ABSTRACT
At the Consolatio’s open, Lady Philosophy, the Boethian-Prisoner’s teacher, shows the practice of philosophy to entail earthly creativity as well as transcendent through a variety of figures and allusions. Philosophy’s creative aspect is indicated, in part, through the conspicuous “life” of her allegorical female body. This chapter argues that each of these details—Philosophy’s womanly body and its “life” experiences, the ladder on her dress, and her mnemonic diagnosis of the Prisoner’s illness—points to the Consolatio’s double goals of transcendence and philosophical reproduction. If Philosophy’s initial description of her rape is conventionally abject, its retelling reveals the power of philosophical rewriting to transform sexual victimization into agency that literally and figuratively reproduces Philosophy and philosophy. The Consolatio’s project of philosophical reproduction begins with the notion that human knowledge is a living entity that can grow, decay, and be begotten. Boethius suggests the life and begotten nature of philosophy and philosophical writings in the Consolatio and elsewhere.
