Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 9-13).

This dissertation examines the nature and influence of the structural complexity of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy on Dante’s Commedia, arguing that the latter is a deliberate response to the former. The General Introduction sets the groundwork through a survey of the major scholarship on Dante and Boethius; the genre of the Consolation as understood through the modern, but inadequate, category of Menippean satire and through accessus ad auctores in the medieval commentary tradition on Boethius and related authors; and the conception of intertextuality used in the study, which is connected to both the practice of allegory and Boethius’ understanding of metaphysics. Chapter One examines the Consolation, beginning with the presentation and roles of its two major characters, Boethius and Philosophy. Anchoring the more abstract discussion of the Consolation’s structure and its scholarly interpretations is the subsequent analysis of three main themes, time, love, and prayer. Chapter Two considers five twelfth-century prosimetra and their intertextual relationships with the Consolation in order to map authorial strategies of imitation: Bernard Silvestris’ Cosmographia; Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature; Hildebert of Lavardin’s Liber de querimonia; Adelard of Bath’s De eodem et diverso; and Lawrence of Durham’s Consolatio de morte amici. Each work is examined for its Boethian elements and structural complexity; the most original, the Cosmographia, is considered at greatest length. This provides an overview of common interpretive and imitative options for the Consolation. Chapter Three examines the Boethian elements of Dante’s Vita Nuova and the Convivio before engaging with the Commedia in order to take issue with the prevailing scholarly opinion that the Commedia can be understood as a rejecton of Dante’s Boethian stage as symbolized by the Convivio. Through a thorough examination of the many ways the Consolation is an intertext in the Commedia, this chapter argues that the Commedia is deeply responsive to the challenges of the Consolation both philosophically and artistically, and, in fact, is positioned by Dante so as to supersede and typologically fulfill the Consolation. In conclusion, therefore, Boethius’ work is demonstrated to be integral to a proper understanding of Dante’s purpose in the Commedia.

This dissertation examines the nature and influence of the structural complexity of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy on Dante’s Commedia, arguing that the latter is a deliberate response to the former. The General Introduction sets the groundwork through a survey of the major scholarship on Dante and Boethius; the genre of the Consolation as understood through the modern, but inadequate, category of Menippean satire and through accessus ad auctores in the medieval commentary tradition on Boethius and related authors; and the conception of intertextuality used in the study, which is connected to both the practice of allegory and Boethius’ understanding of metaphysics. Chapter One examines the Consolation, beginning with the presentation and roles of its two major characters, Boethius and Philosophy. Anchoring the more abstract discussion of the Consolation’s structure and its scholarly interpretations is the subsequent analysis of three main themes, time, love, and prayer. Chapter Two considers five twelfth-century prosimetra and their intertextual relationships with the Consolation in order to map authorial strategies of imitation: Bernard Silvestris’ Cosmographia; Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature; Hildebert of Lavardin’s Liber de querimonia; Adelard of Bath’s De eodem et diverso; and Lawrence of Durham’s Consolatio de morte amici. Each work is examined for its Boethian elements and structural complexity; the most original, the Cosmographia, is considered at greatest length. This provides an overview of common interpretive and imitative options for the Consolation. Chapter Three examines the Boethian elements of Dante’s Vita Nuova and the Convivio before engaging with the Commedia in order to take issue with the prevailing scholarly opinion that the Commedia can be understood as a rejecton of Dante’s Boethian stage as symbolized by the Convivio. Through a thorough examination of the many ways the Consolation is an intertext in the Commedia, this chapter argues that the Commedia is deeply responsive to the challenges of the Consolation both philosophically and artistically, and, in fact, is positioned by Dante so as to supersede and typologically fulfill the Consolation. In conclusion, therefore, Boethius’ work is demonstrated to be integral to a proper understanding of Dante’s purpose in the Commedia.

Missing page 58. Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / From the time of its first publication in 1864 interest in Pearl has steadily increased. In the late nineteenth century the poem, primarily because of its difficult dialect, was a scholar's curiosity. Today, thanks to carefully prepared editions, translations and critical studies by English, American, German, French, Italian, Frisian and Japanese scholars, Pearl has rightfully achieved international renown. A clearly discernible shift in critical attitudes accompanied this increase in interest. Early sentimental views of the poem and its author were gradually supplanted by more accurate historical and textual criticism with the result that recent critical opinion is of one mind in its emphasis upon multiple levels of meaning within the poem. This study also employs a combined historical-textual approach as it interprets Pearl by means of the medieval fourfold method. Beginning with a brief sketch of allegory in pre-Christian times, the origin and development of the fourfold system is chronologically defined and this definition, supplemented by textual criticism, supplies the basis for an understanding of the poem as a product of its time. After a review of previous Pearl scholarship the interpretation also demonstrates how the fourfold method provides a frame of reference in which previous divergent interpretations of the poem can be reconciled. [TRUNCATED]

The master thesis presents and analyses a range of different ways in which the motif of the forest was treated in late-medieval literary sources as an element of thematic and compositional construction of the text. At the theoretical basis of the thesis is the concept of diachronic text reception and adaptations which bring along the transmission and simultaneous transformation of the use of topoi, while this process is being related to the development of the literary chronotopos signalizing a change in the public's horizon of expectation. The majority of sources for analysis are drawn from Czech sources of the long 14th century - courtly and chivalric romance, the Old Czech verse legend of St. Procopius and the Dalimil Chronicle - while a shorter part of the thesis is devoted to the presentation of individual tendencies in the development of the use of the forest topos in English and French literary allegory of the 14th and 15th centuries. In detailed comparison of specific passages from Old Czech texts with their actual models in other languages (Old Middle German, Latin), the thesis demonstrates, upon the example of the forest topos, that topoi do not represent fixed, inalterable clichés, but actually exhibit intense shifts in function, content and theme.