SOURCE: "Form and Method in the Consolation;' in Boethius, Twayne Publishers, 1982, pp. 131-53.

In the essay below, Reiss analyzes the structure, dialogue form, and interweaving of prose and verse in the Consolation of Philosophy.

Structural Patterns

Whereas linear progression is the most obvious structural pattern of the Consolation, this progression involves much more than a simple movement from a beginning to an ending, or a simple change of the narrator from despair to hope and from ignorance to understanding. As the work develops and consolation yields to instruction and to an awareness of truth, so simplicity yields to complexity—of thought, language, and structure. The five-book structure of the Consolation, where the subject of one book overlaps to that of the next, reveals a movement beyond the overall one that extends from Book 1, with its statement of the problem in terms of its effect on the narrator...