. As Skeat noted as far back as 1894 in his The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, âthe chief point of interest about Chaucerâs translation of Boethius is the influence that this labour exercised upon his later work, owing to the close familiarity with the text which he thus acquiredâ (xxvii). That familiarity was born from the act of translating. To translate the text, Chaucer must have first understood the text and then made countless interpretive decisions regarding both syntax and word choice. While it is impossible to know the extent to which Boethian concepts informed Chaucerâs personal worldview, they certainly found their way into his future poetic works. Skeatâs text (and many others that followed) diligently sets about comparing all the known places in Chaucerâs work where the ideas of The Consolationâwhich Chaucer may have first encountered through Jean de Meunâs Middle French translationâand the phrasing from Boece find a home in Chaucerâs other works. So as not to overly burden the reader, this present edition only notes significant cross-references, but these alone are enough to show how much The Consolation inspired Chaucer.
It is impossible to say what inspired Chaucer to translate The Consolation. In The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., Hannah III and Lawler suggest two possible reasons when they write, âWe may suppose, then, that Chaucer by translating it was filling a clearly perceived need, making the work available to his contemporaries, not as some readers have speculated, merely writing out a pony for his own useâ (396). Regardless of whether Chaucer wrote to fill a need or for his own private use, what is certain is that the ideas therein seemed to Chaucer just as relevant in the 1300s as they had been to Boethius in the 500s. And that relevance endures today.