Sources of the Boece. Edited by Tim William Machan, with the assistance of A. J. Minnis. The Chaucer Library. Athens, GA: the University of Georgia Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 311; 1 illustration. $85.

One factor motivating today's students to become knowledgeable and conversant about Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius and his works is this: Chaucer translated Boethius's final Latin statement to the world, De Consolatione Philosophiae, into the English of his day (ca. 1380), and he used the philosophical, cosmological, scientific, and logical ideas it contains in his subsequent writings. For this reason, Tim Machan's Sources of the Boece is a valuable contribution to Chaucerian studies. King Alfred and queen Elizabeth I translated the Consolatio into Old English and Renaissance English, respectively, but it is Chaucer's use of boethian concepts in his later poetry that keeps multiple English Consolatio translations in print today.

Noel Harold Kaylor Jr.
Troy University