nathan_straub_prior ages essay final

8/9/2019 Nathan_Straub_Prior Ages Essay Final

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Nathan Straub

LSH 499 Capstone Project

Prof. Beverly Wall

Charter Oak State College

5/8/2010

Prior Ages: Boethius in the Words of Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth I

The title for this essay comes from the Latin of Boethius De Consolatio Philosophiae (The

Consolation of Philosophy) book II, fifth metre: Felix minium prior etas. In that poem, Boethius speaks

from his prison near Rome in A.D. 523 and, through the voice of Lady Philosophy, bitterly extols the first

age of men, when greed and violence were unheard of, when all were content with what their own

fields produced. From 1380s London, Geoffrey Chaucer updated his language: Blysful was the fyrst age

of men I wolde that owre tymes sholde torne ayein to the olde maneres! (Fisher 840) From Windsor

Castle in the fall of 1593, Queen Elizabeth I took up the refrain: Happy to muche the formar age... Wold

God agane Our formar time to wonted maners fel. (Kaylor & Phillips 71-72)

Boethius and his two distinguished translators each wrote in a sophisticated idiom of their day,

while they wrote about his concept of the past. Now their day is gone, and with it the currency of Latin,

Middle English, and Early Modern English. Allas, what was he that fyrst dalf up the weyhtes of gold

covered under erthe, and the precyous stoones that wolden han be hydd? He dalf up precyous perils.

(Fisher 840) Instead of delving under the earth for precious stones, this essay will delve into the

vocabulary of Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth I for clues to the development of the English language.

Throughout my research, I have kept in mind the following questions: How did English vocabulary

change between the time of Chaucer and the time of Elizabeth? What words in Elizabeths mental

lexicon were derived from words in Chaucers mental lexicon, and what forms did they take?


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To set the stage, I will argue for the significance of this study, and then outline the history of the

texts. Next I will explain what the Consolation of Philosophyis about, and what aspects of it motivated

Chaucer and Elizabeth to translate.

For qualitative analysis, I will analyze the opening sentence of the Consolatio, comparing the

translations of Chaucer and Elizabeth for vocabulary and literary technique. For quantitative analysis, I

will classify words used twenty times or more in the two translations, comparing pronouns, construction

of infinitives, and common verbs and nouns.

At the end I will summarize our findings and place our current time in perspective with the

history weve discovered. Following the conclusion and bibliography is an appendix with word-cloud

images from Wordle.net to visualize word frequencies in the two translations under our study.

Significance

Chaucer and Elizabeth are ideal informants for the state of English vocabulary during their

lifetimes. Chaucer may have written his translation of Boethius to help in the education of young King

Richard II. (Fisher 814) Elizabeth, as queen, helped set the standard for written English during the

sixteenth century. While both translators were influential, their translations of Boethius were not

widely circulated, thus isolating them from influence on each other and on our present day English

vocabulary, so any common, recurring patterns are due to either the common Latin text of Boethius

they were working from, or the general usage of English at the court.

Chaucers work appears to be a rough draft, which accounts for its unpopularity, but also makes

it more interesting as the raw product of his mind. In fact, he invented about one-eighth of the words in


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his translation. (Donner 187) Elizabeth completed her translation during her leisure time in the course

of a month, so hers is also rough. Both Chaucer and Elizabeth are faithful and literal in their translations,

making it easy to find correspondences between word choices in the two.

According to C.S. Lewis, the Consolatiowas for centuries one of the most influential books ever

written in Latin Until about two hundred years ago it would, I think, have been hard to find an

educated man in any European country who did not love it. To acquire a taste for it is almost to become

naturalized in the Middle Ages. (75) Such an influential text deserves more study.

Though Chaucers and Elizabeths personal translations have long been neglected, they are rich

mines of words that we can enter to view how English developed in the royal court in the 200 years

between 1380 and 1593.

Source Texts

As befits a medieval clerk, Chaucer made good use of a rich array of texts and commentaries for

his translation. Boethius wrote his work in sixth century Latin, but over the years, a vulgate Latin textual

tradition sprang up. As Latin lost its case inflection system, copyists compensated by adding pronouns

or explanatory phrases to the original text. The Latin text Chaucer translated was from this vulgate

tradition. (Machan 2008:xvi) Chaucer also relied on a French translation of the Consolatio by Jean de

Meung, Li Livres de confort de philosophie. (Machan 2008:xvii) Chaucers text of de Meungs translation

was a peculiar, composite one that contained both readings of the main manuscript tradition and also

of a peculiar tradition now best found in Besanon, Bibliothque Municipale MS 434. (Machan

2008:xvii) Alongside his Latin and French sources, Chaucer used at least two commentaries: that of


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Nicholas Trevet and a collection of interlinear glosses associated, ultimately, with Remigius of Auxerre.

(Machan 2008:xvii)

Elizabeth lived in the age of printing. She was also a ruler, with a fabulous education in Latin

and Greek, but who had precious little time for textual criticism. As near as Mueller and Scodel can tell,

her sole Latin source text was Theodor Pulmanns Antwerp edition of 1562. (55) However, she must

have been familiar with the text from her school days at Hatfield under tutors like Roger Ascham, so that,

in the words of Mr. Bowyer, the Keeper of the Records at Windsor, it apperith that in *26+ houres or

theraboutes, her Ma[jes]tie performed the wholle translation. (Kaylor & Phillips 20, 153)

Textual History of the Translations

There are ten extant manuscripts ofChaucers version of the Consolatio, called the Boece, in

addition to the early printed editions of Caxton and Thynne. This study will use Fishers edition ofThe

Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucerfor the qualitative analysis, and Gerard NeCastros

website eChaucer, a digitized version of Larry Bensons Riverside Chaucerfor the quantitative analysis.

Fishers text is based on MS Cambridge Ii.3.21, with significant variants from the Caxton edition,

Cambridge Ii.1.38, and B.M. 10340. (Fisher 816) The Riverside Chauceruses Cambridge Ii.1.38 as its

copy-text, with collations from all of the surviving Middle English sources of the Boece. (Machan

2008:xx-xxvi)

Chaucers text contains about 300 short glosses, explaining his vocabulary and syntax. Because

only one-third of the glosses are shared by two or more manuscripts, and not one of the glosses is

present in every manuscript, Machan argues that they are scribal additions to Chaucers work.


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(2008:xxvi-xxvii) Since this study deals with the tradition as it came to us, and every word is a piece of

evidence for the history of English, I have left the glosses in the text.

There is only one complete manuscript, a first-draft, of Queen Elizabeths translation of Boethius

(hereafter QEB). All of the metres and part of the prose sections are in her handwriting, and the rest is

in the handwriting of her secretary, Thomas Windebank. There are fragments of a second and third

draft, but I have kept with the first-draft because it is complete and it is the only one that Elizabeth

appears to have worked on personally. The manuscript is in the State Papers of Queen Elizabeth, Public

Record Office Manuscript SP 12/289.

Only three editions have been published, two of them as late as 2009. These are: Caroline

Pembertons Early English Text Society edition (1899), Mueller and Scodels edition for the University of

Chicago (2009), and Kaylor and Phillipss diplomatic edition for the Arizona Center for Medieval and

Renaissance Studies (2009). I will be using the latter.

Note on terminology

As stated above, Boece stands for Chaucers translation and QEB stands for Queen Elizabeths

translation. The text is divided into five books, each book composed of alternating prose and verse

(metre) sections. Thus, 1m1 stands for book 1, metre one. 5p6 stands for book 5, prose 6.


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Thematic motivation

This study deals with vocabulary and word usage at two points in English history. Still, it is

helpful to understand what the Consolatio is about, and what our two translators hoped to draw out

with their wording.

Boethius starts out weeping at his wretchedness in his prison cell, when Lady Philosophy

appears, chases off the gloomy muses, and volunteers to be the physician for his soul. As they converse,

Boethius tells her how he, after defending others against wicked men in the Senate, had been falsely

accused and put in prison. Philosophy questions him further, and tells him his real problem is not

physical exile but spiritual blindness, as his sorrow has clouded his intellect. Above all, he has forgotten

that God truly governs the world despite the schemings of men and the tumblings of Fortune.

Throughout the five books of the Consolatio, Philosophy teaches Boethius like Socrates, arguing

philosophically about the true meaning of happiness and suffering, the problem of evil, and the working

of Fortune, Destiny, and Providence in relation to human character and free will. The last section

demonstrates that divine Providence upholds free will, and closes with the assurance that prayers are

not in vain, exhorting the reader to withstand vice and love virtue, putting hope and prayers in God, who

sees and judges all things. (Rossignol 39-47)

The prose sections hold the dialogue, while the metres show the emotional aspect of the

arguments with celebration, despair, and everything in between, giving examples from nature and

classical literature of the ideas analyzed in the prose sections.

Quan Manh Ha assesses the different emphases of Elizabeth and Chaucer in the introduction to

The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I. (Kaylor & Phillips 4-5) About Chaucer, he says,


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Chaucers work is fairly accurate, but, more importantly, he has left us his own reading of the

Consolatio as a philosophical and scientific work, as shown in part by the types of glosses he

interpolates into his primarily utilitarian, all-prose translation... The epistemology that Boethius

and his reader Chaucer employ rises through the successive stages of sensing, imagining,

reasoning, and finally understanding... Evidently, Chaucer read the Latin work as a philosophical

and scientific work, and it is upon these registers that he draws substantially as he creates his

subsequent poetic works.

By way of contrast, Quan Manh Ha explains what interested Elizabeth about Boethius:

Thematic evidence indicates that Elizabeth, however, read the Consolatio as a literary and

political work, with special attention to the Latin verses and to the logical arguments on

foreknowledge and free will, as shown by her attention to meaning in particular philosophical

passages in the text. (Kaylor & Phillips 5)

How did this political and literary interest affect Elizabeths translation style? Maria Perry elucidates:

Derided by some [earlier+ critics as her least impressive Englishing, it has not been generally

realized that she was experimenting with the antique style favored at the time for translating

classical authors... When she came to a passage that interested her, Elizabeth forgot about the

antique style and went straight for the sense... (Perry 221, quoted in Kaylor & Phillips 5)

Perry cites an apt illustration of this going straight for the sense from a place three pages from the end

of Elizabeths manuscript:

Whrfore ifthou woldest way [Gods] foreknoledge by wch he all undrstandith, thou woltst Iudge

that he hath not aforeknowledge of thingz to com, alone, but rightlyer a science of nevr worn

contynuance. Whrfore we must not call it foresight, but providence wch being set ovr all thingz,

yet in the meanest, vewes them all as out of the very top & spring of all. QEB 5p6 lines 55-61

(Kaylor & Phillips 144)

Boethius can be read many ways. One can get a sense of the philosophical and scientific as well

as the literary and political, which is one reason why the Consolatio was so popular through the Middle

Ages. All wrapped up in the poetry and the arguments, however, is an inquiry starting in despair at the

tumbling of fortune and ending up in awe of the inscrutible ways of God.


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Readers needed Boethius the sixth-century politician, philosopher, and martyr from Rome, for

the same reasons they needed his prototype, Job, the Old Testament nomad from Uz. First, his

misfortunes made their lives look really good, even though they themselves had sometimes asked the

same despairing questions he did. Second, he eventually led them to a sublime answer, and he did it

through sublime poetry.

Qualitative Analysis

Allas! I wepynge, am constreyned to bygynnen

vers of sorwful matere, that whilom in florysschyng

studie made delitable ditees. Boece 1m1 lines 1-3

Righmes that my groing studie ons performed

In teares alas cumpeld woful staves begin[.] QEB 1m1 lines 1-2

Chaucer starts off with an exclamation. Actually, most of the punctuation is supplied by the

editor (Caxtons printed version of 1478 has no exclamation point), but his opening is still a bold contrast

to Elizabeths rigid Righmes. He tries to catch the emotion of the author, even though his words whilom

in flourysschyng studyonce in flourishing study ensnare the modern reader with their floridness. The

latter is a borrowing from the Latin phrase studio florente. The infinitive verb construction to bygynnen

is unusual in modern English, but standard in Middle English, a carryover from Old English. (Smith 56)

The infinitive verb usually has the suffix -en, and it follows the preposition to.

Vers of sorwful matere sounds like it comes from a French commentary, both from its

circumlocution and from the stress on the end ofmatere. A native English phrase would have modified

vers directly, as Elizabeth did below, or at least used a stronger link than of.


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Finally, Chaucer closes his first sentence with the alliterative delitable diteesdelightful ditties.

The suffix ofdelitable is from Old French, and it mainly carries an active sense of able to delight rather

than the passive sense of Modern English able to be delighted. (Machan 1985:15-16)

Elizabeth is the only English translator who starts with the equivalent word of the Latin text

carminarhymes. Both lines of the sentence have five or six feet that can be resolved into iambs,

depending on which of the final es count as syllables.

Cumpeld(QEB) corresponds structurally with constreyned(Boece) except that it omits the

stative verb. I seems to be the logical subject, but it is missing from this tight pair of lines. The closest

alternative is righmes but this makes nonsense ofin teares. Woful staves could be beginning themselves

and the teares could be compeldto fall on their own. What is clear, though, is that Elizabeth let her

grammar be constrained by a Latin text that could fit the line more succinctly than English.

What of her words? Groing studiegrowing study and woful staveswoeful staffs/lines are

phrases made of native English terms, but she has joined them together for rhythmic impact. Where

Chaucer borrowed the phraseflourysschyng studyfrom Latin, Elizabeth incorporated studie with the

native equivalent groing. The suffixesing andful express the difference between past activity and

present langour.

Quantitative Analysis

To start my quantitative analysis, I extracted a plain-text digital copy of the Boece from

NeCastros website, eChaucer, and of QEB from a PDF version of Kaylor & Phillips provided by the


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publisher. Then I used a computer program called KWIC (Key Word In Context) to create three wordlists

from each text, sorted alphabetically, reverse-alphabetically, and by word frequency.

To narrow the scope of this project, I chose to focus on the words from the two word frequency

lists that occurred twenty times or more. These I collated and sorted using Microsoft Excel, producing a

list of common words and word-families that are common to both the Boece and QEB.

Using KWIC, the wordlists, and the word-frequency collation project, I have produced a sampling

of word usage from QEB and the Boece on a wide scale, focusing on pronouns, infinitives, common

verbs, and common nouns.

Pronouns

Table 1 presents pronouns in the order of frequency in which they are found in the Boece. If a

word appears in the text less than twenty times, the number is given. Notice how hit/hytis more

common in Elizabeths dialect, while in the Boece, hem is used instead ofthem, and hir/here instead of

their. Them does not appear in the Middle English Dictionary, so the voiced dental fricative must be a

later development. The possessive pronouns myne and thyne and their variants are not used frequently,

but the Chaucer uses them over twice as much as Elizabeth. This could indicate a difference in

construction, or a historical shift away from dependence on these pronouns.


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Table 1: Pronouns

Boece QEB Meaning

it/(hyt)1 it/hit 3sg neuter

I I 1sg subject

he he 3sg male subject

his/hise his 3sg male possessive

hem them 3pl object

sche she 3sg subject

thow/thou thou 2sg subject

hir/here their/ther 3pl possessive adjective

hir/here her 3sg female object/

possessive adjectivehym him 3sg male object

me me 1sg object

my my/(mygh)1 1sg possessive

we we 1pl subject

ye ye 2pl subject

thy thy 2sg possessive adjective

us us 1pl object

your (yor)16 2pl possessive adjective

yow you 2pl subject

our (our)14 1pl possessive adjective(thyn)16

(thyne)14

(thynne)5

(thine)1

(thyne)14

(thyn)1

2sg possessive adjective

myn/(myne)8 (myne)8 1sg possessive


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Infinitive verbs

The present-day English speaker uses the suffixen with irregular verbs to form the past

participle, such as to eat forming eaten. In Old and Middle English, the very infinitive of our verb to

eat was to eten. (Middle English Dictionary)

The following passage shows infinitives at work in the Boece and QEB:

But axestow in somme, of what gylt I am accused? Men seyn that I wolde save the compaygnye

of the senatours. And desirest thowto heren in what manere? I am accused that I sholde han

destorbed the accusor to beren lettres, by whiche he sholde han maked the senatoures gylty

ayeins the kynges real majeste. Boece 1p4 lines 140-147 (Fisher 823)

[B]ut what is o[u]r faulte? will ye seeke the principall? we are sayde to wish the Senates surety:

The waye you desire. A sclaunderer, lest he might delay his Lessons by wch he might make me

guilty of treason, we are accusedto have lettedhim. QEB 1p4 line 55 (Kaylor & Phillips 50)

To test the extent of the to ___en infinitive form, I ran a search of every verb in Boece and

QEB that is preceded by to. Boece has 121 distinct to infinitives with the suffix and 83 infinitives

without the suffix. Of these, 31 appear both with the suffix and without it (see Table 2). For Chaucer,

theen suffix was normal for infinitives, but he applied it inconsistently. Several explanations are

possible for this inconsistency:

1. Scribal dialect. Machan points out that while most of the Boece is written in a Midlands dialect, a

number of manuscripts of the section from 2m2 through 2p6 contain spelling variants belonging to a

Kentish or southern dialect. (2008:xxix) He posits that this part was copied by a scribe from southern

England. If a scribe lived in a time or place where theen infinitive was dying out, he might apply it

inconsistently. Perhaps a future study could examine all the textual variants to test this hypothesis.

2. Syntactic function. Chaucer might have used theen infinitive for one function and the plain infinitive

for another function. For a full working-out of this idea, see John Samuel Kenyons published Harvard


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thesis, The Syntax of the Infinitive in Chaucer(1909). As Jacob Zeitlin facetiously noted in his 1913

review of Kenyons book, Every student of Chaucer will have to give the monograph a diligent and

thorough perusal. (500)

3. Language change. English was in a state of flux in Chaucers day, and Chaucer himself was in the

vanguard. Maybe he experimented with different infinitive forms just as he created nonce words like

skyllinge. Or maybe common usage was also inconsistent, like our present-day use ofwho and whom.

At any rate, we can see the direction infinitives were headed, because in Queen Elizabeths

translation, some verbs use theen suffix, but the suffix is completely absent from to infinitive

constructions.


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Table 2: Inconsistently-formed infinitives in Boece

glossplain infinitive -en infinitive

1. to be to be to been/ben2. to bear to bere to beren3. to happen to betide/betyde to betyden/bytiden/bytyden4. to come to come to comen/comyn5. to comprehend to comprehende to comprehenden6. to confound to confownde to confownden7. to desire to desire to desiren8. to despise to despise to despysen9. to doubt to doute to douten10.

to endure to dure to duren

11. to find to fynde to fynden12. to get to gete to geten13. to govern to governe to governen14. to hate to hate to haten15. to have to have to haven/han16. to hear to here to heren17. to listen to herkne to herknen18. to keep to kepe to kepyn19. to know to knowe to knowen20. to lead to lede to leden21. to look to looke to loken/looken22. to show to schewe/shewe to schewen23. to say to seie/sey/seye/saie to sein/seyen/seyn24. to seek to seke to seken25. to speak to speke to speken26. to climb to stye to steyen27. to tell to telle to tellen28. to believe to trowe to trowen29. to understand to undirstonde to undirstonden30. to realize to wene to wenen31. to know to wite to witen


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Common Vocabulary

The next two sections list vocabulary occurring twenty times or more, that the Boece and QEB

share in common. In keeping with Chomskys theory of deep structure and surface structure, the gloss

column of the table will show the underl ying form or translation of a word in present-day English. The

other columns will show the collated surface forms, spelled and inflected just as they appear in the

Boece and QEB. Individual forms are included in the list only if they have twenty or more occurrences in

that particular spelling.

Note: the dates and word origins on the last column of tables 3 and 4 are from the Oxford

English Dictionary. Abbreviations are as follows: OE, Old English; ME, Middle English; ON, Old Norse;

OFr., Old French.

Common Verbs

It is fair to say the list of verbs in Table 3 represents the core of English verbs between 1380 and

1593. The only ones that seem less than commonplace today are to desire, to last, quoth, and to

seem.

Desire is a major theme of Boethius. Boethius desires to be restored to prosperity from his

dungeon, or at least to understand the ways of Providence. Philosophy in turn must explain to him the

desire for power and the danger that comes to wicked people who actually get what they think they

want. For that matter, desire has been replaced in present-day English by want, which used to signify

lack.


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[N]or doo I desyre my shops walles adornid wt yvory or glasse, rathr than the seate of thy mynde,

In wch I placed not bookes, but that that gives them price, sentences of myne owne woorkes.

QEB 1p5 lines 22-25 (Kaylor & Phillips 54)

Last indicates Boethiuss focus on eternity. It is used more often as an adjective than a verb, but this

extract from the Boece will show the idea:

Forwhy ful anguysschous thing is the condicioun of mannes goodes; for eyther it cometh nat

altogidre to a wyght, or elles it ne lastnat perpetuel. Boece 2p4 lines 76-79 (Fisher 836)

Quod is important to the structure of the Consolatio because all of the prose is a dialogue

between Boethius and Lady Philosophy. Since the original texts didnt use quotation marks, quod was

the next best thing. To signal a change in speaker, our translators tag on quod she or quod I,

sometimes along with the tag said I or said she.

I can not rememberqt Ithat evr my mynde was so free but somwhat greevid it[.] QEB 3p3 lines

12-13 (Kaylor & Phillips 82)

Thanne seyde she thus: Certes,quod she, that were a gret mervayle...Boece 4p1 lines 38-39

(Fisher 870)

If the verb to seem were an animal, it would be the weasel. Boethius, for all his emotion, was

novelizing as a Roman philosopher, being careful to qualify every argument.

In general, Elizabeths often condensed renderings of arguments in books 3-5 bespeak some

impatience with Boethiuss careful, even fastidious qualifications and his precise articulations of

logical entailment. Formulations like esse dicantur (may be said to be) are reduced to a simple,

straightforward be (book 3, prose 7). (Mueller & Scodel 50)

Boethius must have used seem quite often for it to survive in QEB over twenty times despite all

Elizabeths condensing.


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Table 3: Shared verb groups

Gloss Boece surface forms QEB surface forms Origin

1. to be be/ben/art/was/were/weren

be/being/are/art/was/

were

ME, OE (see OED for

history)

2. to come comen/cometh com OE (825)3. to desire desiren/desired/

desireth

desyre ME, OFr., L. (1230)

4. to do don/doon do/doo/don/doth/dost/did

OE (950)

5. to have han/hadde/hast/hath/have have/had/hast/hath OE (832)6. to know knowen/knowe/

knoweth/knowynge

know/knowe OE (1000)

7. to last laste last OE (900)8. to make maken/maketh/

maked

make/makes/made OE

9. to need nede/nedes needes OE (see OED forhistory)

10. to quoth, say quod qt OE (form ofqueath)11. to say seyn/seide/seith said OE (900)12. to see see/seen see OE (888)13. to seem,

befit

semeth seeme ME, ON (1200)

14. to think thought think OE15. may may/mai/moot/

mowen/myghte

may/might OE

16. shall schal/scholde/schulde shall/should OE (831)17. will wil/wol/wolde will/wold OE (825)


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Common Nouns

If Table 3 gave the core verbs of the English language, Table 4 gives the core nouns of the

Consolatio in particular. Watch the symbolism take shape as they are joined together: thing and nothing,

good and evil, cause and necessity, providence and power, God and right, form and nature, pain and

body, life, world enough and time. These all represent philosophical ideas that remained alive from

Roman times through the late Renaissance. Eight out of 19 nouns on the list are from Latin via French.

Nature and necessity came into philosophical use in English at the time of Chaucer. The other eleven

are native English terms.

Table 4: Shared nouns

gloss Boece QEB Origin

1. body body body OE (800)2. cause cause/causes cause/causes OFr., L. (1225)3. evil yvel evill OE (850)4. form forme forme OFr., L. (1297)5. god god/gode god/godes OE (825)6. good good/goodes good/goodes OE (as n. 1300)7.

life lif lyfe OE

8. man man/men man/mans/men/mens OE9. nature nature nature OFr., L. (1275, 1390)10. necessity necessite necessitie OFr., L. (1390)11. nothing nothyng nothing ME, OE12. pain peyne payne OFr., L. (1300)13. power power powre OFr., L. (1300)14. providence,

foresight

purveaunce providence OFr. purveaunce (1300)

providence (1382

Wycliffe Bible)

15. reason resoun/resouns reason/reson OFr. (1225)16. right right/ryght right OE (900)17. thing thing/thyng/thinges/

thingis/thynges

thing/thinges OE

18. time tyme tyme OE (893)19. world world world OE (832)


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Conclusion

At the outset of this study, we set out to discover how Middle English changed into Early

Modern English, using two translations of Boethius as a corpus. The introduction gave a background to

the textual history, showing that Chaucer and Elizabeth were entering into a long medieval tradition,

and that they were not working from the same text. Next it outlined their motives and translation styles.

The qualitative analysis took a look at the very first sentence of the Consolatio in both

translations, showing Chaucers verbose phrases influenced by the French commentary, and Elizabeths

terse Latin-inspired rhythms combined with native English vocabulary.

The quantitative analysis narrowed the field of study to a core of words used twenty times or

more in the text. It proved that all the English pronouns are present in both translations, but that a

phonological shift turned Chaucers heminto Elizabeths them, and Chaucers itinto Elizabeths hit(this

dialectal variant is nonstandard today). Next we turned to infinitive verbs, learning that the to __-en

infinitive, which Chaucer used inconsistenly, was totally absent from Elizabeths translation.

Finally, we examined lists of vocabulary common to both translations, from the corpus of twenty

occurrences. There were 17 shared verb groups and 19 shared nouns. The verbs were generic, except

for ones like quoth and seem, which indicate the dialectic structure and philosophical language

inherent to the book. All the verbs on the list except for desire (French) and seem (Norse) were from Old

English. The nouns, on the other hand, presented a rich array of basic philosophical concepts. Eight of

the nouns came from French, and the rest were native English terms.

Is it enough to say that medieval philosophy was a Latin and French project that carried those

Latin and French words into English translation? Or that inflexions, verb constructions, spelling, and

phonology changed over two hundred years? Or even that translation style, whether scholarly or


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personal, can slavishly follow its source and yet be full of verbal or rhythmic charm? No. A truly

satisfactory conclusion to a historical language study should predict as well.

I dont foresee school-children continuing to translate Latin classics. I do foresee scholars and

school-children in India and China translating English poetry. In fact, two months ago I spent hours

searching through blogs and online forums to find a Mandarin translation of Walt Whitmans Psalm of

Life for an exchange student named Si-Wei.

I also foresee scholars and school-children about one percent turning to an 800-year-old text

as Chaucer did with Boethius, puzzling out its meaning through cognates. That they will be turning to

Chaucers Canterbury Tales for entertainment rather than to his Boece for intellectual comfort is an

indicator of the ethos of our curriculum.

A more widespread phenomenon will be English-speakers meditating on 3000-year-old Hebrew

poetry in the Psalms or the book of Job, comparing the plain English of a present-day Bible translation

with the grave archaisms of the one commissioned by Elizabeths nephew, King James I, and published

in 1611.

Each of these situations illustrates the lasting power of poetry. We pull it out of centuries of

disuse, and soak our minds in it. Having thus pickled our memory, we pass the book on to our children.

At first they choke on old words as we did, but soon it passes into their own idiom and the brine

becomes sweet. (For those of you offended by the pickling analogy, may it grow on you as beards and

cucumbers grow. (Glyer 97)) Contrary to Boethiuss complaint, the prior ages werent so different. But

they do need a translator.


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Bibliography

Benson, Larry D., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Donner, Morton. Derived Words in Chaucer's "Boece:" The Translator as Wordsmith. The Chaucer

Review. Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter 1984), 187-203.

Gerard NeCastro, eChaucer. (Online text and concordance of Benson)

Fisher, John H., ed. The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer. New York: Holt, Rinehart &

Winston, 1977.

Glyer, Diana. The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community.

Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2007.

Kaylor, Noel Harold, and Philip Edward Phillips. The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I: The Queens

Translation of Boethiuss De Consolatione Philosophiae : Public Record Office, Manuscript SP 12/289.

Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2009.

Kenyon John Samue. The Syntax of the Infinitive in Chaucer. London: Published for the Chaucer Society,

1909.

KWIC Concordance for Windows (computer program).

Lewis, C.S. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renassance Literature. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1964.

Machan, Tim William. Techniques of Translation: Chaucers Boece. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1985.

Machan, Tim William, ed. Chaucers Boece: A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library, MS

Ii.3.21, ff. 9r-180

v. Heidelberg: Universittsverlag Winter, 2008.

Middle English Dictionary

Mueller, Janel and Joshua Scodel. Elizabeth I: Translations: 1592-1598. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2009.

The Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pemberton, Caroline (ed.). Queen Elizabeths Englishings. London Early English Text Society, 1899.

Perry, Maria. The Word of a Prince. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999. Quoted in Kaylor & Phillips.


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Rossignol, Rosalyn. Chaucer A to Z: The Essential Reference to HIs Life and Works. New York: Facts On

File, 1999.

Smith, Jeremy J. Essentials of Early English. London: Routledge, 1999.

Zeitlin, Jacob. Review of John Kenyon, The Syntax of the Infinitive in Chaucer. Journal of English and

Germanic Philology, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jul., 1913), 496-503.


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Appendix: Word-Cloud Images from Wordle.net

Figure 1: Boece Wordle


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Figure 2: Boece Wordle minus the most common words


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Figure 3: QEB Wordle


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Figure 4: QEB Wordle minus the most common words

nathan_straub_prior ages essay final

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