Text and Eschatology in Book III of the Old English Soliloquies

Abstract

The Old English adaptation of Augustine's Soliloquia, traditionally attributed to King Alfred, is quite the most ambitious undertaking of the whole Alfredian project, and the third and final book of that work is easily the most ambitious part of it, but the textual confusion of Book III in the only surviving copy of the work makes it hard to come to a proper appreciation of the work. Karl Jost in 1920 demonstrated that the confusion could in part be explained by dislocation of leaves in an earlier manuscript. This article argues that the dislocation of text goes further than this, and that a closer analysis suggests a substantial rearrangement which offers a more coherent structure to the text. It goes on to explore the eschatology of Book III in the light of this rearrangement, and demonstrates that the Alfredian argument shows familiarity with traditional positions on the nature of the after-life but takes a radically more expansive view of the kinds of knowledge available after death.