Constructing the Old English Solomon and Saturn Dialogues.

Editors have constructed the firstSolomon and Saturn Dialogueas consisting of three different texts: a more or less complete poem, a prose “fragment” inserted into the manuscript and another poem with significant losses due to manuscript damage. In this paper, I argue that we should read these fragments as a single, generically varied, composition. By analogy with individual works such as the Old Norse wisdom poems, charms and Boethius’Consolation of Philosophy,as well as with the many manuscripts that merge verse and prose, we can read the verse, prose and verse of the first twelve pages of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College manuscript 422 as a scribally if not authorially single work combining both genres. This leaves us with a single integrated work in which Saturn approaches Solomon with a request for help with wisdom; in response, Solomon provides Saturn with various descriptions of the Pater Noster and its powers in mystical and spiritual terms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]