Alfred's epistemological metaphors: eagan modes and scip modes

Abstract

King Alfred's translations successively develop the metaphors of eagan modes and scip modes to render the implicit and explicit psychological contexts of nautical and ocular images in their Latin source-texts. The increasing complexity and independence of the metaphorical modification evident in the Old English translations suggest the order in which Alfred translated and reveal his maturing conception of epistemology, particularly the theory of illumination. In Pastoral Care, Consolations of Philosophy, Metres of Boethius, and, especially, Soliloquies, the interplay of these psychosomatic metaphors functions not as rhetorical flourish or stylistic ornamentation but as a means for Alfred to model his inferences about epistemological phenomena.