La consolazione di filosofia

This volume marks the restart of Einaudi’s classic NUE series. The translation is the first to be conducted on the most recent critical edition (C. Moreschini, 2005), which differs in some point from earlier texts. The Introduction presents the figure of Severinus Boethius, at once so Roman and yet so medieval, in his imaginary encounter in prison with the persona of Philosophy, the lady who calls to his mind the fundamental ideas of Neoplatonic and Neostoic philosophy in the face of death. Aided by the most recent secondary literature, the aim is to understand a work that is at once too pagan (Christ is not mentioned once) and yet too Christian, in view of the indirect references to Scripture, and that is composed in an alternation of prose and verse, of subtle argumentation and poetic beauties – and would influence Dante as much as Dino Campana, Petrarch as much as Tolkien.