Augustine's Soliloquies in Old English and in Latin

Author / Creator

Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430, author

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Summary

"In the late ninth or early tenth century, a scholar in southern England-sometimes identified as King Alfred of Wessex (r. 871-899)-translated two difficult works of Latin philosophy into his nativ...

"In the late ninth or early tenth century, a scholar in southern England-sometimes identified as King Alfred of Wessex (r. 871-899)-translated two difficult works of Latin philosophy into his native Old English vernacular: The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, who died in 524 or 525 CE, and Augustine of Hippo's Soliloquia (Soliloquies), completed in 386-387 CE. The manuscript exemplar of the Latin Soliloquia that was used by this Old English translator is not extant; however, based on the Old English version, we can deduce that the textual variants in that Latin exemplar were very similar to those that survive in a manuscript copied in southern England in the decades around the middle of the tenth century (now Brussels, KBR, MS 8558-63, part 1). As for the vernacular version, which modern editors have named the Old English Soliloquies, it survives, fragmented but nearly complete, in a single copy produced in the mid-to-late twelfth century. The scribe who produced this copy wrote in an idiosyncratic form of Old English that is difficult to digest, even for readers who are trained in "textbook" Old English. The present volume includes both the Old English Soliloquies and Augustine's Latin Soliloquia, the latter based on the Brussels manuscript. Because the Brussels text differs notably from those found in modern editions, this single-text edition of the Latin Soliloquia offers readers a better understanding of what was in the translator's exemplar, and thus provides the foundation for a more accurate appraisal of his methods as he reworked his chief Latin source into the Old English Soliloquies. The Soliloquia is a dialogue in which an interlocutor called "Augustine" converses with his own faculty of reason, as though talking to himself; hence Augustine coined the term soliloquium, based on the adjective solus, "alone," and the verb loquor, "speak." The conceit of the soliloquy prompts the reader to question what and where the faculty of reason is and how it communicates with the mind or the self. The Old English Soliloquies is conventionally and conveniently labeled a translation, but it is more accurate to describe it as a vernacular adaptation of excerpts from Augustine's Soliloquia, supplemented with apparently original material and with excerpts translated from other Latin sources"--

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