The Mind in the Old English Prose Psalms

Abstract

The Prose Psalms, an Old English translation of the first 50 psalms into prose, have often been overshadowed by the other translations attributed to Alfred the Great: the Old English Pastoral Care, with its famous preface, and the intellectually daring Old English translations of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine’s Soliloquies. However, this article proposes that, regardless of who wrote them, the Prose Psalms should be read alongside the Old English Consolation and the Soliloquies: like the two more well-studied translations, the Prose Psalms are concerned with the mind and its search for true understanding. This psychological interest is indicated by the prevalence of the word mod (‘mind’) in the Old English text, which far exceeds references to the faculty of the intellect in the Romanum source. Through comparison with the Consolation and the Soliloquies, this article demonstrates that all three texts participate in a shared tradition of psychological imagery. The three translations may well, therefore, be the result of a single scholarly environment, perhaps enduring for several decades, in which multiple scholars read the same Latin, patristic writings on psychology, discussed these ideas among themselves, and thereby developed the vernacular discourse observable in these three translations. Whether this environment was identical with the scholarly circle which Alfred gathered at the West Saxon court remains a matter for debate.

Seeking within the self in The Metres of Boethius

“…7 The bark and pith analogy from the Pastoral Care serves as a reminder of the preoccupation with the mind that we encounter throughout the translations traditionally associated with Alfred. 8 It cannot be said with any certainty that the poet of the metrical sections of the Old English Boethius knew the Pastoral Care; moreover, the morally-charged, Gregorian analogy of the bark and pith is quite different from the philosophy encountered in Boethius's De consolatione and its Old English adaptations. However, what is clear is that, like the translator of the Pastoral Care, the poet of the Metres of Boethius is deeply concerned with the scrutiny of the innermost part of the self.…”