Time and the Astrolabe in the Canterbury Tales

TIME AND THE ASTROLABE IN THE CANTERBURY TALE5

Series for Science and Culture

EDITOR, SERIES FOR SCIENCE AND CULTURE Robert Markley, West Virginia University

ADVISORY BOARD Sander G~lman,Cornell University Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa Cruz N. Katherine Hayles, University of CaLfornia, Los Angeles Bruno Latour, Ecole Nationale SupCrieure des Mines and University of California, San Diego Richard Lewontin, Harvard University Michael Morrison, University of Oklahoma Mark Poster, University of California, Irvine G. S. Rousseau, University of Aberdeen Donald Worster, University of Kansas

TIME AND THE ASTROLABE I N THE CANTERBURY TALE5 Marijane Osborn

University of Oklahoma Press : Norman

Other Books by Marijane Osborn (with Stella Longland) Rune Games (London, 1982) Beom& A Erse Transhtion with Treasuresfrom the Ancient North (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983) Beowu& A Cuide to Study (Los Angeles, 1986) (with Randolph Swearer and Ray Oliver) Beom& A Likeness (New Haven, 1990) (with Gillian Overing) Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World

(Minneapolis, 1994) Romancing the Goddess:Three Middle English Romances about Women (Urbana, Ill., 1998)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Osborn, Marijane. Time and the astrolabe in the Canterbury tales / Marijane Osborn. p. cm. -(Series for science and culture ; v. 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8061-3403-8 (hardcover :alk. paper) I. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400. Canterbury tales. 2. Time in literature. 3. Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages in literature. 4. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 140-Views on time. 5. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 140-Technique. 6. Tales, MecLeval-History and criticism. 7. Astrolabes in literature. 8. Rhetoric, Medieval. 1.Title. 11.Series: Series for science and culture ; v. 5.

PR1875.T55083 821'.14c21

2002

2001055697

Time and the Astrolabe in The Canterbury Tales is Volume 5 of the Series for Science and

Culture. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources, Inc. Coppght O 2002 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A.

As Chaucer matured, as he heed b s e l f progressively from the rhetorically complex and artificial styles of his predecessors, he allowed himself greater scope to experiment with astronomicalstyles, It is a measure of the mastery he had over them that they never seriouslyinterfered with the growing naturahsm of h s poetry. ...[The astronomical passages] tend to be hghly specific, as we have amply shown, and to that extent they are a facet of naturdsm rather than a denial of it. J. D. North, Chaucer's Universe

For David

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Series Editor's Foreword Acknowledgments and Credits Introduction Part 1: Chapter I: Chapter 2: Chapter 3: Chapter 4:

T h g Bearings Chaucer's Sky The Steed of Brass and Chaucer's Astrolabe Using the Astrolabe on the Road to Canterbury Mercury the Sly and the "Bradshaw Shift"

Part 2: Chapter 5: Chapter 6: Chapter 7:

Applications The Amphitheater in The Knight5 Tale The Spheres and Pagan Prayer in The Knight5 Tab Cosmic Retribution in The Miller5 Tale

Part 3: Implications Chapter 8: Chaucer's Attitude toward Prophecy and Planetary Influences Chapter 9: The "ArtificialDayy'of Pilgrimage Chapter ro: Libra and the Moon: Some Final Speculations

CONTENTS

Appendix: A Practice Astrolabe Glossary of Basic Astronomical and Navigational Terms Notes Works Cited Index

I LLUSTRATIONS

1.1.

1.2.

1.3. 1.4. 1.5. 1.6. 1.7. 2.1.

2.2.

2.3.

2.4.

The Rete of an Astrolabe Set in the Main Plate Lady Astronomy Instructing Ptolemy in the Use of the Astrolabe Measuring the Hours The Basic Model The Basic Model with the Celestial Equator and the Ecliptic Aries, Taurus, and the Pleiades The Precession of the Equinoxes ATurbanned Knight upon a Steed of Brass The Parts of the Astrolabe The "Hors" (Skeat) The Constellation Pegasus

2.5. The Great Square as Indicator of the First Point of Aries 2.6. The Constellation Aquila 3.1. The April Half-Course of Aries the Ram 3.2. The Back of an Astrolabe 3.3. The Arc of the Artificial Day for Lat 52ON on April 18 (Julian Calendar) 3.4. A Climate Plate 3.5. The Approximate Positions of the Sun and Its Exaltation in Be Squire? Tab

15 17 20 21

22

25 28 38 41 43 45 46 51 59 60 66 69 73

3.6. 3.7. 3.8. 3.9. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.5. 4.6. 4.7. 4.8. 4.9. 4.10. 4.11.

5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.9. 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. 6.4. 6.5.

Finding 10 A.M. on 18 April on the Astrolable Climate Plate with Almucantars Finding 4 P.M. on 18 April on the Astrolable Bearings on the Arc of Day on the Road to Canterbury The Route to Canterbury The Five Sets of Tales According to Howard The "GeographicMOrder of the Tales Movable Fascicles of The Canterbuy Taks Approximate Mileage on the Pilgrimage Route Virgo above the Eastern Horizon on April 18 at Midafternoon Fitting Virgo into the Pilgrimage Day Noon on Carnbyuskaris Birthday, Leo Rising The Wheel of Fortune Fitting the Meridian into the Pilgrimage Day (Leo emboldened) Measuring Latitude by the Celestial Equator and by the Ecliptic (in note 22) A Model of the Roman Colosseum HalLssy's Plan of Theseus's "Noble Theatre" The Directional Lines on the Astrolabe The Signs as Domiciles of the Planetary Gods The Simple Circle of the Signs The Celestial Sphere with the Observer's Horizon The Observer's Horizon The Earth Encircled by the Observer's Horizon at Latitude 45ON Taurus and Scorpio Standmg above the Horizon, Taurus Rising The Ptolemaic Cosmos The Planets in Their Heliocentric Order and Their Ptolemaic Order The Nine Spheres of the Ptolemaic Cosmos Brealung out from the Visible Cosmos The Inequal Hours in Early May at Lat 5z0N

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Planetary Spheres and the Days of the Week The Sequence of the Planetary Hours The Planetary Hours of Saturday on the Astrolabe The Temple Visits at Hours Correspondtng to the Numbered Spheres The Planetary Hours on the Astrolabe The Twelve Hours of Monday Night Zodac Man Four-Day Imaginary Log of the Canterbury Pilgrimage Venus Accompanied by Symbols of Her Domiciles Dante's Sun and Moon "in Balance" from the Zenith Appendvr figure I. Rete Appendix figure 2. Mother Plate with Inset Climate Plate Appendix figure j. Label

XI

272

273 274

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SERIES EDITOR'S FOREWORD

In recent years, the study of science, both within and outside of the academy, has undergone a sea change. Traditional approaches to the history and philosophy of science treated science as an insular set of procedures concerned to reveal hndamental truths or laws of the physical universe. In contrast, the postdmiphary study of science emphasizes its cultural embeddedness, the ways in which particular laboratories, experiments, instruments, scientists, and procedures are historically and socially situated. Science is no longer a closed system that generates carefully plotted paths proceeding asymptoticallytowards the truth, but an open system that is everywhere penetrated by contingent and even competing accounts of what constitutes our world. These include-but are by no means limited to--the discourses of race, gender, social dass, politics, theology, anthropology,sociology, and literature. In the phrase of Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine, we have moved from a science of being to a science of becoming. This becoming is the ongoing concern of the volumes in the Series for Science and Culture. Their purpose is to open up possiblLties for further inquiries rather than to dose off debate. The members of the editorial board of the series reflect our cornmitment to reconceiving the structures of knowledge. All are prominent in their fields, although in every case what their "field is has been redefined, in large measure by their own work. The departmental or program affiliations of these distinguishedscholarsCander Gllrnan, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine

XIV

S E R I E S EDITOR'S FOREWORD

Hayles, Bruno Latour, Richard Lewontin, Michael Morrison, Mark Poster, G. S. Rousseau, and Donald Worster-seem to tell us less about what they do than where, institutionally, they have been. Taken together as a set of strategies for rethtnking the relationships between science and culture, their work exemplifies the h d of carefd, self-critical scrutiny w i h n fields such as medicine, biology, anthropology, hstory, physics, and literary criticism that leads us to a recognition of the limits of what and how we have been taught to thmk. The p o s t d i ~ c i p h a raspects ~ of our board members' work stem fiom their professional expertise widun their home dsciplines and their willingness to expand their stuhes to other, seemingly aLen fields. In differing ways, their work challenges the basic divisions within Western thought between metaphysics and physics, mind and body, form and matter. Similarly, the volumes we have published in the series reflect crucial changes in the ways we conceive of both science and culture. In an era in which the so-called Science Wars have polarized these allegedly opposing fields of study by caricaturing both camps-"science" and "cult~re'~-as single-minded restatements of invariant beliefs, the studies in the series elevate the level of postdisciplinary discussion by indicating ways in which we can think beyond simplistic modes of attack and defense. All coherence is not gone in a postcLsciptnary era, but our conceptions of what counts as coherence, inquiry, and order continue to evolve. MARKLEY ROBERT West Eqinia University

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CREDITS

Many persons deserve thanks for their part in my growing perceptions and understandmg of &S project. The following are just a few. First, thanks go to my father, who taught us chddren how to recognize the major constellations, then to my brother, the astronomer Rernington Stone of Lick Observatory, who has answered my many questions about astronomy in recent years and donated books to the cause. The first Chaucerian to whom I brought my ideas about astrolabic astronomy in The Canterbuy Tales was my then-colleague Daniel S. Silvia, who guided my steps through the first part of Chapter 4 (which concerns Chaucer manuscripts and the arrangement of the tales). Professor Sigrnund Eisner, whom I consulted next, has been wonderfully supportive for more than a decade as I have learned my way around the esoteric field of astrolabe studies. I owe thanks to the Arizona astronomer Rayrnond E. Whte, for allowing me twice to present papers on Chaucer's astronomy at the Vatican-sponsored conferences he has co-organized, titledThe Inspiration of AstronomicalPhenomena (INSAP I and 11), and for helping me learn the language of astronomy; to Professor J. D. North, for writing the book, Chaucer's Universe, upon which nine is so dependent, and for taking the time to talk with me in Oxford; to the cartographer Robert Guillemette, for creating my first cardboard astrolabe calibrated for fourteenth-century London; to Steven Oerdmgg, for creating the "Chaucerian" astrolabe used in dagrarns in this book and in the appendvr; and to

XVI

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CREDITS

Mr. Harold N. Saunders, author of All the Astrolabes, for the unexpected gift of two useful plastic astrolabes when I visited hLn in Cornwall. I am grateful to Jane Kimball, research librarian at the University of California at Davis, who obtained expeditiously some specialist books that I needed; and to Yvette Kisor, who read through the manuscript with a fine critical eye. I am grateful to my student, John Galbraith, who started me on this venture by a s h g how many mdes it was from London to Canterbury; to another student, Corey Azure, who alerted me to a problem that led to unravehg the technical terms "celestial longitude" and "right ascension"; and to the astronomer Tony Misch, who helped me with this unraveling. Many students have dutifully listened to lectures on astrolabes and astronomy when they might have preferred to hear more about love and chivalry and shape-shifting and wordplay and clever low-life ducanery; I'm grateful to them for their patience, Portions of Chapters 2, j, 5, and 6 have been published previously, in a preh n a r y form, in places rather out-of-the-way for Chaucerians; I am grateful to the journal Al-Masaq: Islam and the Mediterranean Wd,to the University of New Mexico Press, and to the journal Hsttar in Astronomy for permission to adapt in Chapters 3, 5, and 10, respectively, material first published by them. Another part of Chapter 5 is based on a paper presented on ro January 1999 at the Second Conference on "The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena,'' Hotel Santana, Qawra, Malta (proceedmgs forthcoming). I am grateful to Marian Stewart for her patience and care as edrtor and to Pippa Letsky for her assistance in copyediting. Finally, I must thank the Regents of the University of California for the travel grants and sabbaticals that made writing dus book possible, and for the subvention that paid for the dragrams. Clearly, any mistakes in this presentation, and I am sure there are some, are my own responsibility. Edrtorial Note Non-Chaucerians may find unfamiliar the titles of individual Canterbury tales being shown in italics instead of within quotation marks; this usage is standard practice in Chaucer studres. All quotations from Chaucer are taken from the Riverside Chaucer, and individual tales w d be cited by the easily recognizable abbreviated titles in the form listed there on page 7$3, but wi& Prol for pologMe and Intro for introduction. These abbreviated titles are used rather

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CREDIT5

XVI I

than the more usual fiagment number, and followed by line number, as thus for line 1281of the Efanklini Tak fiankT 1281, not U1 1281. Astronomers tradtionally capitalize Sun and Moon to conform to the capitahation of the names of the planets, a practice followed in this book. Where astronomers may place a semicolon between the degree and the minute in referring to angles, as in 6";2ot,both the semicolon and minute mark are cLspensed with here, simplifying the form to 6O20. Figures in the Text with Their Provenance

All the figures other than those for 1.1, 4.9, 4.11, 5.1~5.2, and 5.8 were made with help fiom Steven Oerding in the Division of Mormation Technology of the University of California at Davis and are therefore used by permission of the Regents of the University of Cahfornia. The six diagrams fiom Chaucer's Tratise (figures 3.7,5.3,5.5,5.9,6.8, and 7.1) are fiom the copy held in Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.j.53 as reproduced in R. T. Gunther, Chauder and Messahalla on the Astrolabet and are used with permission fiom Oxford University Press. AdcLtional acknowledgments are given in&vidually below.

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TIME AND THE ASTROLABE IN THE CANTERBURY TALE5

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INTRODUCTION

Chaucer's "poems and prose works," says Derek Brewer, "record a questing, eager spirit and intellect, as interested in astronomy as amused by the bawdy rnisadventures of the lower classes or the pathos of lost love" ( A New Introduction to Chaucer 4). This book is intended for those wishing to understand, in simple term, what Chaucer is doing with the references to celestial objects that he scatters throughout The Canterbury Taks, and what these have to do with the Taks as a whole. The focus here is upon astronomy, a mathematical science, rather than on astrology, an art of pre&ction. Chaucer's interest in applied mathematics, regarded by Brewer, writing two decades ago, as "almost totally overlooked" ("hthmetic and the Mentalrty of Chaucer" 156), is currently a matter of developing attention (see Acker, Shippey). Chaucer's interest specifically in celestial coordinates is unusual for his period, and unusual in any period for a poet, Dante ALgheri and Robinson Jeffers being perhaps the only other well-known poets of the Western world to use the sky in &IS particular way.' Chaucer's interest in astronomy as expressed in Tbm Canterbury Tabs brings together a previous interest in the Ovidian lore of the planets and constellations as ornament and narrative with his newer interest in the use of the astrolabe for determining the mathematical locations of celestial objects. This book does not argue that Chaucer's purpose in deploying this scientific methodology is allegorical, at least in the usual sense. Every book so

far attempting to find large hidden patterns in Chaucer's astronomy or his so-called astrology has failed to convince the community of Chaucer scholars as a whole. Derek Pearsall, for example, dismisses attempts to find sequential dates of composition hidden within Chaucer's texts: "The evidence for [absolute dates of composition] is almost non-existent, and the attempts to be specific, for instance in arguments for topical or astronomical allusion, have generally persuaded none but their proponents" (L9 231). In regard to astronomy, Pearsall is undoubtedly alluding to J. D. North's magisterial Chaucer? Universe, a study that those who are now addressing issues related to Chaucer's interest in the sky ignore to their peril. Nevertheless, while being enormously impressed otherwise by the work of this well-known historian of medieval astronomy, I too remain unconvinced about many of the meanings that North attaches to the astronomical allusions scattered throughout lie Canterbuy Taks. Nor does the more recent book by Ann W Astell, Chaucer and the Universe of Laming, deriving support from Dante? Christian Astrologyby Richard Kay, convince me that in Thr Canterbuy Tabs Chaucer is fobwing Dante's scheme in Paradiso of a "philosophical soul-journeyHthrough the celestial spheres (Astell x t t h o u g h unquestionably he is following Dante's lead in respect to other astronomical matters. Whde profiting from the introduction and the &st two chapters, in which Astell adroitly es~blishesChaucer's clerical d i e u (scanting, however, its scientific and mathematical aspects), I cease to be convinced at the end of Chapter 2 when she posits a Chaucerian "summa" (9).As C. S. Lewis said long ago, "Nowhere in Chaucer do we find what can be called a radically allegorical poem . . . a story which may be translated into a literal narration" (Alkgoy of Love 166); Lewis means a story in which the main meaning is alh, other than the declared meaning. (Turning a literal planetary conjunction into a lovers' tryst, as Chaucer does in The Complaint of Mars, is not the kind of allegory Lewis has in mind.) Brewer likewise emphasizes repeatedly in his New Introduction to Chaucer that the poet prefers literalism and modernism and "has little taste for allegory" (23, cp. 88, 160)~~ A realist in ways that many of his contemporary authors were not, Chaucer seems more interested in practical astronomy than in farreaching metaphysical designs, and he is dearly intrigued by the Arabic sciences being transferred to Europe through Spain. He is one of the few in his generation, for example, to take notice of the "new rnath" incorporating zero, -

.

5

INTRODUCTION

and perhaps the only poet to do so with any understandmg (Acker 29,98). Above all, he is interested enough in the astrolabe, a scientific instrument that presents the sky in essentially mathematical terms, to write a treatise about it. Chaucer is not alone in these interests. In the astronomical passages in The Canterbuy Tabs he seems to be addressing an audience quite different from the "ordinary folks" represented by Harry Bailly, the genial tavern Host who joins the Pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and of whom Alan Gaylord says, "To the extent that the stories remind him of farmliar things, he is wding to respond with farmliar emotions" (zj2). Chaucer's sometimes technically elaborate astronomical periphrases giving the time of day (a well-known rhetorical device called chronographia), and in particular his hidden references to astronomical subjects, are very obviously geared to the special interests of an elite audience, though the argument of this book differs from J. D. North's above all in finding that most of these passages can appeal to persons nat depe ystert in 100re~ "not greatly adept in [astronomical] knowledge." The main purpose of Time and therlstrolabe in The Canterbuy GLr is to enable the reader to be included in that elite yet only moderately adept audience. This purpose may be broken down into three subsidary aims: to demystify the astrolabe by means of Chaucer's treatise, so that any careful reader can perform the first few operations on the device; to show how Chaucer uses the Arabic instrument to create secular time-related structures w i t h certain indvidual Canterbury tales; and to examine various ways that these structures also enhance the frame tale itself,implicitly raising the phdosophical level of the framing fiction without recourse to a philosophical flight of the kind that "Geffrey" the narrator found so uncomfortable in The House of Fame (lines p9-1050). The first set of chapters, "Taking Bearings," shows how the astrolabe works, as Chaucer describes its functions to his ten-year-old son. As a preliminary step, Chapter I provides an introduction to the way Chaucer's sky functions, setting forth the principles of the simple astronomy required for navigation and orienteering to this day. Though its cosmology is long outdated in scientific terms, Chaucer's sky remains the navigator's sky, because it is the sky we see when we take note of the position of the Sun by day or .

.

.

6

INTRODUCTION

the stars, Moon, and visible planets by night. The three chapters that follow show how the instrument itself is "smuggled" into the narrative context of The Canterbuy Tales as a metaphor or as a tool, and the process of explaining these passages introduces the reader to the astrolabe's appearance, its provenance, and the functions of certain diagrams engraved upon it. The second set of chapters, 4'Applications,"takes the reader, by means of Chaucer's own words both in h s Treatise on the Astrolabe and in the Tlzles, through the first three operations of the astrolabe.These operations are used to fiid the time of day, and thus they result in describingthe "arc of day" that spans the pilgrimage. A model astrolabe in the Appendvr will allow the reader to copy, cut out, and operate the instrument in order to follow the discussions more closely in this and the third set of chapters. The third set of chapters, "Implications,~'first digresses to examine Chaucer's attitude toward astrology (a related subject though not the primary interest of this book), then demonstrates further operations of the astrolabe, finally arguing that the supposed astrological error of the exaltation of the Moon at the end of the journey is not the mistake that modern commentators have supposed it to be.This becomes clear when that exaltation is understood not as the astrology it sounds lke, but as a reading on the astrolabe. Such an understandq then reveals the significance of this passage for concluding the "arc of day."This final astronomical reference enhances the form of the pilgrimage, perhaps incidentally provides a date, and more pertinently provides an appropriate thematic and religious closure to the m a d y secular "Canterbury day." That there is a secular-to-religious movement in the first and the last groups of tales cannot be denied. That this bracketing movement has a thematic effect on all the tales, rendering The C a n t e r b u y Tales allegorical as a whole, seems doubtful to most readers of Chaucer, includmg myself; this book is not intended to lure the reader into a return to the patristic-exegetical attitudes of an earlier critical period, Nevertheless, the notion of a single day passing as the Pilgrims move along the way to Canterbury has symbolic implications that Chaucer appears to be utilizing as the Sun rises and sets. "For Chaucer," says Jill Mann, "the literary process is not completed with the production of a literary work. It is not complete without the readerthat is, until it has been absorbed by a living consciousness into a pattern

l NTRODUCTION

7

formed by experience and other books that will give it meaning-not a fixed meaning, but one that wdl s l f t and grow with new readings" ("Authority of the Audience," 12). Recent scholarship makes it clear that Chaucer's own concept of The Canterbuy Tah was in a state of flux that was affected by the books with which he was engaged as theTales grew; he apparently also was affected by the felt presence of an audience having varied interests, one of these being an interest in the astrolabe.The present study provides a record of the growth of The Canterbuy Tabs at a certain period in Chaucer's writing of them, perhaps around the early qgos, with an aulence in mind that is moderately adept in science or at least unafraid of science. It makes an argument for an overall plan toward which Chaucer was working at that particular time.

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PART 1

TAKING BEARINGS

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CHAPTER 1

CHAUCER'S SKY

"Forget Copernicus," George said. "That's the first lesson in celestial navigation. Forget Copernicus. The earth doesn't go round the sun; the sun goes round the earth, and the stars go round us too." Jonathan Raban, Foreign Land

The primary function of the astrolabe is to locate objects in the sky and use the bearings thus obtained to determine time or location on earth.The purpose of thls book is to show why these slulls are important for understanding Thp Canterbuy Takr. In The Sacred Wood, his book of essays and criticism published in 1920, T. S. Eliot says of Dante's Divine Comedy that "it is not essential that. ..the almost unintelligible astronomy should be understood (168).' Fortunately Mary Acworth Orr thought otherwise and elucidated that astronomy in a book of 1914 with which Eliot was apparently u n f a d iar or had not taken the trouble to read. Orr showed that Dante's astronomy is not so unintebgible after all, despite individual puzzling items, and that it is integral to the physical as well as to the mental universe that Dante portrays. Placing emphasis on Dante's allusions to the position of the Sun, Moon, and constellations, Orr observes that these "are seen to follow one another according to a regular scheme, and they form a very good guide by which to time Dante on his journey" (Orr 270). Dante-the-Pilgrim's

l2

TAKING BEARINGS

observation of the sky, especially in his ascent up Mt. Purgatorio, probably inspired Geoffrey Chaucer to incorporate into his own pilgrimage tale certain celestial movements that indicate the timing of the journey to Canterbury. Readers of Chaucer9sHouse of Fame w d remember the eagle that the English poet imitates Erom Purgatorio (9 28-30), who offers to teach astronomy to abducted "GefErey" fiom their elevated, astral point of view: "Would you f i e to learn something about the stars?'' he asks. " C e r d y not," Geffiey replies testily, "I'm too old!" (lines 993495). Ovid, whose Metamorphoses Chaucer knew, also uses celestial movements as a timekeeping device within his series of llnked stories, but not with Dante's careful attention. This preliminary chapter will offer the major astronomical concepts with which Chaucer, l~keOvid and Dante, is working when in various ways he refers to the sky overhead on the road to Canterbury: Perhaps the first thing to be emphasized is that in referring to the sky in these pilgrimage passages Chaucer is not engaging in astrology, but in astronomy, which in medieval times was duefly concerned with the apparent turning of the celestial vault overhead. Modern readers may be confused about dus distinction.3The sky overhead is an objective fact and the stars and planets in it are visible to anyone who wants to see them, rising and setting at precisely calculable intervals. Astronomy attempts to measure and explain these movements and other celestial phenomena in terms of "celestial mechanics." Astrology, on the other hand, while based on the apparent motions of the same planets and stars, is an allegorical system used for prophecy on the principle that the distant stars and planets in some way reflect or influence the lives of individual human beings. Though many medeval authors used the two terms interchangeably, like John in Be Milh-2Tale, some of the most attentive writers make a distinction much like the modern one. The seventhcentury encyclopedist Isidore of Sevdle, for example (following Cassiodorus; ) astronomy Erom astrology more or less as menseeTester 1 2 ~ )distinguishes tioned above, and then he adds that true astrology (which regards the celestial activity above as affecting or reflecting human life on earth) is "in part natural and in part superstitious." The natural parts include observing the effects of the Sun and Moon and the changing seasons, whereas the superstitious parts are the use of the signs of the zodiac and other signs for individual predictions (Lidore 3:27).4

CHAUCER'S SKY

13

The Sun and Moon obviously do influence life on earth, as do the seasons that are marked by the rising times of different constellations. Astronomy and astrology were invented together for the very reason that the steady progress of the constellations across the night sky, both nocturnally and annually, provides a reliable clock and calendar-ne that stdl works, incidentally-and that same celestial movement must have been seen as controlling rituals such as sacrifice and planting rather than merely scheduling them.5Thus the stars appeared to cast down upon human events an "influence." From this idea apparently comes our term "influenza" for a mysterious illness that is cast upon us by malevolent stars. More objective or pragmatic viewers of celestial motion began to correlate the observable motions of the Sun, Moon, and stars with the days and nights of the passing year, eventually rendering these time-defining movements graphically so that clocks and calendars could be consulted without cLrect reference to the sky.6 The thesis of this book is that Chaucer conceived of astronomical time in The Canterbuy Tales as a graphic image, perhaps imagined as a great arc something llke a modern clockface marking the daylight hours above his ~ i l ~ r i m a route. g e He gave some attention to improving t h s image by ananging or rearranging the order of certain tales within the frame tale of the pilgrimage, and he also added to the first two tales, through revision of his sources, a cosmic perspective on the passage of time that reflects ironically upon the plans adopted by persons in those tales. After providing vivid markers at the beginning of his Canterbuy Tiles, perhaps he felt that he had sufficiently established this particular "cosmic" perspective, for he then refers to it only occasionally during the rest of the journey. According to Larry D. Benson, Chaucer probably adopted the plan for a storytelling pilgrimage to Canterbury "sometime in the late 1380s" (Riverside Chaucer j), workmg into this plan a number of previously composed tales as well as other new ones. The plots of nearly all of them are borrowed, as is the image of time itself, and yet no other work in the world is like The Canterbuy Tilrr. The idea of introducing the image of time probably came to Chaucer in midstream, as such ideas do, sometime after he had conceived of the plan of the storytelling pilgrims in general. This image of time would therefore have been connected with his writing of A Treatise on the Artrohbe around 1391~ and with his previous interest in that instrument. Chaucer's

14

TAKING BEARINGS

interest in the astrolabe may have been inspired or reinforced by Dante's references to time in terms of celestial movement, astronomy that an astrolabe can help a reader understand. Chaucer may well have discovered that his astrolabe rendered Dante's astronomy less "unintelligible" than Eliot later found it, and from &S discovery proceeded to use his instrument to increase the structure and meaning of his own pilgrimage frame tale. Yet, for whatever the reason, references to the astrolabe and its b c t i o n s , and most of the related calendrical and horological (clock) references that Chaucer makes in l l e Canterbuy Taks, are not obvious. He seems to be malung many of these references avadable only to those who are sufficiently knowledgeable to catch them. The group of Chaucer's friends and acquaintances who would be interested in the astrolabe were probably connected with Oxford Universityparticularly Merton College-as some of h s science-oriented acquaintances are known to have been (see Bennett 58-85). Merton College still owns a rare and early astrolabe s d a r though not identical to the ins&ent shown in some of the manuscript dustrations of Chaucer's fieatise on the Astrolabe, "one of a small group that have zoomorphic retes" (Webster and Webster 40; see also Ginger&, Eye of Heaven 81-101). The rete is the cutout star map set into the front of the main plate of the instrument. The head of an animal, usually a dog indicating with its tongue the location of the dog-star Sirius, appears on the front of these womorphic retes, as it does in the manuscript drawing.The reader w d become accustomed to seeing this typically English "Chaucerian" rete in the pages that follow (see fig. 1.1). In naming the oxford friars John Somer a n d ~ i c h o l a sof Lynn in the introduction to his Tredtise on the Astrolabe, Chaucer associates himself with a particular group at court and at Oxford that shared his interest in astronomical matters. When in 1380 John Somer dedicated his carefully calculated seventy-five-year Kakndarium to Joan of Kent (the mother of Richard 11), and Nicholas of Lynn dedicated his 1386Kaknddrium to John of Gaunt (Chaucer's own patron and the father of Henry W ) ,such exalted patronage for their work would have authorized the subject of celestial timekeeping as worthy of respect and engagement.These "calendars" included much more than we associate with the word today and are, in effect, almanacs, for, in addition to charting the days of the month, they include charts for finding

The Rete of an Astrolabe Set in the Main Plate. Redrawn by the author fiom W W Skeat's drawing in his edtion of Chaucer's Treatise (his fig. I) based on MS Cambridge Dd.?.s3. 1.1.

16

TAKING BEARINGS

the exact rising and setting times of the Sun, the length of shadow at any given hour and time of year, the phases of the Moon on any day or in any year, and so forth. It may be, therefore, that Chaucer introduced many of these aspects of celestial timekeeping into h s CanterburyZlh in part to appeal to a group of persons more inclined to be impressed by this level of scientific expertise than by the merely decorative metaphor usually found in poetry of the day. The obscurity and te&c&ty of some of his astronomical passages certady suggest that they were intended for a group of specialists, and the specifically astrolabic allusions further define his audence The exotic hand-held brass instrument called an astrolabe is essentially a movable sky chart that works on principles still used by celestial navigators today.8The device's name, coming from Greek, means "star-catcher." Since it is a planispheric projection of the sky's sphere-that is, it projects what we perceive as spherical onto a flat plane-the instrument is technically referred to as the "plane astrolabe.'' The pocket planisphere or star finder available in many bookstores and nature stores is a sort of simplified astrolabe, stripped of the timekeeping and navigational functions that are no longer necessary in our age of clocks and electronic devices. As Chaucer demonstrates by writing his treatise at least ostensibly for his ten-year-old son Lewis, to whom he addresses the introduction, this instrument is an excellent instructional device for teaching the principles of celestial movements.9 In order to understand the arguments of t h s book and to follow the astrolabic h c t i o n s presented in Chapter and later, the reader must become familiar with some basic principles of celestial mechanics and have a fundamental understanding of the sky that we share with Chaucer. The astrolabe with its engraved diagrams is designed to help one better understand that sky. In figure 1.2 the imaginary Lady Astronomy is shown instructing the real Alexandrine astronomer Ptolemy (ca. 90-168 c.E.), who sits at lower right. Ptolemy is observing a schematic model cosmos-the model, of course, standmg for the real sky that he would be viewing with his instrument, if he really had one. He probably did have some sort of instrument of the kind; it would have been an enormous help as he was working out ways to talk about the sky and developing or improving diagrams to assist with this conversation.'~Ptolemy's main diagrams are still used, such as the great circles

1.2.Lady Astronomy Instructing Ptolemy in the Use of the Astrolabe. From a sixteenth-century woodcut found, among other places, as a decoration b e h d the initial C in the Astronomicurn Caesarmm of Peter Apianus (1540).

18

TAKING BEARING5

on the model cosmos shown in figure 1.2. ("Great circle" is the technical term for a circle on a sphere that divides that sphere into two equal parts; its center point is the center of the sphere.) Many other more complicated Ptolemaic diagrams no longer have relevance to modern astronomy and w d not be mentioned in this book. In fact, no astronomical concept presented here w d be particularly difficult, and the present chapter will introduce only the basic skds necessary for following Chaucer's reasoning in those parts of The Canterbuy Tah where he makes references to the sky as a timekeeper, references significant for the pilgrimage to Canterbury. Chaucer includes astronomical or astrological references in more than a h d of the tales, but many of these occurrences serve as time markers w i h the tales, whereas the main interest of this book is the celestial timekeeping on the pilgrimage journey itselEThus, attention will be given m a d y to what these references reveal regarding the "frame tale" of The Canterbuy Tales. Although considerable mystique is associated with the astronomical terms Chaucer uses, the language may be learned quickly as one follows h s usage in the &scussion below; the geometry involved w d be only the elementary plane geometry with which we are already farmliar as users of clocks. (The face of an analogue clock is in fact historically derived fiom the astrolabe.) The three main celestial concepts named here-the echptic, the equinox, and the precession of the equinoxes-are among the most difficult concepts to be encountered in the entire book, though as w d be seen in the next few pages, a basic understanding of them is not at all difficult. Since the best manuscripts of the Eeatise are dustrated with Chaucer frequently announcing to Lewis, "Lo, her t h figure" ("Look here [is] your figure"), Chaucer apparently felt a need for &agrams to make many of his astronomical explanations comprehensible.Therefore, especially in &S chapter explaining basic concepts, Chaucer's example w d be followed and graphic dustrations provided to ease the reader's task. Celestial navigation is an ancient art that has not changed substantially since the days of Ptolemy, for the reason alluded to in the epigraph for this chapter: the sky used for navigation is the sky we see, not the sky that modern science describes. It is "an imaginary sphere of infinite radius called the celestial sphere. T h s sphere has its center at the earth's center" (Dutton 1q).

CHAUCER'S SKY

19

Since we humans project this imaginary celestial sphere from the earth upon the sky, its equator is on the same plane as the earth's equator, and its poles are an extension of the earth's poles (as shown in fig. 1.2). Chaucer calls this celestial equator the "equynoxial" (equinoctial) because upon it lie the two annual points of equinox at which night and day are equal in length. From an earthbound point of view, the distant stars seem "fastened" upon this shell-llke outer sphere, which turns once every twentyfour hours in relation to the earth-or appears to do so. In reality, of course, the earth is turning. Because of the Sun's and stars' endless (apparent) circling, one can use these celestial objects, with certain corrections, to tell the time. When the 360" circle of the celestial equator (our projection upon the sky of the earth's equator) is divided into twenty-four equal sections of arc marked by the celestial meridians (our projection of earth's twenty-four longitudinal hour lines), simple division of 360 by 24 tells us that each section of that divided celestial equator wdl contain 15 degrees of arc and be the equivalent of one hour. In figure 1.3 (a woodcut formerly ascribed to Diirer), an astronomer is measuring these twenty-four hours marked off on a globe representing the celestial sphere.To express the principle differently, since the whole circle turns around the earth once every twenty-four hours, each of its twenty-four sections in turn will take one hour to rise from beginning to end above the eastern horizon. Chauceis clever rooster Chauntecleer in The Nun's PriestS Tale understood this well:

By nature he knew ech ascencioun Of the equynoxial in thilke tom: For when degrees fiftene weren ascended, Than crew he, that it myghte not been amended.

/each /celestial equator, that /crowed, be (WT2855-58)

One can imagine the band of the celestial equator as a twenty-four-spoked wheel with each spoke marking an hour division, like a twenty-four-hour dock. The wheel turns clockwise from our point of view loolung south, so that one might imagine Chauntedeer watching and crowing on the hour, as the hour-marking spokes "rise" one by one in the east?

20

TAKING BEARINGS

1.3. Measuring the Hours. A woodcut often erroneously attributed to Diirer. It appears on the title page of Messahalh Scientis Motus Orbis, published in Nuremberg in '504.

Figure 1.4&splays the celestial sphere in the round with its equator, placing earth at center.The celestial equator (or equinoctial) is one of three basic circles usually inscribed upon the standard model of the sky as seen from earth.This basic figure occurs in more elaborate forms throughout the text.

CHAUCER'S SKY

1.4.The Basic Model: The Celestial Sphere with Earth at Center and the Celestial Equator (Equinoctial). Author's dragram. For example, in Ptolemy's model cosmos of figure 1.2, along with the first basic circle of the celestial equator and the second basic circle of the echptic crossing it at a slant, two smaller circles are added, the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Figure 1.5 abstracts only the celestial equator and the echptic from tlus more complex designThe slanting band of the ecliptic, dancing around the great celestial sphere Lke a cosmic hula hoop, represents the Sun's apparent annual path among the stars.Ths path is described as "apparent," a word

TAKING BEARINGS

NORTH POLE

SOUTH POLE 1.5. The Basic Model with the Celestial Equator and the Ecliptic. Author's lagram.

much adrrmed by astronomers, because what we are really seeing-r calculating, because we cannot see it by day-is the band of stars that passes behind the Sun in relation to us who stand upon the turning and orbiting earth. As celestial navigators we can forget about that re* and merely dunk of the ecliptic as the Sun's annual path overhead. Because the earth's axis is angled in relation to the plane of the earth's orbit (that is, the earth leans as it circles the Sun) the echptic deviates from the equator of the celestial sphere by the same amount as the earth's axial tilt, approximately 23 degrees.

23

CHAUCER'S SKY

The two circles of the ecliptic and the celestial equator cross at the equinoxes, and each crossing is called a colure (or equinoctial colure). The vernal equinox is located where the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator in the spring, and the autumnal equinox is located where the echptic crosses the celestial equator in the f d . Because springtime the beginning of the year, when seeds sprout and leaves reappear on deciduous trees, the vernal equinox is where both circles tradttionally begin.The point is marked with the ram's horn symbol for Anes, the first sign of the zodiac: (Modern astronomers often reduce this ancient symbol to theV for "vernal" that it coincidentally resembles.) Thus the "beginning" of the two great circles of celestial equator and ecliptic, the point where they meet in the springtime, is called "the first point of Aries." All these concepts, which sound slightly incomprehensible in words, become much clearer when viewing figure 1.2, upon which the vernal equinox is marked with what looks like a seagull flying above the head of Aries the Ram. It is meant to represent the traditional sign of the Ram's horns. In figure 1.2 the zodiacal signs proceed right to left from a God's eye perspective outside the cosmos, but of course they originate in the patterns of stars or constellations that we see from earth. Slightly over two thousand years ago astronomers divided the annual path of the Sun, the ecliptic, into twelve equal parts, thus dividing the circle of 360 degrees (the circumference of all circles) into twelve sections of 30 degrees each, ldse the face of a modern dock. In A History of WsternAstroloD Jim Tester informs the reader that "the first [recorded] mention of twelve equal signs, as opposed to the constellations (of unequal extent in the heavens), was in 419 B.c." (14). This was in a cuneiform text mentioning planetary positions in a way that dates it.12 But long before that, partly in order to make the night sky more comprehensible and the night less fearsome, watchers of the sky projected pictures onto the heavens above, perceiving the fixed stars in the groups we call constellations. The twelve divisions of the echptic, unequal in size when first associated with the Sun's path, were named after the twelve constellations or partial constellations that lay within or nearly within each &vision of the ecliptic: Aries the Ram, Taurus the Bull, and so forth. In order to accommodate the elliptical orbits of the planets as well as the Suds apparent motion, the circle of the Sun's path was broadened into

r.

24

TAKING BEARINGS

a band stretching out 8 degrees to each side. Technically the Sun's path, like a line down the center of a hghway, is called the ecliptic, and the broader hghway itself is the zo&ac or the band of the ecliptic (see figure 1.2). Along this zodiacal band the planets wander. The word "planet," in fact, means "wanderer" and distinguishes these objects from the "fixed" stars against whch they move, but the planets always move within this band of the ecliptic, never more widely. The dome above the astronomer in figure 1.3 displays the zodiac tilted at a suggestive, not exact, angle from the celestial equator. As the astronomer marks off the hours on a globe inscribed with celestial longitude and latitude, behind his back ascend the symbols of the planets fiom Mercury to Saturn accordmg to the order of their imaginary spheres. (The planets and the order of their spheres will be discussed in Chapter 6.) Before the constellation Libra the Scales was substituted for the Scorpion's Claws (referred to by Ptolemy), the main constellations along the ecliptic all represented animals or human beings, "zoological" or living creatures. Therefore the general term given to the &visions of the ecliptic that more or less accommodated these marker constellations became "the zodiac," a word based on the Greek root zo'idion, meaning a "sculptured figure (of an animal) . . . &minutive of ro'ion, animal, fiom zoo's, living" (Onions 1023). During the year, as the Sun "backs up" through these constellations west to east in an annual movement opposite to its daily movement, their order proceeds as follows: Aries the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Gemini the Twins, Cancer the Crab, Leo the Lion, Virgo the Virgin, Libra the Scales, Scorpio the Scorpion, Sagittarius the Archer, Capricorn the Goat, Aquarius the Water-Carrier, and Pisces the Fish.13These twelve zodiacal constellations may be seen in the sky today, eternally following one another along the path taken by the Sun across the heavens. Some are associated with a particular bright star used for navigation, as is Leo with Regulus, Virgo with Spica, and Scorpio with Antares, all lying along the Sun's path. Easiest of all to find is Taurus the Bull with his red eye Aldebaran, for he is pursued by that most &stinctive of winter constellations, the hunter Orion, though Orion is not a zodlacal constellation. A line drawn from the bright star Sirius (the brightest of the "fixed stars") along Orion's three-starred belt will pass through red Aldebaran to hit the clustered Pleiades, as in the engraving by Diirer in figure 1.6.

25

CHAUCER'S SKY

-

-

--

P

P

-

1.6. Aries, Taurus, and the Pleiades. From Diirer's Map of the Sky (1515). These constellations along the ediptic are not the same as the signs of the zodac. When someone, probably a Babylonian (Tester 15). used these dusters of stars to mark off the sky "as a device for measuring time" (Gleadow 206), most of the constellation Aries lay in the space assigned to it on the zodiacal band, as most of Taurus and each of the other zodiacal constellations then lay in their assigned spa~es.~4Today, however, due to a long wobble of the earth's axis, the constellation Aries has drifted eastward to lie almost entirely within the space long ago occupied by Pisces, the constellation Taurus having been moved into Aries' space, and so forth. The vernal equinox, that ram's horn "V" on our charts marking the beginning of the agricultural year at the point where the ecliptic circle crosses the celestial equator, is not so securely fixed against the stars as the ancients supposed. The wobble of the earth's axis (one can thmk of a top spinning) is caused by the pull of the Sun and Moon upon the earth's equatorial bulge and takes about 28,500 years to complete. As a result, the location of the vernal equinox slips along the zodtacal constellations approximately one degree every seventy-five years. The invisible point of the equinox remains the "first point" of the space assigned to h e s , though that space no longer contains the constellation itself.Therefore we now dstinguish between the constellation and

26

TAKING BEARINGS

the "sign," the latter referring to that formerly occupied space. Some fiftyfive hundred years ago the two circles of celestial equator and echptic crossed between the horns of the Bull, and that same point of equinox now moves on past Pisces into Aquarius:5Thus along the same path as the ecliptic circle, one that can be determined visually because it is marked out by the zodtacal constellations, moves another circle that cannot be seen, for it is defined only by the equinoxes and the path of the Sun. It can be determined only by the position of the sky on those two "equinoctial" nights of the year when night and day are of equal length. O n tlus second ecliptic lie the twelve zodtacal signs. These two circles, moving along an identical path, have fallen out of phase as they move at different speeds-if one can use the word "speed" at all to describe a circular slippage that takes 28,500 years to complete. T h s movement of the vernal and autumnal points on the invisible ecliptic away from the constellations where they were once observed (as by Hipparchus in the second century B.c.E.) is called "the precession of the equinoxes." Some people find this a daunting term, yet it refers only to the slippage between the signs and the constellations, a concept that is by no means so complicated as its intimidating name suggests. Onlya simple visuahzation is required to understand it in an elementary way: two concentric circles are revolving in the same direction at slightly different speeds. The slower circle slips backward from the other like a Aerry-go-ro&d having two platforms that are out of phase. O n your separate carousel horses, you and your companion are able to hold hands at first, but soon you are stretching. Perhaps the most useful image for visuaLzing tlus phenomenon is the one used in the Middle Ages: two turning spheres, one inside the other. The outer sphere, invisible to us, contains the equinoxes, and the inner sphere contains the stars we see. Chaucer is referring to this image when he says of the clerk in The Franklin; Tale: He knew f d we1 how fer Alnath was shove Fro the heed of thdke h e Aries above . . .

/shoved /head, that h e d (FrankT 1281-82)

Chaucer introduces t h s idea of precession in terms of the visible star called Alnath at the time, but now designated Harnel on the star charts, and his use

CHAUCER'S SKY

27

of this star provides a fine example of the concept in practice.16The star Alnath is the brightest (or alpha) star in the constellation Aries, marking the Ram's horn; accordmg to Richard Hinddey M e n the Arabic word alnath means "The Butting One" (89-90). Diirer portrays &S star in the Ram's horn in figure 1.6. Centuries ago Alnath marked the vernal equinox because this star was rising at dawn on the first day of spring, but now, like all the other stars, it has been "shoved by that mysterious outer sphere away fiom its former place. As opposed to the visible Aries that slips behind so very slowly, along with the other zodiacal constellations, Chaucer's "head of that fixed Aries above,"-that is, in the invisible outer ecliptic-is the constant point markedV that designates the permanent vernal equinox, as in figure 1.2. This fixed point, stdl called "the first point of Aries" by astronomers, marks the beginning (that is, where the numbering of degrees begins) of both the circles of celestial equator and ecliptic, where they cross in the springtime. But &S point is no longer in the constellation called Aries, which has been "shoved by the wobble of the earth off that sign-space of Aries. Thus, accordmg to the lines quoted above, as the clerk in The Franklin's Tale works with his understandmg of the Moon and its tides to make the coastal rocks of Brittany seem to disappear for a time, he is performing a calculation that takes &o account &; dow drifting of the constellationh i e s with its Moon-associated star Alnath away fiom the "fixed" point of the vernal equinox upon the invisible sphere above i t This "precession of the equinoxesfi is plural because, of course, the autumnal equinox as well as the vernal equinox drifts slowly in relation to the constellations. Figure 1.7 provides a time chart, adapted from the endpapers of Hamlet's Mill (de Santilla and von Dechend), showing how the vernal equinox has precessed over the centuries in relation to major stars like Hamel (Alnath) and Algenib, both of which have been added to the original chart, Because every seventy-five years the constellations move approximately I degree east in relation to the vernal equinox, at the time that Alexander of Macedon set out to conquer the world in the third century B.C.E. the constellations stood more or less within their corresponding 30-degree boxes on the zodiacal band. When Christ was born they had slipped back some 3 degrees fiom where the twelve &visions were calculated fiom the head of h e s , and by Chaucer's day they had been "shoved," as he phrases it, about 22

1.7The Precession of the Vernal Equinox. Based on the endplate of Hamlet? Mill: An E 5 5 9 on Myth and the Fyame of Time by Giorgio de Santlllana and Hertha von Dechend, with Hamal and Algenib added. Used with permission &om David R. Godine, Publisher,

Boston.

CHAUCER'S SKY

29

degrees to the east. In a sense it is easier for us than it was for Chaucer to think of precession because now the constellation of Aries the Ram has slipped farther east until it lies almost entirely w i h the sign of Taurus, once again Ming a slot though not the one named for it. Conversely, the spring equinox, forever marked by the schematic horns of Anes (that is, the beginning or head of the sign of that name), now occurs with its nights of equal length when the beginning of the constellation Pisces rises at dawn in the east, a full compartment or 30 degrees of the echptic circle away fiom where it once lay in the constellation of the Ram-and so forth for each of the signs in turn.It is from those nights of equal length, once marked dearly by a particular rising constellation but slowly &&g away fiom that long-ago marker, that the idea of the invisible outer sphere originated in the first place. The incongruity between the sign divisions and their former constellations is one reason that modern astronomy has dispensed altogether with these zodiacal divisions and now measures along the celestial equator east from the first point of Aries in hours, minutes, and seconds (the measurement called "right ascension"); navigators use the full circle of the ecliptic measured in degrees. This modern way of measuring still takes the first point of Aries, the point of the vernal equinox, as its beginning. Another way to solve the difficulty of calling a space along the ecliptic by the name of the constellation that has vacated it would have been to drop the zodiacal names of the divisions-the "signsJ'-and instead use Roman numerals to indcate them.Then, rather than saying that the Sun or a planet stood at, say, "the twenty-ninth degree of Libra,'' or the modern navigator's 209" on the ecliptic, one could give W : 2 9 as the coordinate, since Libra is the seventh sign after the vernal equinox. Perhaps our modern familiarity with the twelve hours of an analogue clock face would make this system of numbering easier to manage than the navigators' larger numbers, though any numerical alternative deprives the amateur observer of the colorful rnnemonic device of the animal parade.nYet to argue that the new mode of calculation is "more correct" than the old one makes about as much sense as Gulliver's Lilliputians fighting over which end of a soft-boiled egg should be opened at breakfast. The two formulations are simply different ways of expressing celestial position eastward from the first point of Aries, one formulation using degrees within named signs and the other using either

30

TAKING BEARINGS

larger numbers along the ecliptic or "hours" along the celestial equator measured to the right in "right ascension."The final note to Part I contains a brief explanation of the hfference between ecliptic and equatorial celestial coordinates. The names of the ancient divisions of the ecliptic made the zodiac also adaptable to the non-astronomical uses of astrology, the evocative animal names addmg allegorical and emotive meaning to the sipficance of the signs. (Someone born with Taurus rising is "naturally" territorial, someone born under Leo is self-confident and outgoing, and so on.) Perhaps the most irnportant psychological effect of dropping the zodiacal names for the &visions of the ecliptic was to create a linguistic distance between the astronomer or navigator on the one hand and the astrologer on the other, so that they no longer used the same language for speaking of the sky. As a result, when someone today says "signs" or "zo&ac" or even names a sign, the terms of discussion are evident: an astrologer is speaking. But it must be remembered that in Chaucer's time this hguistic division had not yet taken place. Both the me&eval astronomer and the medieval astrologer spoke of the signs and named them, the astronomer when objectively describing the sky or a date in terms of the Sun's position, the astrologer when seeking to describe a future inscribed in the stars or an occult influence upon human life below, usually with planets involved. Since both practitioners used the same terminology, though for quite different purposes, someone reading their works today will do well to be aware that the language now so revealmg &d not provide such easy labels then.18 One must work a little harder to examine the context of a celestial allusion in a medieval work in order to determine whether the intention behind it concerns astronomical description or astrological prophecy. This is especially true of Chaucer and his fictions. Chaucer has his characters and hls narrators talk of astrology on a number of occasions in The Canterbuy Takr, most o h referring to planets as well as signs in order to provide fatalistic excuses for their own behavior or to explain the behavior of others. But Chaucer's first-person narrator, to some degree representing Chaucer hunself;seems to display a far greater interest in practical astronomy and the way one can calculate time by the heavens. While using such calculations occasionally in previous stories, outside The Canterbuy Taks Chaucer

CHAUCER'S SKY

31

&splays this scientific interest most obviously in his translation of practical instructions for the use of the astrolabe, translation work that seems to have clarified and influenced his own understandmg and attitudes. Chaucer says in his preface to The Tveatise on the Astrolabe that he is "but a lewd compilator" (an unlearned compiler) of other people's work, and the identity of the works he compiled for the Sreatise has now been fairly well established by scholars, the main source being "Me~sahalla."~9The fact that Chaucer "compiled" his sources from Latin allows us to regard the Treatise, even with his additions, as one of his four major translations. His other major translations were of works that deeply interested him the R m de la Rose, Boece (Boethius's Consolation of Philosoply), and certain epic poems of Boccaccio--considering the Tvoilus and The Knight's Tak to be translations in the very broadest sense. ( M are in The Riverside Chauce~)These earlier translations may be said to mark phases of Chaucer's writing career, and their influence upon his own poetry is obvious. As well as providmg him with material for h s fictions, they influenced h s dunlung in major ways.20If h s Sratise on the h l a b e , undertaken during the writing of The Canterbuty Taks, may be regarded as Chaucer's fourth and h a 1 major translation, the documented influence of his previous translations upon the works in and following the period when he was translating them might lead us to expect a s d a r influence of the Sreatise upon the Tales. In fact it does seem possible to demonstrate such an influence, but in this case an influence exerted by both the Tveatise itself and by the instrument it describes-an influence perhaps not on the same level as the others but significant in a way that has not been previously examined. At the very simplest level of analysis, Chaucer's tendency to make allegorical astronomical allusions before the 1390s and more technical allusions after that time demonstrates the growth of h s scientific, even mathematical, interest in the heavens. He allows certain narrators and characters w i t h h s tales, however, to indulge both in astrology and in chronographiae, the flowery astronomical time-defining metaphors that were popular in his day and earlier:~ It appears then that sometime around 1391Chaucer became more serious about h s astronomy, or more specifically interested in the celestial motions by which one determines time and location on the earth's surface.The astrolabe, though useful to astrologers, was primarily useful in the nonplanetary

32

TAKING BEARINGS

"astronomy of the prime mover,') as Henri Hugonnard-Roche defines it, referring to the vault of the sky beyond the traversing planets: Bearing in mind the tradtional meleval &vision of astronomy into two &stinct areas-the astronomy of the dady motion of the heavenly vault, on the one hand, i.e., the astronomy of the prime mover, and planetary astronomy, on the other-treatises on the astrolabe obviously dealt only with the first of these. (286)

Thus, while he was writing his Geati~eon theeArtrohbe and was working on f i e Canterbuy T a k at the same time, Chaucer must have been conceiving of the day in terms of the Sun moving up and across the sky degree by degree like the hour hand of a clock-almost in the way that we, surrounded by clock faces, graphically perceive and manage our busy days. In fact, the celestial spaces of the signs are like our own hour clock-spaces. O f course Chaucer had no access to a personal clock as we know these objects, but he had his astrolabe, and perhaps he had discovered its usefulness for reading Dante. One can imagine him realizing, whde working on h s treatise, that the astrolabe might be used in the General Prologue and the links between the tales. Chaucer's emerging sophistication with its h c t i o n s is evident in The Knight? Tale, which despite important references to the planetary deities is essentially a "prime mover" tale, concerned in terms of its actual astronomy with mathematically defined spaces on the celestial sphere, as will be seen. Although Chaucer would obviously have been aware of the precedent of Dante's design of the Commedia as a week-long journey based on the Ptolemaic spheres of the planets, his own various time-based designs in The Canterbuy Taler are different in that they are not based upon an abstract concept of time, derived like "the week" from astrological calculations (these are explained in Chapter 6)) but rather on diagramsderived directly from observational astronomy and inscribed upon the astrolabe. If Chaucer imagined the frame tale of his great work as conforming to a graphic image of time, he did not elaborate it completely or clear up the small discrepancies left when he moved some of the tales around. Perhaps he felt that he had done enough to make the point for someone who wished to see it, either for an ideal astronomically aware reader, as he must have felt himself to be for Dante, or for specific persons of his acquaintance llke those of the group

CHAUCER'S SKY

33

associated with Oxford. Perhaps he never finished, or changed his mind about the usefulness of so much effort. Even if following Dante in adopting celestial movements to indicate the passing of time, however, it is &ely that Chaucer would have used the astrolabe to implement a grand philosophical scheme like Dante's-for skepticism about grand schemes and amusement at most human attempts to create them are among the most vivid and engaging characteristicsof Chaucer's writing. This is evident in his first pair of tales. Although in The Knight's Tak Chaucer may have been using the astrolabe to LLstinguish the pagan realm from the broader Christian cosmos (a matter explored in Chapter 6)) in the frame tale of Be Canterbury Tabs Chaucer's interest in the astrolabe and the sky it represents seems to have been duefly pragmatic: he uses the sky as a timepiece. Moreover, as we moderns use our clocks and watches to order our day without any commitment to a philosophcal system, or as we use the days of the week with their names from the Teutonic gods without ever a thought of paganism or the occult, Chaucer's use of the astrolabe and its zoLLacal diagrams to order his fiction llkewise demonstrates a reliance on a commonplace agreement about spatial and temporal relationships. Such use does not implicate him in a commitment to astrology or any other belief system. T h s point must be emphasized because experience has revealed how automatically modern people assume that anyone interested in the stars in medieval times must be an astrologer, especially if they are using the now occult-appearing a s t r ~ l a b e . ~ ~ In The Milb's Tak Chaucer mentions Nicholas's "astrolabie, longpge for his art" (MilTpo9), and in this case the astrolabe is indeed connected with the young scholar's "art" of astrology. At least twice elsewhere, as well, other pilgrim narrators make oblique references to this timekeeping instrument w i t h their stories. Presumably Chaucer does not intend to force h s audience to identify that astrolabic presence, for although he is not engaged in astrologically based scheming as Nicholas is, he does display a certain reluctance to reveal in these passages exactly what he is about. The most vivid and accessible of these oblique references to time in terms of celestial motion is explored in the next chapter, wluch, whde introducing Chaucer's method of provocative concealment, also introduces and describes the astrolabe itself.

CHAPTER 2

THE STEED OF BRASS AND CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

The comparison that is made covertly, on the other hand, comes with no tell-tale sign; it does not come in its own mien, but disgcused, as if there were no comparison there, but rather some new transformation were being marvelously ingrafied; whence the idea may thus cautiously settle in your narrative as if born of your theme. Geoffiey of Vinsauf, La Poetria nova (trans. by J.B. Kopp)

The sudden appearance of an uncanny horseman at a royal banquet, reminiscent of Sir Gawain and the Geen Knight, marks the promising beginning of the tale told by the flamboyant young Squire on the journey to Canterbury. Once the stranger knight has entered upon his magnificent steed of brass, however, the tale sprawls too unrestrainedly for modern tastes. In more leisurely days, The Squire'sTaL, though not adrmred by everyone (Baker, Squire's Tak 60), was quite popular, as attested by Spenser's continuation of it in The Faerie Queene (book 4, cantos 2-3) and Milton's admiring reference to "the wondrous Horse of Brass / O n whch the Tartar lung dcd ride" in I1 Penseroso (lines 114-15). Thomas Warton, the great eighteenth-century critic, placed it second only to The Knight's Tak in terms of Chaucer's "noblest compositions," and John Penn in 1797 makes it "perhaps Chaucer's principal poemJ' (Baker, Squire's Tab 59, 60). Such an assessment would be impossible today, but the tale, and in particular its horse, is f;ll of interest for the pres-

...

35

THE STEED OF BRASS AND CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

ent discussion. The rhetorical Squire takes nearly eighty lines to reach the point where the stranger knight rides into the hall. His narrative is abbreviated here:

At Sarray, in the land of Tartarye, Ther dwelte a kyng that werreyed Russye, Thurgh whch ther dyde many a doughty man. This noble kyng was cleped Cambyuskan

/warred upon Russia /&ed /named

...................................... And so bifel that whan A s Cambyuskan Hath twenty wynter born h s diademe, As he was wont fro yeer to yeer, I deme, He leet the feeste of his nativitee Doon cryen thurghout Sarray h s citee, The laste Idus of March, after the yeer

/ordered /be announced /i.e., after the equinox

...................................... And so bifel that after the thridde cours, Whd that this kyng sit thus in his nobleye, Herknpge his mynstralles h r thynges pleye Biforn hyrn at the bord deliciously, In at the halle dore a1 sodeynly Ther cam a knyght upon a steede of bras.

/&rd /sat, amid h s nobles /play their pieces /before, table

Even if one were to include the narrative embroidery that has been omitted (some of it astronomical, like the narne of Carnbyuskan's wife Elfeta and possibly the narnes of their children'), dus is a fine beginning for a tale of wonders.The Squire goes on to tell us that, in addtion to the steed of brass he rides, the knight has arrived bearing three other treasures:

And in his hand a brood rnirour of glas. Upon his thombe he hadde of gold a ryng, And by h s syde a naked swerd hangyng; And up he rideth to the heighe bord.

/high table (SqT 82-85)

36

TAKING BEARINGS

The knight salutes the king and queen and all the lords with such grace that not even Sir Gawain "with his olde curteisye" (SqT 95) could have improved upon the speech. Finally the knight announces that the four treasures he brings, all of which have magical powers, are gifts from his own lord, "the kyng of Arabe and of Inde" (SqT 110). The sword and steed are birthday presents for King Cambyuskan, and the mirror and thumb ring are for the king's daughter, Canacee. The four magic treasures presented at King Cambyuskan's birthday party-steed, ring, mirror, and sword-are f d a r devices of fatry tale, but they rarely appear together, and a horse made of brass is an anomaly. N o exact source is known for Chaucer's magical steed (it could have been oral), but in most analogues the flying horse is made of wood. This construction material for the miraculous horse is so rooted in tradition that L. Frank Baum can parody it in Dorotly and the Wzard in Oz by fastening onto Jim the buggy horse wooden wings in which "the power to fly lies" (135). More convincing than the many earlier suggestions that have been made for the origins of Chaucer's horse (see Baker, Squire's Tak 4-23) is Thomas W. Best's proposal that the poet drew on the Rqmnaerts Historie, a contemporary Dutch poem. Apparently the association of three magical presents for a king with a flying horse is unique to this Dutch story. In R~naertsHistorie the kmg is presented with a ring, a comb, and a mirror framed in shittim-a wood as durable as ebony. The storyteller introduces the flying horse as an amplification of his designation of the shittim wood for the mirror's frarne: of whiche wode [wood] kmge Cropart made his horse of tree [wood] for love of kynge Morcalcas doughter that was so fayr whom he had wende [intended] for to have wonne. That hors was so made within that WO [who] somever rode on h t yf he wolde he shold be within lesse than on haur [one hour] an hondred myle thens.

. . . Compart torned a pynne that stode on h s brest and anon the horse lyfie hym up and wente out of the halle by the wyndowe and er one might saye his pater noster he was goon more ten myle way."z

It is possible that Chaucer knew another version of this tale as well, for instead of setting the operating "pin" in the magical horse's breast (as above), he sets it, more conveniently for someone astride, in the horse's ear. It is

THE STEED OF BRASS AND CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

37

located in the horse's ear in "The Tale of the Ebony Horse" in the Arabian N&s. Chaucer could have known a version of that tale, such as the one told around 1285 by Adenes le Roi (summarized by Pollard xiv-xv), to which the chronicler Froissart, Chaucer's contemporary, alludes casually>The horse's controlling pin is variously situated in other stories. In Sir Gawain and the Geen Knight, containing the English analogue of the sudden entrance of a knight into a king's banquet hall that is most familiar to modern readers, the stranger knight's horse is, llke the knight himself, bright green (lines 1772-78). When at line 95 of The Squire%Tak Sir Gawain is mentioned as the model of courtesy, it seems that Chaucer must have been thlnking of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and that he expected his audience to make a connection between the two wondrous horses. But the steed of Be Squire? Tak is neither made of wood llke the horse in Reynmds Historie nor colored green llke the horse in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Whether Chaucer had these particular stories in mind is irrelevant; in the many analogues that scholars have proposed the horse is distinguished as peculiar, but in none of those analogues is it made of brass. Chaucer, adapting h s material as usual, has combined some elements from outside the realm of story. Since he seldom arbitrarily alters an item that his source makes significant, and since he often seems to intend, when varying from his sources, to call attention to the anomaly, one must consider why the steed should be constructed specifically of brass. At first the horse seems hke n o t h g more than a life-sized mechanical toy, the sort of clockwork horse that might actually have been introduced at a king's feast in the fourteenth century. Ornate clockwork automata, often of Islamic workmanship, were immensely popular then, frequently found as dinner-table ornaments or appearing as parade mechanisms between the courses of a banquet. Rulers attempted to outdo each other in their possession of these ornate and valuable items, and it is well known that such devices offered impetus to the development of clocks.4 Even two centuries later clockwork automata had strong associations with the Arabic world, as displayed by the mounted and turbanned knight in figure z.r.sThis drawing is based closely on Guye and Michel's magnificent plate 2, the photograph of a brass automaton built into a renaissance clock from the private ath hi collection. As the clock scnkes, the knight turns h s head and lifis his scepter,

A Turbanned Knight upon a Steed of Brass (German, late sixteenth century). Drawing by Steven Oerdmg based on color plate II in Guye and Michel's Time and Space.

2.1.

39

THE STEED OF BRASS A N D CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

the dog jumps, and the horse rolls his eyes, recalling Chaucer's description of the steed of brass as "so horsly and so quik of ye [eye]." But the powers of the steed of brass, as the knight explains them to the king, far exceed those of a clockwork toy. This horse /one

Kan in the space of o day natureelThat is to seyn, in foure and twenty houresWhere so yow lyst, in droghte or elles shoures,

/say /wish, else /bear

Beren youre body into every place

/desires to pass

To which youre herte wllneth for to pace; Withouten wem of yow, thurgh foul or fair./

harm, through

(SqT I 16-21) Later that day, after the banquet, the visiting knight explains to the king how to control the horse: Whan you list to ryden anywhere, Ye mooten trdle a p p , stant in his ere.

/wish /must, that stands

(SqT 3 1 5 - 1 9 The detatls of the "space of o day natureel" and the pin that must be turned both point to the nature of this steed of brass fiom Arabia. The steed of brass in l l e Squire%Tak, in addition to being a mechanical creature capable of carrying passengers w i h the story, becomes a metaphor for that scientific instrument imported to England and the Continent from Arabia, the brass astrolabe.The rest of this chapter wtll examine how this is SO and consider some implications of h s association, introducing the reader to the instrument itself in the process. In 1964 J. B. Priestly described the astrolabe as "the most remarkable instrument that the Middle Ages can boast":

Its origins go back to ancient Greece; a few astrolabes are stdl made, for educational purposes, so it may reasonably be regarded as the oldest scientific instrument we know. But it owes most to the astronomical researches and the fine craftsmanship of the Middle East about

A.D. 1000.Later

it came into regular use in Western

40

TAKING BEARINGS

Europe. . . . As it gave both latitude and time of day, it was used by navigators until about the middle of the eighteenth century and the arrival of the quadrant.6 More recently JimTester has described it in equally superlative terms as "the most important observational instrument before the invention of the telescope" (156). In the treatise that Chaucer wrote sometime around the years 1391-139j while f i e Canterbury Taler was well in progress (and perhaps specifically around the time he was writing or adapting f i e Squire? Taak),7 he put considerable time and effort into explaining the construction and use of the astrolabe "in naked English to his son "little L e ~ i s . " ~ In his Treatise on thehtrolabe Chaucer first describes the instrument in d e t d and then instructs Lewis in such simple operations as determining latitude, h d m g the altitude angle of the Sun and stars, and calculating the time of day-& uses of the astrolabe in which Chaucer appears most interested. These particular operations of Part 2 of the Treatise will be explained in Chapter 3; the present chapter focuses on the instrument's construction rather than its use. In Part I of his Wise, Chaucer describes the parts of the astrolabe that are diagrammed below in figure 2.2. (The dustrator of North 1984, George V: Kelvin, omits here the "label" or straightedge that is found above the rete on many instruments, and to which Chaucer refers.) Chaucer's description of the pin that holds together the instrument's separate plates is relevant to this discussion: Than is there a large pyn in manere of an extre [axle], that goth thorugh the hole that halt [holds] the tables of the clyrnates and the riet in the wombe of the moder [i.e., onto the main plate]; thorugh which pyn ther goth a litel wegge [wedge], which that is chpid [called] the hors, that streynith [constrains] all these parties to-hepe [together]. Thys forseide grete pyn in manere of an extre [axle] is ymagyned to be the Pool Artlk [North Pole] in thyn Astralabie. emphasis added) (Treatise 1:14; The bordure of [the] wombe syde . . .shewith [shows] the 24 houres equals [equal hours] of the clokke. (Treatise 1:16)

By turning

not this astrolabic "horse" itself but the "label" (its position inserted in fig. 2.2) and the rete or cutout star map that lies under it, one may

2.2. T h e Parts of the Astrolabe. Used with permission fiom the artist, George V; Kelvin.

42

TAKING BEARINGS

indeed journey, as Cambyuskan is invited to do, wherever in the cosmos one wishes, all widun the "space" of the twenty-four hours engraved on the outer periphery of the mother plate. O n some astrolabes the periphery of hours is marked on this plate in Arabic numerals, on others in Roman numerals or letters of the alphabet (as in fig. ~.r).Theastrolabe that Chaucer describes, like the manuscript drawing in his Treatise on which figure 1.1 is based, uses twenty-three letters plus a cross to mark the twenty-four hours of "one natural day," or, as he explains in his Treatise, the twenty-four equal hours of the clock. It is the "litel wegge" mentioned above, however, that is of especial relevance to f i e Squire'sZlk T h s wedge, described as fastening the pin that holds the plates together, gets its name from its Arabic designation, alpheraz-"the horsev-because it was traditionallygiven an equine shape. The Arabic treatise (in Latin translation) that Chaucer was m a d y following mentions &S Arabic name: alpheram sive equus. W. W Skeat copied the following sketch of figure 2.3 from that of the horse-shaped pin appearing in the Cambridge manuscript of pseudo-Messahalla's treatise (8, note para. 14). In this manuscript (Camb. Ii.3.3, dated A.D. 1 2 ~ 6 )the , sketch of the "horse" appears on the same page as the description of the wedge (Gunther 145). The equine shape of the wedge is found on tine Arabic astrolabes especially, l~kethose that may be seen in profkion in the collection of the Oxford Museum of Science. By synecdochic extension the small brass hors at the center of the instrument may stand for the astrolabe itself. By associating the steed of brass in The Squire'sTale with this instrument, Chaucer has turned around the relationship between horse and pin, putting the pin in the horse's ear in the story, whereas the horse is in the pin's "ear" on the astrolabe.9 Few poets would either thuds of such an inspired inversion or dare to implement it, and the spatially aware aspect of the idea seems quintessentially Chaucerian. As an analogy one might consider the cartwheel proposed at the end of The Summoner'sTale to solve the story's "ars-metric" problem of dvidmg a fart. In that story the fart is to go outward from the center, whereas the iconography that Chaucer alludes to behind the action concerns an inspiration, regardless of whether one accepts Levitan's Pentecostal Wheel or Pulsiano's wheel of the winds as the source for the cartwheel idea. Finally, the horse-shaped wedge of the astrolabe, made of brass and with an Arabic pedigree like the

THE STEED OF BRASS'ANDCHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

2.3. The "Hors." From Skeat's

drawing in IS edition of Chaucer's Treatise based on the horseshaped wedge called alpheraz in Messahalla's treatise "The Astrolabe." Cambridge University Library MS Ii.3.j, dated 1276. (See Gunther's f a c s d e plate opposite p. 145.)

horse in the tale, can be pointed, with the straight-edged "label" beneath it, anywhere withm the circuit of the mother plate's graphc "space . . .of foure and twenty houres" (SqT 116-17). Besides designating the pin or wedge of an astrolabe, the Arabic word alpheraz is a star name.Ths fact suggests a fascinating three-way Mc between the horse in the story, the astrolabe, and observational astronomy. In this most astronomical of Chaucer's Canterbury Tabs, full of allusions to stars and planets and even containing "something resembling an exercise in spherical astronomy" (Universe 264), J. D. North finds an association of the steed of brass with the constellation Pegasus (Universe 267,275). The audience inside the story broaches dus idea at h e s 207-208, though they are referring to the

44

TAKING BEARINGS

Pegasus of myth, not to the stellified projection of that winged beast in the sky. North proposes that Chaucer might have had in mind a comprehensive star map ldse that found on the plate of a mechanical clock, "a dial that was an astrolabe . . but an astrolabe that was often turned inside out, so to speak" (Universe 267). Because he is thinking of the clock's continuous motion, which carries the stars around the dial as around the sky, North does not mention that the relative location of Pegasus is i d c a t e d on the rete or star map of the astrolabe itself, the instrument that Chaucer seems to be thlnking of in telling this story. Often engraved there, on a marker coming up from the end of Pisces or extended over that sign on the zoclac circle of the rete, is the star name Alpheraz or an abbreviated form of it (see Skeat, Treatise xxxvii-xxxix, and Webster 152). Although obviously named for "the horse" and marking the navel of Pegasus (and therefore sometimes called "Pegasi vrnbi" on astrolabes), this star is also in the constellation Andromeda, the brightest star of that constellation, marlung the lady's head; thus it is officially Alpha Andromedae today. It is overhead in the night sky of autumn at the northeast corner of that most recognizable part of the constellation Pegasus called the Great Square. Alpheraz is circled in the engraving in figure 2.4. Although at only 2.2 magnitude it is the h e s t of the four stars marlung this Great Square asterism, the fact that Alpheraz marks one corner of the square makes it easy to identify. ("Asterism" is the word for a clstinctive star formation that is not one of the s q - s i x officially recognized constellations.The Big Dipper, for example, is technically an asterism, and part of the more extensive constellation of Ursa Major.) Moreover, if one draws an imaginary line down from Polaris, through Caph at the end of the constellation Cassiopeia9sW, then through Alpheraz and another Great Square star Algenib, that line w d cross the celestial equator very near the point of intersection where that imaginary great circle crosses the ecliptic at the first point of Aries. Thus Alpheraz is an important navigational marker, which the 1987 Nautical Almanac lists at SHA (sidereal hour angle) 358". The usefulness of Alpheraz for identifying the position of the equinox at the first point of Aries is a function of our age, however, as the star had not precessed far enough to be useful in this respect in Chaucer's day. Though hls discussion is a little hard to follow, North seems to place Alpheraz's position then at 351~longitude (Universe z75), that is, in the twenty-first degree

.

THE STEED OF BRASS AND CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

45

2.4. The Constellation Pegasus (Diirer, with Alpheraz circled).

of Pisces. This location agrees with Skeat's table 2 (xxxix-xli), which he derived from the same manuscript that "has also hnished us with the Latin version of Messahalla" (Skeat, Tredtisexxxvii); a century before Chaucer, that table situated ''Alferaz" at Pisces 20". The star is marked "Alfraz" on the earliest astrolabe, ca. 1250, of the Adler Planetarium Collection illustrated in Western Astrolabes (Webster and Webster 41). and the likewise abbreviated name "AEer" has been added to the emended rete of figure 1.1 here,The other three stars marking the Great Square of Pegasus, the asterism by which the constellation is primarily known, were in Chaucer's day at longitudes 7", . 346") and I", roundmg "to the nearest degree'' (North, Universe ~ ~ 5In) other

TAKING BEARING5

Polaris

Deneb

;jlr

Great Square as Indicator of the First Point of Aries. Diagram by author based on standard star maps.

2.5. The

words, the longitude of the equinox then would have more nearly bisected the asterism. This apparently random information about Pegasus is relevant to Be Squire's Tab because of the way the horse constellation seems to be associated with the date of King Carnbyuskads birthday, whch occurs on "the laste Idus

47

THE STEED OF BRASS AND CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

of March, afier the year" (line 4.7)) that is, after the year begins with the vernal equinox. By Chaucer's reckoning the equinox would be March 12, about ten calendar days before ours, and "the laste Idus of March" refers to March 15. "On this date," North explains, "the Sun was at about three degrees of Aries, depending on the place of the year in the leap-year cycle" (Universe 265). North's calculation is confirmed when Chaucer tells us explicitly that on the next morning the Sun, which proceeds along the ecliptic at approximately one degree per day, is in the fourth degree of Aries (SqT 386). One can see from the zodiacal circle on the rete in figure 1.1 that the longitude of the third degree of Aries, which corresponds to the date of Cambyuskan's birthday, lies approximately between the markers for two important stars associated with Pegasus.The tongues extenhg above Aries indicate Alpheraz to the left and Markab to the right. In figure 2.4, which is the same portion of Diirer's 1515 star map that North shows (Universe 277)) the four stars of the Great Square of Pegasus may be seen as follows: Alpheraz above Andromeda's head, Algenib at the end of the horse's wing, Scheat on his brisket, and Markab on h s shoulder. With Alpheraz having a declination of z90N, it and the other stars of the Great Square describe a smaller circle in the sky than the Sun. Thus at Chaucer's latitude they are above the horizon for up to three hours longer at both dawn and dusk, though their longitudinal degrees associate them with the degree of the March 15 Sun (cp. North, Universe 275)) a vicinity that someone using a ~ o c k eastrolabe t might notice. "The very fact of Chaucer's having introduced star positions makes it very that he made some use of an astrolabe,'' North observes (Universe z74), but "vicinity" seems the appropriate term if Chaucer is using an astrolabe Lke that described in the prologue of h s Trpatisc "a small instrument portatif aboute" (Skeat, fieatise 3). His precision comes when he uses figures from written sources, as w d be seen in some detail in Chapter 3. If the Sun, then, is at a longitude that bisects the Great Square of Pegasus so that, in astronomical terms, it "souths" along with the Great Square (that is, moves south along the ecliptic toward its noon position), this circurnstance confirms the appropriateness of the flying steed of brass as a birthday present for a h g whose birthday f d s upon "the last Idus of March." When the Sun rises in Aries 3") the astrolabe shows that the star Alpheraz ("The Horse") is standing above the eastern horizon to mark the presence .

rob able

TAKING BEARINGS

48

of Pegasus, a constellation that, astrolabically speaking, will dominate the entire day as it extends westward across the sky from Alpheraz. Moreover, this enormous constellation may be described just as the narrator describes the steed of brass: hgh, broad and long (SqT 191). At noon the nearly sixty degrees of arc of huge Pegasus wdl stretch across most of the sky, "fiom his t d unto h s eye" (SqT 196)--or since he's only half a horse, from his navel in Aries to h s eye in Aquarius. But of course by day the presence of that stellar horse is apparent only to an astrolabist. The concordance of the fictional event in the story and the real event in the sky above is brilliantly contrived and so obvious that, once seen, one feels awkward not to have observed it without North's prompting. North's dearly correct proposal that the steed and the degree of the Sun are to be associated with the constellation Pegasus offers just the factual astronomical 1Lnk laclung in the previously published argument that the steed of brass represents the astrolabe (Osborn "Steed), because now the astronomy supports the metaphor of the steed as astrolabe and adds another element to that identification. The horse comes into the tale as the Sun rises at a longitude near Alpheraz, and it vanishes at the end of the day as the last stars on the eastern side of the Great Square are descendmg.~~ When the "brydel" of the horse is taken to the tower at dusk, "at after soper" (SqT3oz), it is placed with the h g ' s jewels (SqT 341), where no doubt a precious astrolabe would indeed have been stored. Then, the narrator says: The hors vanysshed, I noot in what manere, Out of hire sight; ye gete namoore of me.

/know not /their, no more

(W342-43) "Ye get namoore of me,'' he says, and Chaucer does seem to be particularly bent on obscuring the astronomical level of this story. To North the vanishing at line 342 suggests the automata on docks returning into their case and "thereby becoming invisible" (Universe z70), but in tlus particular tale the magical vanishing trick is lkely to be at least partly astronomical.The steed, "which that shoon as some brighte" ("as bright as the Sun," [SqTI~o]),vanishes as the Sun, at a longitude within the Great Square of Pegasus, leaves the sky. It is useful to consult an astrolabe in order to imagine this. O n

THE STEED OF BRASS A N D CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

49

modern astrolabes from the workshop of Norman Greene in Berkeley there is a tongue marked "Alfer" (Alpheraz) coming up from Aries. Though imprecisely located for Chaucer's time, it is nevertheless placed where one can use it to approximate the Sun's progress across Chaucer's March 15 sky. Whereas the steed of brass represents the astrolabe metaphorically, the presence of the constellation Pegasus in the daytime sky provides an excellent demonstration of the astrolabe's function as a star finder. Chaucer may have discovered the amusing device of linking the flying animal in a story with a star or constellation representing a creature of the same species about a decade earlier while writing The House of Fame (The Riverside Chaucer 347-373. T h s poem is usually dated 1379 or 1380). His main source for the garrulous eagle, the most vividly realized character in that poem, is Canto Nine of Dante's Purgatorio (see Chapter I), though Chaucer's eagle has several other lines of descent as well, the most important of them being the myth in which Jupiter's Eagle snatches up Ganyrnede. O n the night of December 10, a date mentioned twice in the poem (lines 63 and 111),the narrator "Geffrey" dreams that an eagle snatches him aloft, much as Dante dreams that a celestial (but in h s case merciWly silent) eagle carries him up into "the Sphere of Flame" (Purgatorio 9:28-30). In what is almost an aside in his article on "Chaucer's Windy Eagle," John Leyerle points out that on the night of December 10 the Sun in its annual path along the ecliptic is close to Aquila, the constellation of the eagle, an astronomical configuration that

likely explains why Chaucer picked the month of December for h s poem. The constellation is not visible in December, of course, because the light of the sun nearby submerges that of the stars. Aquila can be seen in December only in the imagination (or during an eclipse of the sun). (Leyerle q9)

Or, may we add, on the astrolabe. Accordmg to Nicholas of Lynn's Kahdarium, to which Chaucer would not have had access at the time (though other almanacs were avadable to h ) the ,Sun on December 10 is at Sagittarius z7" and some minutes (Eisner, Kalendarium 131). A table that Chaucer might have known shows Altair at Capricorn 20" (Skeat, Tmaise mix).If Chaucer had been workmg carefully from almanacs, as he &d later in h s life, he might not

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TAKING BEARINGS

have thought a proximity of 23 degrees dose enough to be significant Smyser proposes 063) that he would not yet have been interested in the sky in so technical a manner, in which case the association of Altair with Capricorn and of Capricorn with December might have been sufficient. (Chaucer makes the December-Capricorn association in lines 1244-48 of The Franklini Tab, where the time is December and Phoebus the Sun "now in Capricorn adoun he lighte.") But there is another possibility, an "astrolabic" one. As the talking eagle soars with Geffrey so high that the earth seems but a little "prkke" (line 907)~he points out that Geffrey's interest in the stars is wholly in terms of myth and, referring familiarly to a series of constellations (the official names of which are Corvus, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Lyra, Gemini, Delp h u s , and the Pleiades asterism inTaurus), he rudely remarks on Chaucer's ignorance: "For though thou have hem [them] ofte on honde,/ Yet nostow not [you do not know] wher that they stonde" (100~-10). Despite Geffrey's rejection of the eagle's offer to educate him, one feels on reading this story that the real-life Chaucer is in the process of overcoming various h d s of ignorance about scientific matters, above all this one of locating the constellations-presumably he knows the locations of those that the eagle names. Perhaps the audience was meant to find the fictional Geffrey's lack of interest in star locations ironic, and laugh. Or perhaps the eagle's adrnonition is to call our attention to the fact that the real Chaucer is actually very conscious indeed of star locations. If Chaucer has the constellations, or the alpha stars of many of them "on honde" on a recently acquired astrolabe, and if he has consulted it, he w d have seen that, as the Sun rises over the horizon on December 10, Altair, at a latitude of 29" N, w d appear just above the horizon, even though it is so far "behind in terms of longitude as to be in another sign (see Treatise 11.19 for a somewhat inaccurate attempt to explain this "merueyllous arising with a strange degree in another signe"). Altair will remain in the sky above for the whole of that brief, seven-and-a-half-hour day (Eisner, KaLndarium 13I). The Eagle star Altair is marked on the rete of the astrolabe in figure 1.1; it is located on the bar that comes up between Capricorn and Aquarius. In figure 2.6, Aquila is in the Milky Way above the horns of Capricorn. Its alpha star, Altair, is circled in this engraving by Diirer.

THE STEED OF BRAS5 AND CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

2.6. The Constellation Aquila (by Diirer, with Altair circled.)

There is more. To Leyerle's astronomical reasons for the December dream Larry D, Benson adds a ~oliticalevent that makes the tenth of that month important, and he confirms Leyerle's statement that "the poem can be dated, with some hesitation, as December, 1379" (meaning, one hopes, that the poem refers to that date, not that Chaucer composed it then). Benson then comments judiciously that "hesitation is dearly appropriate in such matters. The dating of Chaucer's poems is, at best, an inexact science" ("Love-TydyngesH 13). Yet Benson also points out that the eagle says he dwells with Jove (at lines 606-609), and "Aquila is not only near the sun but dose to the planet Jupiter. This corresponds to the actual condition of the skies in December of 1379, 1380, and 1381, but it corresponds most closely to the skies on

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TAKING BEARINGS

December 10, I ~ ("Love-Tydynges9' ~ ~ " 13). According to the separate tables of planetary longitudes produced by Stahlrnan and Gingerich (475) and by Tuckerman (707), on December 9, 1379,slow-moving Jupiter is at longitude 280" (Capricorn roO).Thslocation places it on December 10 neatly between the Sun at Sagittarius 27" and Altair at Capricorn zoo, as a computer program showing planetary positions will confirm. Determining the daytime location of Jupiter in 1379 by combining planetary information fiom an "almenak (see Treatise II:4o, where Jupiter itself provides the example) with the location of Altair on the astrolabe, Chaucer could indeed be making use of these celestial events. It is pleasing to t h d that he cLd so, because using the star to h& the eagle to the date adds cleverness to an already clever story. But that he would introduce into a story an animal mirrored in the sky at the Suds actual longitude is far more lkely in the case of The Squire'sTdk than in The House of Fame, first because of the context of the astronomical interest expressed throughout ShP Squire'sGk, and second because, by the time of dus story's composition (or astronomical reworking) probably a decade later than the House of Fame, Chaucer's astrolabic skills were dearly more advanced than in the days of B e House of Ihme. Moreover, whereas in The House of Fame Chaucer merely provides the date, in 7hr Squire's Tak he conditions his audience at the beginning of the story to t h d of the date in terms of the Sun's longitude on the given date and what it lies significantly near (SqT48-51; more is said about this passage in Chapter 3). Thus evidence mounts for a carefully contrived three-way correspondence between the steed of brass, the horse-shaped wedge of the astrolabe, and the position of the Sun on the king's birthday at a longitude within the Great Square of Pegasus with its horse-star Alpheraz. It seems doubtful that Chaucer intended to narrow his associations to a single pair of correspondences, because in lines 202-24 of the tale he makes fun of those who even consider such minimizing thoughts. In these lmes, where "&verse folk &versely they demed," various groups in Cambyuskan's court offer conflicting explanations for the steed of brass, but when examined, each explanation has some degree of validity.~~ Moreover, on more than one occasion when Chaucer presents an especially elaborate chronographia-the rhetorical term for such astronomical descriptions-he seems to be simultaneously alerting his audience to a number of different matters associated with it. The attention-

THE STEED OF BRASS A N D CHAUCER'S ASTROLABE

53

getting quality of this device is similar to his rhetorical technique of using dense repetitions of a particular word in a brief passage, often alerting the reader to a secondary level of meaning." Multiple associations in other chronographiae will be discussed later, in particular that remarkable interrupted periphrasis with which the Squire attempts to begin Part 3 of h s tale. In this chapter the purpose is to affirm that the steed of brass serves as a metaphor for the astrolabe in terms of its national origin, its composition of brass, and its function (its abhty to move about accordmg to the rider's will within that astrolabic "space" marked with four and twenty hours&and to show how it is connected to the date, the Sun, and the sky above by stellar associations and the tongues (star-markers) on the astrolabe's rete. Although Chaucer offers this vivid and tantalizing glimpse of the astrolabe in B e Squirei Tab, he never actually reveals it as an object. It does not exist in the fictional world evoked by the Squire. As Chaucer disguises the presence of the astrolabe, one suspects him of that "&port including great sentence" (amusement including great meaning) that Lydgate mentions as being typical of him (prologue to Book I of She Fall of Princes), or, in more Chaucerian terms, of an "earnest game." Perhaps by this game Chaucer merely means to alert the astronomically skdled members of his audience to the presence of astrolabic and astronomical allusions in The Canterbuy Tabs-or to entertain and instruct little Lewis, who might have delighted in the idea of an "operable" flying horse. Perhaps through association of the steed of brass with the "matter of Araby," Chaucer means to allude more generally to the new science and humanistic philosophy emanating from the Muslim world. In any case, when Chaucer draws attention to the fact that his horse is more than it appears to be by comparing it to that artificial horse at "the grete sege of Troie,/ Theras men wondreden on an hors also" (SqT 3oG7), it seems unltkely that he meant the steed of brass allusion to be so obscure as the years have made it, when, with the obsolescence of the astrolabe, that allusion has dropped out of sight. Chaucer does seem to enjoy the considerable irony of having his Squire speak of ignorant people who judge "thynges that been maad moore subtilly/ Than they kan in hir lewednesse [ignorance] comprehende" (SqT 222-23). Although this could be a slighting remark about persons who (to this day) associate the scientific astrolabe entirely with astrology and magic,

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TAKING BEARINGS

it could also be a reference to the rhetorical figure described in the epigraph to this chapter. In Dante and Medimal Latin Traditions Peter Dronke argues that "for the closing cantos of Purgatorio, the concept of the sustained hdden comparison-Geoffiey of Vinsauf's colhtio occulta4s critically illuminating and historically appropriate as a guidmg principle" (81). "Sustained hidden comparison" describes exactly how Chaucer associates the steed of brass with the astrolabe in The Squire3 Tak.13It is also an apt description for the astrolabe's covert "looming," as it were, behind the scene of the pilgrimage. Before developing the broader argument that Chaucer used his astrolabe to construct a schematic day to frame h s pilgrimage fiction, this book will address some of the simplest functions of the instrument, using examples from The Canterbuy Tabs that form an instructive sequence.The next chapter will show how one function illuminates the first of many puzzling astronomical passages in the poem, then how two of the Pilgrims might be perceived to be using the astrolabe to take bearings along their way to Canterbury.

CHAPTER 3

USING THE ASTROLABE ON THE ROAD TO CANTERBURY

Again the Alrmghty spake: "Let there be lights High in the expanse of heaven to chide The day from night, and let them be for signs, For seasons, and for daysl and the circling years1' Milton, Paradise Lost, Book V11

Possibly the single element of Chaucer's society most alien to what modern readers are used to is the way that most people perceived time without docks and hence without the tight schedules that seem to us a part of c i v h e d life. In the late fourteenth century only about ten church tower docks existed in all of England.The instructions inscribed in recipes offer a dear example of the differing points of view before and after ordinary people became accustomed to using the dock. Whereas medieval cookery books tend to be vague about time: "Putte hem on a spete and roste hym, and whan he is y-now [enough] done . . .,"Elizabethan cookbooks refer to dock time in the same way modern recipes do: "Let them stewe hKe an houre, then turne them and let them stewe hKe an houre more" (examples from LePan 511). Persons associated with the Church probably had a much more exact sense of time because of their knowledge of the canonical hours of prayer, which are based on carefuly calculated divisions of seasonally variable nighttime and daylight

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hours. Those who were used to watching the movement of the stars or the Sun across the sky would also have developed a fairly accurate idea of fixed time as we know it, though not necessarily of our moment-by-moment dock time that creates "equal hours" irrespective of season. Persons with some expertise in using the astrolabe might even have had the feeling that they could manipulate time. Although extant manuscripts of Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrohbe vary in length and content, they give evidence that Chaucer described approximately forty "conclusions" (that is, operations) to be performed on that instrument. Of these, only the first three operations are essential for basic time keeping, the operations with which this chapter is concerned.' The first discussion focuses on how celestial movements can b c t i o n as a calendar, and the second on how they function as a clock. Those caring to learn these functions wdl find it useful to have an astrolabe at hand. A practice astrolabe, designed for Chaucer's latitude and sufficient for following the discussion here, may easily be constructed by following the step-bystep instructions given in the appendix. Some of the manuscripts of the Treatise subtitle it "bread and mrlk for children," and Chaucer h s e l f claims to be writing in "naked English, that is, in unadorned English prose easy enough for h s ten-year-old son to understand. Accordmgly, the reader wdl find Chaucer's instructions easy to follow and will come away with the ability to apply a slull unusual in this age. (A discussion of the broader implications of these procedures for the pilgrimage frame tale wdl be reserved for later chapters.) In addition to offering hands-on experience in the use of the astrolabe while demonstrating evidence of Chaucer's use of it in his fiction, the three passages of The CanterhT Tabs discussed in this chapter also provide good examples of Chaucer's interest in both the precision and the symbolism of astronomically defined time as derived from the apparent daily motion of the heavenly vault. Only the first three operations of the astrolabe (described in Part 2 of Chaucer's Treatise) are relevant to the present discussion. The First Operation and the Ram in April Chaucer's description of the first of the operations one can perform with the astrolabe begins:

USING THE ASTROLABE O N THE ROAD TO CANTERBURY

57

Tofynde the degre in which the sonne is day by day, +er his course about: Rekne and knowe

which is the day of thy month, and ley thy rewle upon that same day, and than wol the verrey poynt of thy rewle sitten in the bordure upon the degree of thy sonne. (Treatise 11.1)

Lines 7-8 of the General Prologue, where Chaucer establishes the approximate date of the Canterbury pilgrimage by referring to the Sun's position in relation to the sign Aries (the Ram of line 8), may give the impression that The Canterbuy Tales is a more inaccessible work than it is, and that this is an obscure astrological allusion. What Chaucer is m a d y doing here, however, is indicating the position of the Sun along its annual path, in terms that correspond to the zodiac circle on the back of his astrolabe (see fig. 3.2 below). Yet h s phrasing clearly leads us to assume that the Sun is in the sign of the Ram, when it is not. Here is the passage, one that all Chaucerians and many of their students know by heart: Whan that Aprd with h s shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

/sweet showers /pierced

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

/liquid (rain)

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

/strength, flower

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne . . .

/the west wind, also /woodland /shoots, Sun /run

(GP 1-8) It is natural to understand the last line to mean that the Sun has run "half his course" in the Ram, which would obviously place it in the middle of that sign. Larry D. Benson, editor of the General Prologue in The Riverside Chaucer, explains: On the face of it, these lines fix the time at the beginning of April, when the sun was a bit more than halfway through Aries. However, since 18 April is specified in the Intr MLTll. 5-6, halve cours is usually taken to mean the second half of the sun's

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TAKING BEARINGS

course through Aries that falls in April. By 16 or 17April [Benson implies here h s acceptance of the theory of a pilgrimage of several days' length] the sun was five or six degrees into Taurus. Chaucer is usually more precise in such references, and Lydgate perhaps corrects him in the Prologue to the Siege of Thebes. (Riverside Chaucer 799)

It is indeed true that when Lydgate continues The Canterbuy Tabs in his poem The Siege of Thebes, he phrases this zodiacally described reference to time in a far more accessible manner, saying simply that in mid-April Phoebus the Sun has passed out of the Ram (Aries) and into the Bull (Taurus): Whan brighte Phebus passed was the ram Mid of Aprdle and into bole cam . . .

/the b d (Erdrnann 1-2)

This manner of phrasing leaves no doubt about which sign the Sun is situated in. Clearly Lydgate believes the pilgrims have set out a little after mid-April, when the Sun has run not only his first half-course but his second half-course in Aries, and is now in the part of the sign Taurus that lies in the month of April, mentioned in the first line of the poemas A. E. Brea pointed out in 1851. Chaucer's reference to a "half course" is more comprehensible visually than verbally, and his assumption of our visual understanding of this, his first astronomical periphrasis in The Canterbuy Tabs, may be the cause of the problem for modern readers. Figure 3.1, based on the illustration of April in the Duke of Berry's Trir Riches Hares, is an illustration that is frequently reproduced in dus Chaucerian context. In it one may see Aries the Ram running his second half-course during the first half of the month, withTaurus the Bull coming next in the order of the signs.The eighteenth day of April mentioned later on the pilgrimage may be found by counting left to right for eighteen spaces on the inner half-cirde.The eighteenth day is ahgned with the last part of the s d degree of Taurus on the outer circle.The same dates and degrees are presented in identical relationshp, but more schematically, on the back of the astrolabe (see fig. +2), where they may be ahgned with the rule (a ruler), as Chaucer indicates in his first operation, quoted above.

3.1. The A p d Half-Course of h e s the Ram. Drawing by Steven Oerding based on the April page of the 3-2s Riches Heures of Jean Duc de Berry, in the Muske Condk, Chant~lly,France.

TAKING BEARINGS

3.2. The Back of an Astrolabe. Skeat's drawing of the back of an astrolabe in hs e l tion of Chaucer's Treatise, based on MS Cambridge University Library MS Dd.3.53.

Once one "reckons and knows" the day of the month, in this case April 18, one can lay any straight edge across the dagram to find the degree of the Sun on that date in Chaucer's time. First, look for the degree of the date, April 18, in the circle of the signs on the back of the astrolabe, much as on

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61

the calendar dustration in figure 3.1. As Chaucer explains in his first operation, once you know what day of the month it is and lay your rule upon that day marked on the back of the astrolabe, then the pointer on the rule w d sit on the degree of the Sun marked in the circle of the zodiac. There is some disagreement, however, about whether Chaucer intends to be using the signs (Aries andTaurus) at all in this passage. In 1974A. A. Prins argued that Chaucer was setting his date by the constellation Aries in the stellar zodiac, that is, in the circle of visible stars rather than in that of the signs. After briefly explaining precession, Prins proposes that by April 17, the day the pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn before setting out, the Sun "would have covered fifteen degrees or half of the stellar zodiacal sign of Ram" (343). Thus, in Chaucer's day the Sun would have run hisfirst halfcourse through this stellar constellation (not the sign) by mid-April.'This is indeed an astronomical fact. Chaucer's choice of expression, however, along with his dear reference to astrolabic calculations elsewhere in the Tabs, argues for an astrolabic reading here, a reference to zodac and calendar rather than to the observable sky. The expression "half-course" makes the most visual sense only in terms of the medieval graphic depiction of signs cutting across the months, as the signs divide April in figure 3.1. Moreover, external textual evidence also exists for reading "the Ram" of this passage as a zodiacal sign rather than as a stellar constellation. In book 4 of the Historia Destructionis Troiae, from which Chaucer drew some of the language of his complexly structured first sentence in Be Canterbuy Tabs (Bowden zo), Guido delle Colonne provides a long series of "when" dauses beginning with "When the sun . . . had entered into the sign of Aries" (my emphasis), and concluding with "Then almost the middle of the month of April had passed.'' The astrolabe shows Guido's error. One may imagine a recently converted astrolabist llke Chaucer aching to clear up an imprecise readmg that wrongly associates mid-April with the beginning of Aries instead of with Taurus. Yet Guido, and later Chaucer, may have wanted to name the sign Aries because that sign is so closely associated with springtime.Years &er Chaucer's death, when his follower Lydgate translated Guido in Be Troy Book (or rather translated into English a French translation of Guido's Latin), Lydgate replaced this first "when" clause with a bold imitation of Chaucer's familiar lines, thereby talung a liberty with both Guido

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TAKING BEARINGS

and Chaucer-and introducing a clear example of interte~tualit~ that suggests that he might have recognized Chaucer's debt to Guido. By omitting the reference to mid-April, Lydgate also corrects the overprecision that led to Guido's astronomical mistake. Lydgate's version places the Sun somewhere in the Ram's second half-course that falls in April: Whan that the soote stormis of Aprde /sweet Unto the rote fd lawe g m d d l e /root, low, d d l e d His lusty licour, with many holsom schour, /a wholesome shower To reise the vertu up into the flour; /raise, flower And Phebus was ascendyng in his spere, /Phebus: the Sun, sphere And on the brest smote his bemys clere /clear beams Of the Ram . . . /i.e., on the breast of the Ram (Goy Book I. j907-j9)3 Lydgate is unable to improve the astronomical situation by much, however, while trying both to imitate Chaucer and remain more or less faithfd to his original, the situation found in The Siege of Thebes quoted above. Reformulating the passage in the interest of precision was uniquely Chaucer's pleasure, and perhaps the ability to do so was unique to him also. The translation history of dus description of the Sun associated with the mid-April date and the sign Aries, clearly designated a sign by Guido, argues against the interesting idea that Chaucer was here referring to the Ram as a constellation (though Eisner as well as Prins has shown that the idea is viable). Instead Chaucer seems to be correcting h s predecessor by retaining references to both April and Aries, but in a way that allows the Sun's course through the Ram to be seen as completed. It seems unlikely that Chaucer intended to be as obscure about the Ram in April as time and his readers have made hirn.Yet he is certainly presenting the date in an oblique way. He could have given the Sun's degree inTaurus as straightforwardly as he describes the Moon's position in The Merchant? Tale, when his narrator reports that the Moon is "in two of Tawr" (line 188~),or he could have described the situation as clearly as Lydgate does later in The Siege of Thebes. Evidently Chaucer's purpose in the General Prolope is more complex than that of either his Pilgrim Merchant or Lydgate as they tell their

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63

stories. At the same time that he provides an astronomically defined date placing the Sun inTaurus, Chaucer keeps the focus on Aries by dearly alluding to the sign of the zoclac, not the visible constellation, and with dus allusion he reinforces the springtime imagery of his opening verse-paragraph. Chaucer's symbolism here depends on an astrological association of the sign, but one that is logical rather than occult. As the heavenly equivalent of Greenwich on earth for reckoning time, the first point of Aries is the point from whlch the 360 degrees of the zoclacal circle of the heavens are counted, thus marking the beginning of the zodracal year. This explains why the Sun of the General Prolope, though now beginning its course throughTaurus, is still described in line 7 as "yonge": it is young in terms of its annual circuit of the sky. As the pilgrimage begins, the Sun is s t d young enough to be associated with Aries, the first of the signs and therefore the sign of a fresh start, a new beginning, setting out on a journey. In modern astrology, where this idea of newness is developed the sign Aries symbolizes the self in its carnal state.4 In this respect as well, Aries is a suitable sign for the opening of the General Prolope, in which Chaucer tells us of the beginning of the pilgrimage at the inn in Southwark and somethmg about the individual pilgrims who join it. These pilgrims, including Chaucer himself, are about to set out on their journey in a carnal state, though some are c e r d y more inclined toward carnality than others. Thus the symbolism of Aries is as appropriate here at the beginning of the journey as Libra, the sign of the Scales opposite to the Ram on the zoclacal circle, is suitable for the more spiritually thoughtfd end, where it is mentioned in f i e Parson2 Prologue. (The symbolism of Libra w d be &cussed in Chapter 10.) Because Aries begins the year, its symbolism for beginnings is "natural" in the same way that youth corresponds to morning and age to evening. Notwithstandmg his doubts about the more occult uses of astrology, Chaucer would have been foolish not to take advantage of an available source of symbolism f d a r to much of his auclence. Astrology was probably used then as a convenient verbal shorthand much as it is used today, though a shorthand accompanied with more credulity among the educated dasses then than now. (Many people who mention signs today would not dream of accepting the idea of astrological influence on their lives.) This astrological suitability of using the Ram for the beginning of the pilgrimage at Harry Badly's worldly inn would be apparent only to those

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TAKING BEARINGS

who associated the signs with their symbolism. The twelve signs, rising in turn through the different months of the year, function primarily as a giant calendar. It is in these terms that most of Chaucer's graphically trained courtly audence would probably have understood h e s 7-8. Most of us today know, at the very least, what sign we were born under and the month related to it, and thus, without t h h g about it consciously, what section of the sky comes up at dawn around the time of our birthdays. Elegant calendars such as that represented by figure 3.1 suggest that, whether or not they were interested in astrology as such, Chaucerk audence may have been more adept than we are at linking the signs to the months.5 Saying that the Sun had run through its Apnl half-course in the Rarn, therefore, was primarily a way to give a general idea of the date. Chaucer was providmg enough information to let his audience know that the pilgrims were starting out sometime around the middle of the month; later on he mentions the specific date of April 18, correspondmg to the Apnl28 on our modern (Gregorian) calendar? But Chaucer might not have phrased the description quite as he &d had he not been able to assume his audience's familiarity with the way the months and signs are set out graphically on calendars and astrolabes. Operations Two and Three and Ten O'clock on the Canterbury Road Lines 1-17 of the Introduction to the Man $Law3 Tale and the related passage at lines 1-12 of The Parsoni Prologue are similar in the way they refer to the time of day and the Sun's path across the sky, or more precisely to what the Host in the first of these passages calls "the ark of his [the Sun's] artificial day" (Intr MLTz). This arc, calculated for the April 18 that he mentions, is shown in figure 3.3 below. The term "artificial day" is misleading, for it refers to the authentic day from Sunrise to Sunset, as described in Tredtise 11.7. It does not refer to the day that we know, artificially cut up into twenty-four nighttime and daytime hours of equal length, to which the Sun's position is irrelevant. Night and day are of the same length on only two days of the year, the equinoxes. In Chaucer's period the day was described in a way attentive to the fact that in the northern hemisphere daylight lasts longer in summer than in winter; thus the individual hours of the so-called artificial day became longer or

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shorter depending on the season, with the length of the nighttime hours compensating accordingly. The length of daylight hours also depends on latitude. As the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon scholar Bede nicely explained, in Scythia the winter hours of daylight are shorter than in Africa, and in summer they are much longer (Bede 1~5).This concept of hours of uneven length is difficult to grasp by modern persons for whom the hour is a uniform and exact standard of time: the hours of the "artificial" day are equal, and have the length of our standard hour, only at the equinoxes of spring and fall. The more recently introduced dock time or "natural day" on the other hand was composed of twenty-four (artificially) equal hours, with the nighttirne hours equaling the daytime hours, always. Because the day measured thus has hours of uniform length at all seasons, which is useful for scheduling and coordinating events, this form of day won out and it is the one with which we are f d a r . In the April of Chaucer's pilgrimage the days would have been lengthening with the approach of summer, so that on April 18,the date given in the passage to be examined, the Sun rose at 4:47 A.M. and set at 7x3 P.M. at latitude 52" North, according to Nicholas of Lynn's Kalendari~m(85). The 218" arc of this April 18 day is measured along the ecliptic and implies a corresponding 142" arc of night. In both passages now to be examined Chaucer (or, in the world of The CanterburyTales first the Host and then Chaucer the Pilgrim) uses the Sun's angle above the horizon and the length of shadows to calculate the time in relation to this arc of artificial day, and he uses both angle and shadow with a precision that implies the aid of an instrument. O f the first passage, that in The Introduction to the Man of h i Tak, J. C. Eade remarks that the calculations would work "given the necessary equipment" (in Chaucerb case the equipment would have been his astrolabe), but the calculations would not lead anywhere without that equipment (Sky 125). O f the second passage, that in The Parson2 Prologue) Eade likewise says, "Such precision is not possible without an instrument" (Sky 1~8).Applicable to either passage is the question that Eade then asks, whether "Chaucer expects us to imagine hun armed with a measuring device" (Sky 1~8). Though Chaucer is actually obtaining his details of the sky from his friend Nicholas of Lynn's Kakndarium) as demonstrated below, one must conclude that at the story level both the Host in the first passage and Chaucer the Pilgrim in the second are indeed to be -

TAKING BEARINGS

NOON

3.3. The Arc of the Artificial Day for Lat 5z0Non April 18 (Jdan Calendar). Dia-

gram by author. imagined "armed with a measuring device," that is, having an astrolabe in hand. Chaucer does not advertise that detail, however, for those who do not wish to be bothered with it. These two passages have been selected for examination because they demonstrate, uniquely in fiction, the astrolabe being used in its technical capacity of finding the time, and they comprise the most important information that Chaucer offers from which one may form a graphic image of time for the Canterbury pilgrimage. The Riverside Chaucer provides the passage from l l e Introduction to the Man of Lawi Tab as follows:

/saw, Sun Oure Hooste saugh we1 that the brighte some The ark of hs artificial day hath ronne /run The ferthe part, and half an houre and moore, /fourth And though he were nat depe ystert in loore, /not deeply advanced in study / knew, eighteenth 5 He wiste it was the eightetethe day Of Aprdl, that is messager to May;

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And saugh we1 that the shadwe of every tree /saw, shadow Was as in lengthe the same quantitee That was the body erect that caused it. /as was the erect body 10 And therefore by the shadwe he took his wit /understood /Phebus: the Sun That Phebus, which that shoon so clere and brighte, /had climbed 45" Degrees was fyve and fourty clombe on highte; And for that day, as in that latitude, It was ten of the clokke, he gm conclude, /he concluded 15 And sodeynly he plighte his hors aboute. /he turned "Lordynges," quad he, "I warne yow, a1 this route, /company The fourthe party of this day is gonl' /fourth part Lines 1-3 give the Host's (supposedly) rough estimate of the time, and lines 4-14 offer an example of the full process of finding the time by the Sun. Lines 4-14 are the part of these calculations most interesting to someone learning astrolabic skds, but before proceehg to this part, the first three lines, with "the fourth part" in line 3 emphatically repeated at line 17, demand a discussion of the subject of azimuth. (The reader may skip ahead to the "Digression on Punctuation" if preferred.) The question is whether these quoted lines represent uncanny accuracy or mere nonsense. The Host observes the Sun standing at the one-fourth point of the day, but a fourth part of the day schematized upon the "artificial arc" in figure 3.3 is half of 109 degrees, placing the Sun at 8:zz A.M.,not the 10 A.M. of line 14. Harry therefore must be calculating this "fourth part" in some other way. A. E. Brea long ago suggested that the mathematics implied in lines 1-3 indicates that the Host is calculating the quarter-day not in terms of the arc of artificial day but of the "azimuthal arc,'' the Sun's position relative to the observer's horizon and the cardinal directions. If one imagines an umbrella held drectly overhead, the top of the umbrella marks the observer's zenith and the rim represents the horizon. Since the horizon is viewer-specific, it is slightly different for every observer and is therefore called the "observer's horizon." (This concept wJ1 become relevant in Chapter 5.) The spokes of the umbrella represent azimuth lines descending from that zenith to the horizon at north, south, east, west, and at points in between. These spokellke lines are inscribed upon the climate plate of the astrolabe and radiate

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fiom the point that represents the zenith at a particular latitude (see figs. 2.2 and 3.4). O n the climate plate in figure 3.4 the zenith is the dotted dark patch slightly south of center, representing the point directly over the observer's head, while the center of the astrolabe represents the north pole. An "azimuthal arc" is a section of the observer's horizon extending between any two given azimuth lines, llke the edge of the umbrella between any two spokes, but not necessarily adjacent ones. Like his predecessors, Eade fmds fault with Chaucer for conhsing two arcs here, that of the azimuth, imaginarily inscribed around the observer's (flat) horizon, and that of the ecliptic, the curving path of the Sun overhead upon which the artificial day is based. H e analyzes the Host's conclusion on the basis of the Sun's azimuth as follows: If the sun lies atTaurus 6")it w d (at Chaucer's latitude) rise roughly 113"away from the south line. Half of this interval is 56"3o', and the sun will not stand above this point of the horizon until about 9:2o A.M. If, then, we allow "and moore" to represent 10 minutes of time, "half an houre and moore" w d bring us to 10 o'clock, as required.

(Sky 124-25) One can see by comparison of Eade's analysis to figure 3.3 (where half of that arc is only log0,not the 113" that Eade specifies as necessary) that the Host has calculated from an arc different from that of the artificial day that he mentions. Eade argues that the result of his own azimuthal arc calculation is too precise to be believable as the result of the Host's unaided sighting. It is impossible, doing such a calculation on the move and without an instrument, "to come to the conclusion that it is ten o'clock-not g:4o or 1o:15" (Sky 124). Eade's solution requires Harry Bady to have used more than his naked eye. J. D. North has a hfferent idea to explain the peculiarity of these first three lines. H e argues that Brea and his followers are simply wrong in presuming that Chaucer was guilty of confusing the arcs of azimuth and artificial day. He suggests that it is more likely that Chaucer, working not from the actual sky but from Nicholas of Lynn's Kakndarium, as he clearly does elsewhere, turned accidentally from the April shadow table to the main

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calendar for February (not April), "a very easy thing to do."There he would have found "that at ten o'clock on the eighteenth day of the month the Sun had covered one fourth part of its diurnal arc plus half an hour and nine minutes" (Universe 125). While North's scenario provides a possible explanation with an interestingly exact solution, it is also possible that Chaucer, with his repeated emphasis on "one fourth," is suggesting something that none of us has as yet guessed. N o solution for this vexing problem of the day's "fourth part" is offered here, though a suggestion does follow for the next problem raised by the passage-the notion that the Host is calculating the date. He is not.

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A Digression on Punctuation As punctuated above, lines 1-6 of The Introduction to the Man of Law's Tak present a logical sequence with "and" implying "therefore" at line 4 and the Host's knowledge of the date appearing to be the result of his casual estimate of the arc of day: Oure Hooste saugh we1 that the brighte sonne The ark of his artificial day hath ronne T h e ferthe part, and half an houre and moore, And though he were nat depe ystert in loore, H e wiste it was the eightetethe day O f Aprd, that is messager to May.

(IntroMLT 1-6)

Little wonder that Eade, trying to follow the passage as punctuated here, is provoked to sarcasm: "The comment that [the Host] is not expert is . . . followed immediately by his knowing, forsooth, what day of the month it is" (Sky 123). But Chaucer is describing two separate processes here, first Harry's unaided-eye discovery of the "ferthe part" of the day, ending at line 3, and then, beginning at line 4, a far more complicated though not very difficult process for which it is not necessary to be "depe ystert in loore."The Riverside Chaucer's punctuation, following that of Robinson's earlier edition, obscures the distinction between these two operations. Eade has himself noted the similarly misleading punctuation of the first important ch~ono~raphia (astronomical periphrasis of time) in The Squire's Tak Since the "ides of March'' context of this passage is farmliar from Chapter 2 and the passage contains terms that will prove usefd in the present chapter and later chapters as well, it w d be profitable to follow Eade's analysis. Robinson's edition presents these four lines as follows: Phebus the sonne f d joly was and deer; For he was neigh his exaltacioun In Martes face, and in his mansioun In Aries, the colerk hoote signe.

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The Riverside Chawer changes Robinson's semicolon in h e 48 to a comma and omits his comma after "face" in order to modernize punctuation style, changes that do not affect the meaning at all.To clarify the meaning it is necessary to repunctuate the passage as a list, one of Chaucer's favorite forms.. Explanation of the terms "exaltation" and "face" is required first. It will be remembered that a planet is "at home" in one or two particular signs: the Sun and Moon have one sign each, and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have two each. A planet's exaltation is a particular degree of a specific sign that (except in the case of Mercury) must not be in that planet's mansion or domicile, the sign in which it is considered to be "at home." Astrologers believe that a planet has a special surge of power at this specified degree of the zodiac called its exaltation. Each of the signs, 30 degrees long, is divided into three equal parts, or "faces," each face occupying 10 degrees. Each face is assigned to a particular planet, beginning with the face of Mars in the first 10 degrees of Aries, as in the passage quoted above.This is a logical beginning, since Aries is the domicile of Mars. The second face of Aries belongs to the Sun, the third to Venus, and so forth. The sequence of faces follows the Ptolemaic planetary sequence in reverse order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun,Venus, Mercury, Moon. (Planetary sequence is discussed in Chapter 6; it is not relevant here.) The sequence of planetary rulers is repeated face by face throughout the course of the zodiacal year, concluding with Mars as ruler of the last face of Pisces. The Sun's exaltation is Aries rgO,which is not in the first face of that s i p , degrees 1-10 belonging to Mars, but in the second face, degrees 11-20 belonging to the Sun. Therefore Eade suggests that lines 48-51 of The Squire? Tak should be repunctuated to place the Sun "(I) neigh his exaltacioun,/ (2) In Martes face, and (j) in his mansioun/ In Aries . . ." (Sky 142). In regard to the durd of these items, Eade h e l f makes a momentary slip when he explains, "With this repunctuation the sun sits in Aries his mansion." It is a curious slip since he appears to be following Skeat in all &S argument yet Skeat does not make &S error?The Sun's own mansion, as Eade well knows (Sky GI), is Leo, whereas the sign Aries is the domicile of Mars, thus t h s planet's name must be the antecedent of the pronoun "hs" in h e 50. Unfortunately, repunctuation alone cannot dmrnbiguate the reference to "hs mansioun." For that purpose, actual rephrasing is necessary: "In Mars's face

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and in that planet's mansion in Aries, the Sun approaches his exaltation at Aries igO."The proximity to its exaltation may be one reason for the Sun being described as "jolly and brightu at line 48, but another reason may be that it is influenced by the doubled "heat" of Mars and of Aries, for "whan an hot planete comyth into an hote signe, than encresseth his hete" (Treatise 1.21). This statement is pure astrology, of course. The repunctuated lines follow, with the emphasized words clarifying the list structure of the passage: Phoebus the some fi.11 joly was and cleer, For he was neigh his exaltacioun, I n Martes face, and in his [Martes] mansioun In Aries, the colerrk hoote signe.

(SqT 48-59 The dotted circle in figure 3.5 represents the position of the Sun at Aries j0 and X marks its exaltation at Aries qO. The engraved circles of months and zodac on the back of the astrolabe help one understand this otherwise puzzling passage. But since line 47 specifically states that the date is "the last the further comIdus of March" (March 15 when the Sun is in Aries ment of lines 48-51 is not needed. These four lines, repunctuated to make better sense, simply provide a graphically inspired elaboration of the date of King Cambyuskan's birthday and alert the reader further to the astrolabic reference in Part I of The Squire's Tale. Whereas these repunctuated h e s in The Squire? Tale merely confirm what has already been said, in The Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale the repunctuation actually clarifies the Host's calculations about the time. In the passage that follows, extra spacing is used between sets of lines to emphasize the progression of ideas. This progression proceeds as follows: In lines 1-3 Harry sees where the Sun is located upon the dady arc it follows across the sky.Then, alrea4 knowing the date mentioned in lines 4-6, he observes the trees' shadows (lines 7-~o), figures out fiom their ratio the Sun's height (lines 11-12), and, aware of the latitude ( h e q), comes to a conclusion about the time ( h e 14). He then turns and speaks to the other Pilgrims. In addtion to the period afcer line j, semicolons should be placed after h e s 6,9, and 12, and a period after h e 14, as indcated within the brackets following these lines:

P),

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3.5. The Approximate Positions of the Sun and Its Exaltation in The Squire%Tale. Diagram by author.

Oure Hooste saugh we1 that the brighte some The ark of his artificial day hath ronne T h e ferthe part, and half an houre and moore, And though he were nat depe ystert in loore,

5 H e wiste it was the eightetethe day

Of Aprd, that is messager to May, And saugh we1 that the shadwe of every tree

Was as in lengthe the same quantitee That was the body erect that caused it,

TAKING BEARINGS 10

And therfore by the shadwe he took his wit That Phebus, whch that shoon so clere and brighte, Degrees was fjve and fourty clombe on highte,

And for that day, as in that latitude, It was ten of the clokke, he gm conclude. 15 And sodeynlyhe plighte his hors aboute. "Lordynges," quod he, "I warne yow, a1 this route, The fourthe party of this day is gon"

/he concluded

With the punctuation altered in dus way, the description of Harry's practice in &S passage becomes clearer. H e is not concludmg the date from the position of the Sun, as Eade and others assume, only the time of day. T h s astute London d e e p e r already knows what day of the month it is. Knowing the date, he makes a first assessment of the time (getting it improbably accurate without an instrument), then he proceeds to confirm that estimate by means of h s shadow scale. It is possible to follow h s procedures by merely using the dtagrarns provided here, but of course it is preferable to have in hand an actual astrolabe. Harry's Method and Chaucer's Method First, malung a naked eye estimate, Harry carefuly takes note of the position of the Sun and appare&ly deduces that more than a quarter of the-day has gone by-though it is a p e d a r quarter at best ( h e s I-?).Then he calculates the time more specifically, not to find the hour of the artificial day mentioned in h e 2, a method that would give hun the inequal hour (to be discussed in Chapters 5 and 6), but rather to find the hour of the "natural day," the hour accordmg to the twenty-four equal hours of the clock irrespective of the times of Sunrise and Sunset. (In other words, he is findmg our sort of time.)To calculate t h s precise hour, Harry follows the order, though not exactly the procedures, of the first three operations explained in Part I1 of Chaucer's Eeatise. Though t e h g the time is by no means the simplest operation on the astrolabe, it is the first t h g that anyone wants to learn how to do, and one need not be "depe ystert in loore" to do it, merely careful. Findmg one's particular time on such an instrument is l k e writing one's name using a new lettering system; the process demystifies what seems h e n by appropriating it.

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Time of day is a function of the Suns degree along the ecliptic (its monthly in the zockac) and of its current angular height above the horizon, with the necessary correction for latitude. Since Harry refers to latitude in line 13, we are meant to imagine that he has in place the appropriate latitude plate on his pocket astrolabe. He then takes the three main steps needed for his calculation (abbreviated here to give the gist of the operation and explained later in more detail). First, because he already knows the date, he finds on the back of the astrolabe (see fig. 3.2) the zodiacal degree corresponding to that date. A s~rmlarcalculation has previously been done concerning the Ram in April (discussed earlier); the procedure that Chaucer describes in The Squire3 TaL passage is more or less the reverse of that one. Here, knowing the date, we are expected to find the zodacal degree. The degree the Host would find for April 18 (on his medieval astrolabe) is Taurus 6". Next Harry takes the height of the Sun, but instead of doing this second step according to Chaucer's instructions in Treatise 11.2, he uses his shadow scale to make the calculation easier and findsthe Sun's height to be 45". Finally he turns his astrolabe fiom the back side to combine these two results, the Sun's diurnal degree and its present angular height.Then he slides the "label," or straight edge (one can use any ruler) across the point of juncture to find the time noted on the rkrx ten o'clock. Following Harry's steps once more, with dose attention to detail, demonstrates how he accomplished this elementary astrolabic calculation. Already aware that the date is April 18 (lines 5-6), Harry's first step is to note on the back of the astrolabe the degree of the zodiac corresponding to that date according to the Julian calendar of his epoch. He finds that degree by placing his "rule" across April 18 on the inner month circle and reading the degree it points to in the zodiac circle: Taurus 6" on a pre-1582 astrolabe. The results of this first operation may be confirmed by placing a straight edge across figure 3.2, lining up the center of the plate with the date, and reading the degree on the zodiac circle. (On a modern astrolabe Taurus 6" corresponds to April 26 or 27, not Chaucer's April 18.) Next comes Harry's shortcut. In The Parson's Prolope Chaucer demonstrates the more standard practice of sighting the Sun's altitude as described in fieutise 11.2. But here, instead of following that procedure, Harry uses the shadow scale to do s o m e t h g equivalent. Observing by eye that the shadow of every

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tree equals its height, he consults the shadow scale on the back of the astrolabe, the right-angled diagrams in figure 3.2, to confirm that, where the proportion angles of height and shadow meet at the corner of the scale, the angle of the Sun's height above the horizon is 45O. Again a ruler placed across figure 3.2 shows this. By laying it across the center point and at the point where the identical proportions are indicated at the number 12 (in the corner of the angular shadow scale), one finds that it will cross the degrees marked on the outside border at the number 45. For the third step Harry must turn the astrolabe around to view it from the front. There he rotates the rete of the instrument untll the Taurus 6" on the zodiac scale, found in his first step, lies across the almucantar for 454 found in h s second step. The almucantar is the height circle, concentric upon the zenith, between numbers 40 and 50, just as it is on the climate plate calculated for that latitude in Appendix figure 2. Since the time is before midday, before the Sun has arrived at its hghest point in the sky marked on the astrolabe by the south line, Harry must turn his rete to set the zodiac degree on the almucantar at the "east" or left side of the front of the astrolabe, just as an analog clock or watch represents morning on the left side of noon. Figure 3.6 offers this 10 A.M. setting for April 18 on a practice instrument. Finally, Harry lays his label (ruler) across the point where the zodiac degree meets the alrnucantar. (When using a separate ruler one should remember that a well-made astrolabe would have a ruler affixed to the center of the instrument.) H e reads the time of day from the point where the label is positioned in the border. If Harry has calculated correctly and has lined up the marks with care, the label wdl point to the alphabetical letter Y that inhcates 10 A.M. on his astrolabe's twenty-four-hour outer circle; on some modern astrolabes this hour is marked by the Roman numeral ten. Harry also could glance down at the eastern horizon line to see which sign of his zodiac circle is ascendmg at this hour. Figure 3.6 shows that an early degree of Leo is rising at 10 A.M. Though the ascendant sign is not relevant to this passage, it is mentioned in The Parson's Prologue when Chaucer the Pilgrim performs the time-of-day operation himself. After Harry has ascertained the time, "sodeynly he plighte his hors aboute" ( h e 15). Although he is astride an actual horse, as all the pilgrims are, this mention might well serve as a punning reference to Harry's astrolabe,

3.6. Findmg author.

10AM

on 18 April on an Astrolabe. Cardboard instrument set by the

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TAKING BEARINGS

synecdoche based like that in She Squire? Tab on the name and occasional shape of the little horse-shaped wedge holding the plates together.9 As the operations described above demonstrate, one must turn the instrument around in order to calculate the time fiom the position of the Sun, calculating first on its back, then on its front. If the "hors" of line 15 is a reference to an astrolabe, which Harry, with his flair for drama, would surely have brought along had he been able to lay his hands on one, it is one of only two times in The Canterhy Tabs when the physical instrument itself is referred to directly as opposed to allegorically (the other is line 3209 of The Milbr? Tab). But even here the astrolabe is introduced obliquely, as if Chaucer were intentionally suppressing references to the instrument for those who, like persons suffering fiom computer anxiety today, do not wish to know about it, or were reserving recognition of the instrument for persons in some way special, like his son or a patron. After a l l the hullabaloo about Harry's elaborate &splay, however, Chaucer htmself is not using an astrolabe at all in this most practical of his astrolabic passages. Sigrnund Eisner in "Lynn's Calendar," J. D. North in "Kalenderes" ( 4 ~ ~ - 2 6and ) more recently J. C. Eade in S b (125,1~8-41). have all shown that Chaucer derived the figures for this calculation from the Kalenddrium of Nicholas of Lynn, whom he mentions in the prologue to his Treatise. Eade bases his argument on features in Nicholas's calendar, which include:

a set of tables that equates shadow length with the sun's altitude for each daylight hour throughout the year and for the latitude of Oxford. And it so happens that the round figure 45O may be read at the intersection of ro A.M./ 2 P.M. (the values being symmetric about the axis of midday) and 18 April. How could the inference be plainer? What the Host calculates so elaborately, Chaucer recovered from Nicholas's table. (Sky 125) Eade seems to be implying that, in order to play the game fairly, Chaucer should have taken h s astrolabe out on the road and done the calculation h self, rather than copying it from a book. But Chaucer's borrowing of Nicholas's figures demonstrates h s concern with astronomical realism. The

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tables in the book give less margin for error about the true altitude of the Sun than would a pocket astrolabe (although using the tables incorrectly also could introduce error, a possibility proposed by North in his discussion of lines I-?). Chaucer's use of the Kalendarium may demonstrate his feeling that, in order to offer such a demonstration of astrolabic skill on Harry's part, he should get the numbers absolutely right-as the book does. Alternatively, he may simply have had the book conveniently at hand. Four O'clock on the Canterbury Road This section is important for understanding the astrolabically devised day that is the main subject of t h s book. Recent studies have Gequently referred to the idea that the date implied by Chaucer's four o'clock sky in fie Parson? Prologuq April 17, is a day earlier than the April 18 confirmed by the ten o'clock sky of The introduction to the Man of h? Tale. The author here takes strong issue with this idea and asserts that this conclusion is in error, because the reading has not been taken fiom the Game of mind of someone accustomed to using an astrolabe. Before exploring the problem technically, some discussion of the context is in order. In 1976 Sigmund Eisner argued that the dates "rather than presenting a chronological sequence for ShP Canterbuy Tales and their l d s , are useful only for symbolic purposes. Thus the April 17 date following the April 18 date is not significant" ("Lynn's Calendar" 22). T h s view is repeated verbatim in h s 1980 edition of the Kalendarium (3) and is taken by Larry D. Benson, among others, as a justification for dismissing as useless any effort to reconstruct a chronological order for the tales: Manly and Rickert's argument on the basis of time [leading them to dismiss the Ellesmere arrangement of the Tabs]has carried little weight with critics . . . .Indeed, if one were to take Chaucer's references to time as attempts at representing a consistent chronology, he would have to conclude that The Canterbury Tales ended the day before they began. This is not a problem, since most critics today accept, as they must, the fact that Chaucer was not bothered by such inconsistencies, and neither are most readers. ("Orderff113-14)

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Some readers are bothered, however, and in a recent article, "Canterbury Day: A Fresh Aspect," Sigrnund Eisner reassesses his previous view and arguesas the author does here, though on a different basis-for a single pilgrimage day on April 18. H e regards the "ten of the clokke" near the beginning of the tales and the "four of the dokke" toward the end as times that occurred in the morning and afiernoon of the same day. But Eisner's earlier authoritative readmg of Chaucer's sky, confirmed by other astronomically sktlled scholars of similarly impressive status, has led some Chaucerians into uncritical responses such as Benson's response quoted above; Helen Cooper's doctrinaire assertion that "the only two references to the date are irreconcilably contraclctory" (Cooper, Strwture 59); and Dolores Warwick Frese's even more clsturbing vision of the arc of day proceedmg in reverse "&m the Man of Law's ten AM, Apnl18, to the Parson's ten PM, Apnl 17" (Frese I ~ O - ~ I )The . concern about reasonable celestial coordmates that Chaucer &splays elsewhere inclcates that the p e d a r Apnl17 date Eisner formerly proposed for The Parsoni Prolop-and whch others endorsed-results fiom misinterpreting Chaucer's text This is the passage from

The Parsoni Prologue:

By that the Maunciple hadde his tale al ended,

/by [the time] that

The some fi-o the south lyne was descended So lowe that he nas nat, to my sighte, Degrees nyne and twenty as in highte.

5 FoureX0 of the clokke it was tho, as I gesse, For ellevene foot, or litel more or lesse, My shadwe was a th~lketyrne, as there, Of swiche feet as my lengthe parted were In sixe feet equal of proporcioun. 10 Therewith the moones exaltacioun, I meene Libra, alwey gan ascende, As we were entrying at a thropes ende; For whch oure Hooste, as he was wont to gye, As in this caas, oure joly compaignye, 15 Seyde in this wise: "Lordynges everichon, Now lakketh us no tales mo than oon . . I'

/was not /then /feet /at that time /such /as if

/every one /more than one (ParsPr011-16)

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In this second passage wherein bearings are calculated on the way to Canterbury, we encounter the pilgrims for the last time, near the end of their journey. Despite Harry's earlier plan for each pilgrim to offer four tales, two on the way there and two coming back, it appears now that he expects only one tale per pilgrim, that one tale told on the way there. The fact that Harry now asks the Parson to tell the final tale (ParsProl16) makes it clear that the journey is now imagined as ending at Canterbury rather than back at the inn, with dinner. The Parson, rejecting all telling of tales, offers instead a meditation on penance that leads entirely out of the fictional world of the Canterbury pilgrimage. But before this final "dismantling" of the fiction and of all the temporal and topographical locations that belong to it, Chaucer the Pilgrim reads the sky and his own shadow to reckon the time, concludmg that it is four o'clock. He then confirms the Sun's height upon which this calculation is based by taking the proportion of himself to his own shadow. For easier analysis, the passage may be broken down into units and 10-11. comprising lines 1-5, h, Once again Chaucer follows the procedure outlined in his Eeatise 11.1-3. Already knowing the date and the Sun's degree, as he has indicated in the General Prologue and more precisely in The Introduction to the Man of Law? Tak, he goes on to step 2, finding the altitude angle of the Sun by taking a sight on it (ParsProl?).This is the only operation of the three basic ones described in this chapter for which an actual astrolabe having sights is required (a sextant would also do). Chaucer would be careful not to look directly at the Sun (Treatise I1.2), instead lining up on a flat surface the shadows of the two sights in the end plates of the rule (or, technically, because it has sights, alidade), When the Sun is sighted through the end plates of the rule, Chaucer observes what degree is indicated in the border of the plate: he finds that it is "not" rgO(ParsProl2-4). (Most of us would say "not quite," though rather archaic usage s t d preserves Chaucer's phrasing in such expressions of time as "Not ten minutes ago I was thinking of you.") For the next and final step he turns the astrolabe around, matches the Sun's degree on the zodiac circle to the Sun's height on the alrnucantar lines on the inserted climate plate, lays the label across this point (on the "west" or right of the south line since it is afiernoon), and finds that the time indicated in the border is 4 P.M.

TAKING BEARINGS

3.7. C h a t e Plate with Alrnucantars. Diagram from Chaucer's Treatise, 1.18

On this occasion Chaucer has included step 2 (Treatise operation 2), which was not needed by Harry when he did the calculation using the shadow scale. But there is a problem with the way that Chaucer expresses this second step. The phrasing of his assertion that the Sun was "nat, to my sighte,/ Degrees nyne and twenty as in hyghtei' (lines ?-4) has led to the difficulty over the angle that resulted in the queerly "retrograde" result of April 17. According to Nicholas of Lynn's calendar, on April 17 the 4 PM Sun is at 28O57', and on April 18 it is at 25)"11' at that hour. (Each day the Sun remains slightly hgher in the sky as the days lengthen toward the solstice.) If Chaucer's "nat" means "not quite" in this context (as in the phrase "not ten minutes ago"), both days fit &S qualifier. The problem is to determine horn whch dceaion

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83

Chaucer is reckoning when he calculates the Sun as "not [quite]" at 29": Is the Sun not quite as high as 29", meaning that its position is slightly less than 29", or has the Sun not quite sunk so low above the western horizon as 29", meaning that it is s t d slightly higher than 29"? The problem of the Sun's angle can be eased if the situation is considered astrolabically.When observing the altitude of the Sun by using an astrolabe (as with a sextant), one measures the vertical angle subtended between the Sun and the horizon. Having taken t h s measurement on the back of the astrolabe and having &scovered the degree of the sign corresponding to the day's date (Taurus 6" for April 18), Chaucer then would have turned hls astrolabe around to the front and lined up the numbers on the right side (since it was afternoon), as seen in figure 3.8. It may help to think of this figure in clock terms. The grid on the front of the astrolabe represents the sky above the horizon, with east on the left and west on the right. Compare this arrangement to that of an analog wristwatch, regarding noon on the watch as south. The Sun travels east to west, right to left across the sky as one faces south, like the hour hand of a watch from morning to evening, and reaches its highest point in the sky at its southernmost point at noon. The south line on the astrolabe is the vertical or "local meridian" line that intersects with the top of the outer circle (marked with the Roman numeral XI1 on the modern astrolabe, with a small cross on Chaucer's astrolabe) at the same point as noon on a watch. This intersection marks the local noon position of the Sun. The object slanting up from left to right in figure 3.8 is the so-called label. When the viewer is facing south, the label may be rotated to follow the Sun left to right in the course of a single day, just as the hour hand of an analog watch or clock moves, ascending to noontime or meridian line (noon) then descending from that line into the afternoon. Times falling to the left of that line are ante-meridian (A.M.) and to the right are post-meridian (P.M.). When the label, on the right or P.M. side of the south line, is laid across the point where the degree of the Sun (by now Taurus 7°) crosses the alrnucantar corresponding to the Sun's measured altitude of 29" above the horizon, it will point to the four o'clock mark. In figure 3.8, the label's fiducial line (the long side of the arm) has been placed over this mark, which indicates the hour angle of the Sun, that is, the local time.

3.8. Finding 4 P.M. on 18 April on an Astrolabe. Diagram by the author.

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When the afiernoon Sun moves downward, the numbers on a clock designating the hours go up; the Sun is higher at 2 P.M. and lower at 4 P.M. O n an astrolabe, however, the degrees on the outside rim that mark the afternoon altitude of the Sun decrease numerically as the Sun approaches the horizon. With the word "quite" understood, Chaucer says that the Sun is not (quite) at 29"; that is, it has not descended very far past the joOmark. The Kalmdarium of his friend Nicholas of Lynn has given us the exact altitude we should expect for the Sun at 4 P.M. on April 18: 29"11' (Eisner, Kakndarium 86). The problem we encountered was the result of Chaucer not reading the afiernoon degrees "up" fiom the horizon, as we would assume, but instead reading clockwise, or down, from noon. We must simplify rather than complicate the issue. "Not" 29" in this case means "more than.'' Why then does Chaucer not simply say that the Sun is just past the obvious joOmark (going down in numbers)? One answer must be that he is taking the opportunity provided by his astrolabe (or by Nicholas of Lynn) to refer to the number twenty-nine, first broached at line 24 of the General Prologue and now once again here at the end of the pilgrimage, a number symbolically important in a lunar context (discussed in Chapter 10). Twenty-nine is the Moon's number because the Moon's cycle of changes takes approximately twenty-nine days to complete. Another answer, briefer to explain, is that Chaucer is not really doing this calculation from his personal observation of the Sun's height, but once again using the Kakndarium. Having provided 2g011' as the altitude angle of the Sun, Nicholas of Lynn's table for April 18 offers the source for the next five lines of the passage as well, concerning the shadow. At 4 P.M.,when the Sun is at 29"11', the length of a man's shadow is 10.45 parts to 6.0; that is, the shadow of a man six feet tall would be 10.45 feet long, "ellevene foot, or litel more or lesse" (ParsProl6). These two figures, 29O11' and 10.45, stand next to each other in adjacent columns in the Kakndarium (86). Skipping over the next pair of columns, one comes, on the very same line of reckonings for April 18, to the 45' of the Sun's altitude and the 6 to 6 (that is, equal) shadows at 10 A.M. These two latter correspond to those bearings taken on April 18 in The Introduction to the Man of Law? Tak, corresponding to figures given there in lines 12 and 7-9 respectively. As has been shown above, Chaucer's use of these tables is not news; the additional argument here is only that he

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might have meant the figures to be understood imaginatively as if worked out on an astrolabe. Both sets of figures, those for ro A.M. and for 4 P.M.,are fiom the same line of Chaucer's source and refer incLsputably to a single day, the numbers for April 18 in the Kalendarium being the same as those in The CanterburyTales, or close enough for Chaucer's reliance on this source to be evident. Only when consulting a reference book, however, would Chaucer bother with such fractional moddcations as "not quite" zgOor "a little more or less" than eleven feet (i.e. parts). Such qualifiers, rather than giving the calculations an "open air" look, are in fact quite bookish; travelers on the road would not be lkely to bother with them. But the announcement, following these calculations, that Libra is rising is more in keeping with Chaucer's fictional context: on the open road with his astrolabe. The rising of Libra obviously could not be ascertained by sight alone because the stars are not visible at four P.M. on an April day. Nor is Libra mentioned in the Kalendarium. But once Chaucer had aligned on the right side of the south line of his astrolabe the sixth degree of Taurus (by now nearly the seventh) with the almucantar for the Sun's 29 degrees of height, he could hardly fail to notice the sign of Libra ascending above the "Horizon Obliquus" at the left. He records a similar observation in his Treatise, observing in passing the ascendent signs Gemini and Scorpio in the two examples of this operation that he gives in II+ In respect to the Parson's Prologue passage, Brea (cited by Skeat in his introduction to Chaucer's Treatise lviii) gives 4O20' of Libra at 4 P.M.,which the astrolabe confirms. The rising of the zodiacal degrees of Libra at 4 P.M. on Chaucer's April 18 is an astronomical fact, as may be seen in figure 3.8. Discussion of the significance of this rising and what Chaucer meant by calling Libra "the moones exaltacioun" (line 10) forms the substance of the argument of Chapter 10. The modern nautical and aeronautical term for what the Host and Chaucer the Pilgrim have been practicing in these two passages is "celestial navigation," that is, finding a location or time by assessing the angular positions of heavenly bodies. Although in reality it is impossible for a group of idly chatting, quarreling, story-telling pilgrims on horseback to make the trip of some fi+-seven d e s from London to Canterbury in a single day, these two passages strongly imply a symbolic backdrop of a single arc of day, with

USING THE ASTROLABE ON THE ROAD TO CANTERBURY Zenith

/

Sunrise: 447 am

\

A ( Libra 4'rising

)

Sunset: 7:13 pm

Sun at Taurus 6'42

3.9. Bearings on the Arc of Day on the Road to Canterbury. Diagram by author.

morning and afternoon bearings taken for the position of the Sun. These bearings are approximated in figure 3.9. Chapter 4 examines two more possible bearings that could be taken of the sky above the road to Canterbury, along with what these bearings imply about Chaucer's scheme of the journey and his arrangement of the t a l e c at least at one point in his writing of them.

CHAPTER 4

MERCURY THE SLY ANDTHE "B RADSHAW $HI FT"

The Sun, while singing his ancient strain Amid the chant of his brother-spheres, Moves to complete his preordained Journey through the thundering hours. Goethe, "Prologue in Heaven"

Few desire these days to seek literary realism in The Canterbuy Tabs. Derek Pearsall speaks of "the vagueness and inconsistency of geographical reference" in the Tales (L$2?6), and Oxford Chaucerian Helen Cooper writes approvingly of Allen and Moritz's A Distinction of Stories: Its joint authors argue that the frame of journey and tellers has been anachronistically overemphasized to produce readings of the Tales as a series of dramatic monologues, as an Aristotelian plot culminating in the arrival at the spiritual goal of Canterbury (or, perhaps, the more worldly goal of the supper at theTabard), or, oversimplistically, as a literal journey though geographically specified places. (Review 2 9 )

About the "Aristotelian plot," with a beginning and end so offhandedly dismissed here: in a sense any journey fiom point A to point B has such a plot,

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89

and Chaucer himself establishes a double plot of this kind in the General Prologue, first by stating the pilgrims' goal of Canterbury in lines 16-17, and then by having Harry Badly, the Host of the Tabard Inn, make the return to the Inn and prize giving an alternative goal in lines 794-801. The existence of these "plots" is undeniable even though they have been overemin the past, and their disparate goals, different both spiritually and geographically, have much to do with the tensions found in the frame tale.^ The geography of the trip is another issue more complex than recent commentators have implied (or said), as they attempt to move away from both allegory and roadside drama. One recent full-length book on Chaucer simply ignores the geography (Condren, q99), and Cooper, above, belittles it. Yet Chaucer himself has sprinkled place-names along the pilgrims' route from London to Canterbury, thereby inviting us to regard the journey as moving across an actual landscape, or at least as following an accurate pilgrimage itinerary (not quite the same dung). "Geographcally specified places" do not, in any case, necessarily make the journey a literal one. Figure 4.1 is a schematic presentation of the route from London to Canterbury, with the places that Chaucer mentions shown in capital letters. Evidence of Chaucer's interest in time and place is provided by his care with such matters as, for example, re-creating the accurate journeys of the planets in The Complaint of Mars or having his pilgrims and the people in their stories swear by appropriately local saints. Moreover, as has been seen in Chapter 3, Chaucer adds on the Canterbury route careMy researched and to the real described celestial coordmates whch, while they undoubtedly work at a symbolic level, are also meant to suggest real positions of the Sun in the sky on April 18.This chapter speculates-thathe includes celestial bearings of another kind that may serve as evidence for the long-disputed order of the talesor, more precisely, for an order toward which he was aiming at one point in his clearly "evolving composition of the tales (Pearsall, L$229), presumably written around the time of his interest in the astrolabe in the early 1390s. When Chaucer &ed in 1400, he left The Canterbuy Tales in ten disordered fragments, all but two of them linking two or more tales within the fragments, and the introductory and concluding fragments "fixed" by an array of geographical and other references. Ever since his death, people have tried to guess his final plan for the tales in order to put the manuscript fragments

ha sized

lace-names

TAKING BEARINGS

90

(Cathedral)

(Tabard Inn)

LONDON

ROCHESTER

CANTERBURY

4.1. The Route to Canterbury. Diagram by the author. from the center of the work-the "unfixed" sets of fragments-' into a sequence that corresponds to this plan. Even as recently as 1999, Edward I. Condren presented a new argument for a scheme that he believes Chaucer was attempting to implement. But Harry Badly's alternative scheme, arguably not Chaucer's own, is actually inscribed in the text. Harry proposes that every pilgrim tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and another two while coming back, with the best tale to win a free supper upon their return and Harry to be the sole judge (General Prologue 790-806); t l s is often taken as Chaucer's plan, and various reasons are offered for its thwarting. As Donald Howard says, "There are strong reasons for saying that Chaucer, far from having 'changed his mind,' never had any idea of depicting the return journey" (Iha 28). It is Harry's plan that is modfied along the way. If it were carried out, Chaucer would have had to complete 120 tales-and perhaps his ambition did indeed fail, leading him to allow the fictive Host to carry the burden of that failure. In any case, as the story-telling proceeds, the plan soon begins to conform to another model, the one-way journey more typical of the pilgrimage genre (see Howard, Writers and Pilgrims 7 and passim), and so the garne Harry initiates, with its specific rules, "has to be adapted to turn-abouts and surprises-it becomes a garne of chance" (Writers and Pilgrims q). First the churlish M d e r subverts the Host's desire for hierarchy in the order of storytelling by breaking in with his not-so-"noble" tale (MilProl p26), then the huge 120-tale return-trip scheme itself unravels. In the Cook's Prologue, that rough pilgrim teller Roger of Ware is stdl thdsmg of more than one tale when he says that he wdl tell a story now but threatens Harry that he is reserving a story about an Innkeeper for later use (CkProl4343,4+62). Soon thereafter, in The Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale, Harry may be

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implying that the Man of Law will have fulfilled his promise with only one tale (1ntrML.T 33-38, cp. line go). In The Prologue to the Monk? Tak the loquacious Monk offers "a tale, or two, or three," and a saint's life as well, or maybe up to a hundred tragedies (MkProl1966-72); he tells seventeen of these distressing stories before the Knight mercifdy stops him: "Hoo, narnoore of this!" (ProlNPT 2767). As the group approaches Canterbury in the Canoni Eomani Prolope, the Host suggests to the newly arrivedyeoman that his master, the Canon, might tell "a myrie tale or two" (CliProl 5g7). In a confbsing exchange in The Manciplei Prologue, the Cook, who has already told a fiagrnent of a tale and promised a second, is excused fiom t e h g any tale at all because of drunkenness (MancProl z9). Finally in The Parson? Prolope, Harry the Host proclaims, "Now lakketh us no tales mo than oon [one]" (ParsProl16), and he tells the Parson that with this twenty-fourth tale (twenty-fourth according to The Riverside Chaucer edrtion of the Taks), "Thou sholdest knytte up we1 a greet mateere" (ParsProlz8). Derek Pearsall suggests that the discrepancy between the number of tales planned and those actually told can be explained if the four-tales-each scheme is considered "a late addition to the General Prologue, designed to extend the tale-telling possibilities of The CanterburyTaks almost indefinitely" (L9 233; doubted by Brewer, New Introduction z74-75). Even if this were the case, however, it could then have occurred to Chaucer even later, when he grew tired of such a huge project, or perhaps when he got the idea of the scheme of a single symbolic day, that Harry's plan need not coincide with his own. Pearsall suggests that "the 'endmg' of The Canterhty Talesl with the Parson's ringing words comparing the pilgrimage, as the pilgrims prepare to enter Canterbury, with the pilgrimage of every man's life to 'Jerusalem celestial' (X:51), thus becomes the conclusion of a plan that had been superseded (L9 2 3 3 , ~270). . It is llkelier that the more workable plan would be the one that supersedes.The point is, rather than assuming with earlier scholars that "avast Design for a realistic work lies here in shards" (Howard, with irony, in Writers and Pilgrims 1z5), we might do better to acknowledge that the design itself was a shifting proposition as Chaucer experimented with different ideas about it. Although Chaucer certady left some loose ends in his "greet mateere," twenty-four tales may well have been the number he intended, not necessarily

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finally, while he was thinking about a design anchored by time and place. The numbers associated with his Canterbury pilgrimage seem to be those of pragmatic time keeping, as when the nine-and-twenty pilgrims-a number repeated in the Sun's altitude of 290 in Sbr Parson? Prologup (line 4) and associated with the phases of the Moon-are augmented by the late advent of the Canon's Yeoman and briefly the Canon hirnselfi these varying numbers recall the uneven days, thirty or thirty-one, of the twelve months that make up the Solar year.' Sidarly, the tweky-four tales may remind one of the twenty-four hours of the day. It seems likely, however, that if such associations were in Chaucer's mind at all, they were there as loose scaffolding rather than as a strict plan. In fact, the astrolabic time-dimension of the journey was probably a late addition, perhaps even temporary and possibly inspired by some lucky coincidences connected with Chaucer's work on the Zeatise. It may also have been influenced by that other kind of allegorical astronomy that J. D. North argues for with such impressive scholarship, though h s conclusions have found little favor with Chaucerians. In any case, twenty-four tales is the number that Chaucer left us to work with. Other numbers have been suggested as Chaucer's goal. In "Number Symbolism," Russell A. Peck has The Parson? 7hk be number thirty "That is, if Chaucer had finished what is generally understood to have been his revised plan of Be CanterburyTaki' (208). One wonders by whom this revised plan is "generally understood." Peck comments in his footnote here (note 11): "It is, of course, impossible to know the precise order of the Tabs whch Chaucer may have intended. Since not all of them had yet been written he probably had no final thoughts on the matter hirnselC' Presumably Peck Inherits this absolute view of the work being to that degree unfinished from such commentaries as French's Chaucer Handbook of 1927, where the reader is informed definitively that Chaucer "had certainly not written all that he originally intended to write" (French 96). But French's certainty is the result of taking Harry's plan for Chaucer's and assuming that Chaucer began and ended with a firm plan. How do we know whether all the tales had been written or not? When Chaucer asks forgiveness in his Retraction for "the tales of Caunterbury, dulke [those] that sounen [pertain] unto synne," it sounds as though he considers the work a finished product. Contrary to the "unhshed tales" idea, and more in keeping with the evidence at hand, is the proposal that

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93

Chaucer had written the number of tales he intended but had not yet gone back to clear up the promise of more tales mentioned in the links between the tales, just as he had not corrected other lapses llke having the Shipman place himself in the category of wives at lines 1202 and 1204 of his tale, and having the Second Nun refer to herself as a son of Eve at line 62 of hers. "It is clear that Chaucer himself left the situation fluid," asserts Brewer, "changing his mind, and switching the sequence about,'' a fluidity that extends "beyond sequence to who should tell the tale" (New Lntroduction 2 ~ ~ As for the scheme of a return trip followed by dinner, Chaucer might never have considered it necessary to make Harry's plan conform to his own, any more than the plan of Pandarus had to conform to the events of Troilus and Crisqde. As a final alternative,perhaps Chaucer consciouslyintended to have the worldly Host's plan at the inn not accord with the author's plan at the Cathedral end of the story, as when the ruler Theseus (in The Knight? Tale) issues firm proclamations that are meant to hold good forevermore until changing circumstances cause him to emend them, or when the Miller's drunken ruckus at the end of that tale causes Harry Badly to readjust his own orderly plan for a herarchy of tale tellers. Chaucer thereby illustrates the lack of human control over fate that is an important motif in The Canterbuy Tales. Harry's huge plan is but one of many plans that go wrong or need to be reconsidered.3 That the tales were in flux is not in question. Helen Cooper observes: There is plenty of evidence that Chaucer moved tales around and rearranged them. . . just as he would sometimes re-assign a tale to a new teller. All the evidence w i t h the work suggests that he dld care about ordering; that when a story comes to rest w i h a group [of tales], it is there for a good reason, and that there is more than just a missing narrative link to separate the fiagrnents. Chaucer seems, then, to have been much more concerned about the structure of his work than were most authors of story-collections. (Structure 57)

Even though The Canterbury Talrr abounds with evidence of thoughtful rearrangement, however, &splaying an incompleteness or at least a lack of h a 1 tidying-up, Howard's opening premise in his book The Idea $The Canterbury

) .

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Tales (following Northrop Frye7s distinction between "unfinished and "incomplete" in reference to The Faerie @eerie [Anatmy of Criticism 871). is that the work is-r we must regard the work as being-ssentially complete. To include more tales, Howard says, may or may not at some point have been Chaucer's idea-we

do not know. What

we know is that, like other ebullient men, the Host plans more than he and his "flock can deliver; most of the plans laid in The Canterbury Tales, lzke most plans in life, go awry. If we consider this failure of the plan a feature of the story, not a fact about the author's life, we w d be able to read the book as it is, not as we think it might have been. That is what I propose to do: to approach the work believing that "the work as produced constitutes the d e h t i v e record of the writer's intention," and to argue that it is unfinishedbut complete.

(Idea I , Howard's emphasis) LLke the life of a human being, the beginning and end of the Tdles are firmly established, though there is plenty of room both for going astray and ''turning over a new leaf" in the middle. So we do not know for certain how many tales Chaucer &ally envisioned, though the twenty-four he left in manuscript form seem to fit together as a whole. We also do not know the order he intended, except in certain sequences of tales, because the order of the tales varies greatly in the more than one hundred manuscripts and partial manuscripts that have come down to us, all of them dating from after Chaucer's death.4 Howard argues, however, that there are only five major tale sequences to be considered, with the first and last sequences arranged for us by internal evidence.The first sequence begins with The Knight's Tale that is announced in the General Prologue (GP 845)) and the last comes to a conclusion with the so-called tale by which the Parson himself intends, echoing the Host, "to knytte up al this feste, and make an ende" (ParsProl 47)) followed by Chaucer's Retraction. Howard's reasoning provides the following five sets of tales (based on Idea 214). In figure 4.2, the dash at the beginning of a group of tales indicates that there is no headlink, that is, no conversation between the pilgrims to locate the particular fragment in relation to the others or to the route. The Roman numerals label fragments, and their sequence is that of the Ellesmere order of tales, which

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I [General Prologue], Knight, Miller, Reeve, Cook; II Man of Law -1II Wife, Friar, Summoner; IV Clerk, Merchant; V Squire, Franklin -V1 Physician, Pardoner -VII Shipman, Prioress, Sir Thopas, Melibee, Monk, Nun's Priest -VIII Second Nun, Canon's Yeoman; IX Manciple, X Parson, [Retraction]

4.2. T h e Five Sets of Tales According to Howard. Diagram by the author.

wdl be explained shortly. This scheme is a simplification, but it does present the situation as most students of Chaucer would see it.The question is, then, in what order should one place the three middle sets of stories, Fragments 111-IV-V, VI, and VII? Fragments 111-IV-V the sequence that is knitted together the best and is usually considered a unit, is often referred to by Margaret Hamrnond's term made famous by Kittredge, the "Marriage Group" (Kittredge 435-67), because four of these seven tales address the problem about which the Wife of Bath is so articulate: Who should hold the power in a marriage, the husband or the wife?The "argument" about marriage transcends this group, however, and the more general question of who is in control is a dominant theme in every story of Fragments 111-IV-V as well as throughout The Canterbuy Taks.5 Brewer proposes calling this set of tales "The 'Trouthe and Gentilesse' group" (Brewer Introduction 340)) and Donald C. Baker proposes as more suitable the term, "the Gentilesse Group" (Baker, Squirei 7hk 50). This is the term that will be used in this discussion. Fragment V1 has been called the "Floating Fragment" because there are no external llnks and no apparent internal evidence, that is, no references to place or time of day, to suggest where it should go. This fragment turns up in different places in different manuscripts but most often immediately precedes Fragment VII. Paul F. Baum labels Fragment VII the "Surprise Group" (74-84) because it does not seem to have a dominant theme; rather, it presents a series of

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three pairs of contrasting tales. Perhaps the "Contrast Group" is therefore a better term; it w d be used here. The Roman numerals in the list in figure 4.2 label the various fragments in the order in which they appear in the magnificent Ellesmere manuscript at the Huntington Library in California; this order is called the "Ellesmere order." Many scholars prefer this ordering of the tales, arguing that such a fine manuscript must have been a work especially commissioned by someone who knew what the correct order should be.6 One could equally argue, however, that the manuscript must have been created by or for someone who thought they knew what the correct order should be and therefore felt obliged to improve on their sources. In any case, F. N. Robinson follows this Ellesmere order in The Works of GeoJrty Chaucer (rgs7), the edition most often quoted by scholars in the past; the same order is followed in its successor and today's canonical text, The Riverside Chaucer (15187)This order uses Roman numerals to distinguish the idvidual sets of tales, called "fragments" in this system. The Riverside Chaucer editors also provide letters of the alphabet to label the geographical arrangement of the tales as rendered by the "Bradshaw shift," Henry Bradshaw's 1868 relocation of Fragment V11 (also called Group B') to a position before Fragment I11 (Group D), with the "Floating Fragment" V1 (Group C) between them. This arrangement follows the geographical order of references to map location in the frame tale, that is, in the General Prolope and the l& between the tales. In order to distance the argument from the bias of either camp only the standard abbreviation for the tale in question is used in this book when referring to lines in the text, without either fragment number or group letter. Figure 4.3 shows the arrangement of the lettered sequences called "groups.~' In these new terms the problem of order remains the same: how to sequence the internal groups B,C, and D-E-F.7 Larry D. Benson poses the problem succinctly when he explains that the debate over the ordering of The CanterhlyTabs "has now narrowed to arguments for or against the 'Ellesmere order' and the Bradshaw shfi" ("Order" 78).8 Using words as markers of sets might clarify the problem. There are, as Howard has conveniently explained, five sets that can be thematically designated, without prejudice concerning their ordering: First, Floating, Gentilesse (beginning with WIBProI),Contrast (beginning with ShT), and Last. While adrmtting the impracticality of the

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE 'BRADSHAW SHIFT"

Group AI Frag I Group B l/ Frag 11 Group B21 Frag VII Group C/ Frag V1 Group D/ Frag III Group E/ Frag IV Group F/ Frag V Group G/ Frag W1 Group H/ Frag IX Group I/ Frag X

97

[General Prologue], Knight, Miller, Reeve, Cook Man of Law Shipman, Prioress, Thopas, Melibee, Monk, Nun's Priest Physician, Pardoner Wife of Bath, Friar, Summoner Clerk, Merchant Squire, Franklin Second Nun, Canon's Yeoman Manciple Parson, [Chaucer's Retraction]

4.3. The "Geographic" Order of the Tales. Diagram by the author.

idea, Derek Pearsall suggests that in order to combat our assumption that the printed text represents an authoritative Chaucerian order, these five sets might be presented "partly as a bound book (with first and last fragments fxed) and partly as a set of fragments in folders, with the incomplete information as to their nature and placement Mydisplayed" (Canterbu Sakr 23, cp. L$ zj6). Students of Chaucer might at least represent such fascicles on five cards arranged as in the following chart, easy to move around when thinking through the ordering of the tales (fig. 4.4). In his Emporay Prgace to the Chaucer Society edition of 1868, F. J. Furnivall announced the idea of his friend, Henry Bradshaw (chief librarian at Cambridge University Library), for fixing the central order of 7he Canterbuy Tdles geographically. This order is called the Bradshaw shift because Bradshaw shfis the Ellesmere ordering by placing the Contrast set of tales before the Gentilesse set (VD [Bz] before 111-W-V [D-E-F]). As Larry D. Benson says, "The manuscripts seem so confusing that it is ofien said that they can be of no help at all in determining the proper order of the tales, and there is perhaps alrnost as much a sense of relief as of characteristic gusto in Furnivall's enthusiastic acceptance of the Bradshaw sh& X happy hit! and it sets us fiee to alter the arrangement of any or all of the MSS, to move up or down

Fixed

Moveable

Fixed

First Set

Contrast Set

Floating Fragment

Gentilesse Set

Last Set

GP Knight Miller Reeve Cook Man of Law

Shipman Prioress Thopas Melibee Monk Nun's Priest

Physician Pardoner

Wife of Bath Friar Summoner Clerk Merchant Squire Franklin

Second Nun Canon's Yeoman Manciple Parson

4.4. Movable Fascicles of The Canterbury Taks. Diagram by the author.

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE 'BRADSHAW SHIFT"

99

any group of tales, whenever internal evidence, probabhty, or presumption requires it"' ("Order" 78).9 Donald C. Baker has offered readers of the Chaucer Newsletter the letters on this subject exchanged between the expressive Dr. Furnivall and his more cautious friend Bradshaw ("Evolution"). The single reference to place that has most ctsturbed ecttors and critics, the one that provoked Henry Bradshaw's shifting of the tales in the first place, is the Summoner's threat in The W$ of Bath's Prolop (845-47) that he W& tell two or three tales about friars before they arrive at Sittingbourne. Since the Host exclaims to the Monk in The Monk's Prologue, "Loo, Rochestre stant heer faste by!" (MkProl 3116)~and since Rochester comes before Sittingbourne on the road to Canterbury, it makes sense that the "Contrast Group" B' (Fragment VII) where Rochester is named should precede the combined "Gentilesse" groups D-E-F (Fragments 111-N-V) where Sittingbourne is named.10 The following itinerary of the journey makes the reason for this shift clear. From Southwark, where the pilgrims set out on their nearly sixty-mile journey, Rochester is at thirty mdes along the way and Sittingbourne at forty mdes, ten miles farther on. In figure 4.5 the mileage of each place from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, just south of the Thames across London Bridge, is approximate. Bradshaw proposed the shift of Fragment I11 (D) to a position after Fragment VII (B') to make Sittingbourne follow Rochester, just as it does on an actual itinerary. In defense of the tradition represented by the Ellesmere manuscript, Benson takes exception to the Bradshaw shift, asking, "Should a single placename carry h s much weight?"("Order" 114). He argues: "Even if we assume that Chaucer did care about geography, it is difficult to give much weight to one faulty reference when there are so many other minor errors in The Canterbury Tales as we now have them" ("Order" 115). He then lists the various most obtrusive errors, such as describing the Shipman as a "wif" and the Second Nun as a "son of Eve," and says, "All these errors, it is generally assumed, would have been corrected had Chaucer lived (or cared) to make a final revision of his work. The same explanation must also apply to the error in geography. . . . At the very least, it seems to me clear that this one error, one of several that show The Canterbury Tabs was never carefully revised, is not of sufficient weight to negate the evidence of the mss" ("Order" 116).

TAKING BEARINGS

100

Place-name

Mi. from London

Tabard Inn, Southwark Watering of St. Thomas Deptford and Greenwich Dartford (not named) Rochester Sittingbourne Ospringe (not named) Boughton Harbledown, Blea Forest Canterbury

2 5 16 30 40

Problematic References

Monk's Prologue (VIIB2 3 116) Anticipated by Summoner at Wl3Prol845-47 then announced (?) at SumT 2294 (both in III/D)

47

4.5, Approximate Mileage on the Pilgrimage Route. Diagram by the author.

It is easy to see how Benson, in his enthusiasm for this position, is loadmg hls argument. He refers throughout to the anticipation of Sittingbourne in The W$ of Bath? Prologue as "faulty" or an "error." His annoyance with this geographical reason for rejecting the Ellesmere order of the tales is demonstrated by his exclamation, "If the Summoner had only mentioned some place other than 'Sittingbourne,' the whole argument over the order of The Canterbuy Tales might never have begun" ("Order" 114). Cooper, also preferring the Ellesmere ordering argues that there is "no logical reason why the Summoner's remark indcating that Sittingbourne is s t d a considerable distance ahead [in III/D] needs to follow the mention of Rochester [inW/BI9' (Guide 27ni7-) other words, this distant place would lie ahead whether mentioned early or late in the journey. Both of these scholars (and others) prefer to ignore the Summoner's observation at the end of his tale that "we been alrnoost at towne" (SumT z 9 4 ) , yet to argue that the Summoner's observation refers to some other town, in the face of his promise to conclude before reaching Sittingbourne (W@+-01845-47), is less than convincing." Winthrop Wetherbee, no doubt himself persuaded by Benson's argument,

MERCURYTHE SLY A N D THE 'BRADSHAW SHIFT"

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proclaims that "scholars now accept almost unanimously the order of the handsome early fifteenth-century Ellesmere Manuscript" (Chaucer 18). But in The Riverside Chaucer, of which Larry D. Benson is the general editor, Benson himself is more guarded about such general acceptance-more guarded, in fact, than in his own earlier article. H e merely states the problem and observes that the order followed in this edition was chosen by Robinson, the book's previous editor, "even though he believed it probable that the Bradshaw shift was indeed what Chaucer intended" (5). While emphasizing that Chaucer does not appear to have hished with this problem of ordering, perhaps an ongoing concern for him as it is for us, astrolabic evidence confirms his intention, at one time at least, to arrange the tales in a logically geographical order. This is the geographical framework that Chaucer would have found hard to avoid, living between 1374 and 1386 sometimes at the London (Aldgate) end of the Canterbury road and sometimes in Kent. He traversed that road frequently, as many members of his audience surely did. A reference to time in Group F (which contains The Squirei Tak and The Franklini Ihk) possibly confirms this once-planned geographic order, placing Group B' (Contrast) before Groups D-E-F (Gentilesse). In the last chapter we left the Parson about to begin the final tale of the pilgrimage at 4 P.M. Earlier on the pilgrimage, at the conclusion of the Squire's notoriously astronomical tale in Group F of the "Gentilesse" group, there exists what appears to be a Janus-faced chronographia, one that refers backward to the calendar time within the Squire's fiction and forward to the clock time outside the tale, the time of day on the This reading is admittedly a gamble, but a gamble in a tale in which Chaucer is clearly playing with astronomical allusions beyond the reach of most of his a d ence, "for they kan nat the craft" (sqT18~).He even mocks that audience by reproducing their puzzlement within the tale (especially at SqT 1~~-261). It w d be remembered from Chapter 2 that in lines 47-51 of his tale, the Squire gives March 15 (with the Sun at Aries ?") as the date for King Carnbyuskan's birthday, using the ornate language that marks this young man's rhetoric.The date is confirmed when the Sun is observed at Aries 4O on the next day (SqT386). After alarming us with a sketch for a sprawling and complicated romance plot (apparently an interlace romance of the French kmd that w d rival in length The Knight2 Tak told by his father), the Squire begins

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TAKING BEARINGS

Part 3 of his story with rhetoric identical to his earlier description of the date. This new and h a l chronographialets the reader know that in his story the Sun has now moved some sixty degrees, approximately two months, from Aries (the house of Mars) into Gemini (the house of Mercury): Apollo whirleth up his chaar so bye,

Til that the god Mercurius hous, the slye . . .

/chariot, high /Mercury's (SqT 671-72).

At t h s point the Franklin smoothly speaks up: "In feith, Squier, thow hast thee we1 yquit And gentdly. I preise we1 thy wit.''

Though a few scholars argue that there is no interruption here (see Baker, Squire1 Tale 53), most agree that the Franklin disguises the rudeness of his interruption with praise and with the pretense that he thlnks the tale is over.12 Cooper proposes that the Franklin then proceeds to raise the Squire "to a &her degree of superlatives" (Strwture 148) in &ect contrast to the "quiting" or retribution sought by the churls against each other in their tales, a context that gives added meaning to the Franklin's phrase, "Thow hast thee we1 yquit" (SqT 674). What follows both in llnk and in tale makes it clear that the Franklin is firmly in favor of "gentilesse," or noble behavior. However one may wish to interpret these final lines of The Squire1Tale in terms of the pilgrims' interactions, the way the tale is cut off at this point places emphasis on its last words. Here the young Squire uses astrological allusion in the fashionable mode of chronographia as an ornamental way of saying that two months have passed while the Sun has "whirled up his chariot" fiom Aries, the mansion of Mars (see SqT 50-s~), higher in the sky of springtime as the path of the Sun moves north into Mercury's house, GemLli; that is to say (as a glance at the back of the astrolabe confirms) that the date has advanced from March to May. But in using the pair "bye/ slye" Chaucer has passed up a good opportunity for a punning "rime riche" of the lund valued in his day and dearly appreciated by the Squire himself (see SqT

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE "BRADSHAW SHIFT"

103

105-106 and 2oj-204). He could have said, for example, that the planetary god Mercury "gm hye" (hurried), a perfect punning rhyme with "so hye" (so high). Other appropriate rhymes were also ready available, as the anonymous author of The Floure and the hge demonstrates in echoing these very lines (though this particular slant-rhyme would not attract Chaucer):

Whan that Phebus his chaire of gold so hie Has whirled up the sterry sky aloft, And in the Boole was entred certainly. . . (Pearsall ed., lines I-j) Why, then, does Chaucer choose "slye" over "hye"? The very word should alert us to the Mercurial artifice of this Squire? Tale passage. Although not everyone agrees that the Franklin interrupts the Squire, Blake even asserting that the Franklin link is spurious, the drama seems too typically Chaucerian to be &smissed.s The MSprovides a splendidly subtle example of interaction between the pilgrims as the Franklin appears to be gently ironic, over the younger man's head, about the Squire's rhetoric (see the ambiguity of line 675) while appreciating his "gentilessel' After claiming that he hrmself knows nothing of such rhetorical "colors" (FrankProl the Franklin then proceeds to outmatch the Squire's inflated storytelling with a tightly constructed romance in which far more complex astronomical "rhetoric" is used, and astrology is firmly subordinated to the plot while also being integral to ite14TheFranklin is surely directly parodying the rhetoric of the Squire's final chronographia when, after saying "For th'orisonte hath reft the sonne his lyght," he explains blandly, "This is as much to seye as it was nyght" (FrankT1017-18). Chaucer may be repeating a joke by Fulgentius here; after a long and ornate chronographia in the introduction to his MytholO ~the J , Latin author deflates h s own rhetoric by adding, "And, as I can state in very few words, it was night" (Whitbread trans., 46). Yet the tone of Chaucer's passage can be interpreted quite &fferently, not as a joke. Chauncey Wood believes that line 1018 reveals the Franklin as the clumsy "burel man" that he claims to be at line 716 of his Prolopq rather than as a conscious parodist of the more ineptly artificing Squire. Wood regards the Franklin as a genuine adrmrer of the Squire (County 96-97)--

TAKING BEARINGS

104

which Chaucer may well have imagined him to be, despite his teasing. North, on the other hand, perceives the Franklin to be almost supernaturally astute in his ability to perceive the sort of tale the Squire is about to tell (Universe 284). When the young man says that, among further series of tales, he w d tell how Cambalo fights in a tournament to "wynne" his sister Canacee (SqT 667-651), this does indeed seem to be an allusion to Ovid's story of the incest of Canacee and her brother in the Heroides Book XI; the story is retold by Chaucer's friend Gower in ConfessioAmantis (Book 111).North argues, therefore, that on May 13,1383,the day to which he fmds astronomical allusion in the tale, the position of the planets, though invisible in the daytime sky, reveals to the Franklin that the Squire is about to embark on a tale of incest, presumably involving the princess Canacee. "He interrupted because he could see where the Squire's exuberant tale was leading" (Universe 284).'5 One can read the Squire's final chronographia differently, however, from a point of view that neither the Franklin nor the Squire could have imagined.This proposed reading engages a perspective outside Be SquireiTab, the same perspective from which Chaucer the astrolabist observes the presence of the constellation Pegasus in Carnbyuskan9ssky and the astronomical layout of Theseus's amphitheater, to be discussed in Chapter 5. From this perspective outside the tale, the break-off point of the Squire's passage about Apollo's chariot suggests that the Franklin's interruption occurs when, while the pilgrims are on thr mad to Canterbuy, the Sun inTaurus has advanced so far across the sky that Mercury's second house,Virgo, is rising in the afternoon of the pilgrimage day, the April 18 mentioned in the Introduction to the Man of Lawi Tab.The word "hous" at SqT 672 is a technical term referring to the sign or signs of the zodiac in which a planet is accounted at home and hence very powerful, though not so powerful as in the specific degree of its exaltation. It may be remembered from Chapter 3 that each of the seven planets possesses one or more house or mansion, or, in more technical terms, "domicile," the Sun and Moon each having one and the others having two (see figure 5.4). Just as Mars is at home in both Scorpio and Aries, andVenus is at home in both Libra andTaurus (domiciles that are important in The Knight; Tab), Mercury is at home in both Gemini andvirgo. All commentators agree that in his story the Squire is evoking Mercury's house Gemini to inhcate the month of May. Chaucer has previously used Mercury's house Gemini as an -

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE 'BRADSHAW

SHIFT"

105

important locus in his astronomical tale, The Cmplaint of Mars, based on an authentic and datable conjunction.^^ Here he alludes to Gemini to indxate a lapse of time w i t h Thp Squirei Tab. Simultaneously,however, he evokes Mercury's other house, Virgo, to inhcate the time of day on the pilgrimage. When the Franklin stops the Squire's story at the point within the tale where Gemini is rising at dawn in May (a two-faced sign, as Mercury is "sly"), Virgo looms upon the eastern horizon in the "real" midafternoon of the pilgrirnage.This location of Virgo may be seen by following Chaucer's advice for findmg the ascendent in Treatise 11.3.There he explains that when the label is laid where the degree of the day meets the almucantar of the Sun's altitude, the ascendent may be observed upon the eastern horizon h e at left. Knowing, as we do, the degree of the day (the Sun in Taurus 6" on April 18) and being given the ascendent for this point in the pilgrimage day (Mercury$ other house, Virgo), we can perform this operation in reverse to find an approximate hour (or in this case hours; Tredtise 11.28 explains that Virgo is one of the six "sovereign signs" that take more than two hours to rise). The astrolabe tells us that on April 18 the first degrees of Virgo began ascendmg above the horizon a little before I P.M. dock time and w d continue ascending for nearly three hours. Whether a clever ploy or a lucky happenstance that Chaucer appropriates to his advantage, it is a fact that not long after the pilgrims have arrived at Sittingbourne, or "towne," according to the Summoner, the ascending sign in the early afternoon is Mercury's second domicile. Indeed, Virgo is the most important of Mercury's two domiciles, according to J. D. North, "for it is its gaudium, where the planet rejoices" (Universe 1~5).This sign also contains Mercury's exaltation atVirgo IS",Mercury being the only planet whose exaltation is in its own domicile. In figure 4.6, the astrolabe set at Taurus 7" (rounding upward Nicholas of Lynn's Taurus 6"42' for dawn on April 18, since it is now afternoon), shows Virgo above the eastern horizon at midafternoon.Virgo ascends from about 12:5o to 3:45 P.M. on that day of the year, at latitude 51~30North; Virgo IS",Mercury's exaltation, is ascending at 2:2o P.M.; and the third face of Virgo belonging to Mercury, Virgo 21" to 30°, is ascending from about 2:5o until 3:45 P.M. If the Sun is to be imagined either at Mercury's exaltation or entering Mercury's face in Mercury's domicile when The Squire? Tab abruptly ends, perhaps Chaucer is offering yet another

TAKING BEARINGS

4.6. Virgo above the Eastern Horizon on April 18 at Midafternoon. Cardboard

instrument set by the author.

precise degree of longitude along the ecliptic;17otherwise, by referring to Mercury's house as a whole, he offers a more casual indication. One can convert into echptic longitude the pilgrimage coordmates offered so far by the movement of the Sun across Chaucer's sky. In figure 4.7 the first

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE 'BRADSHAW SHIFT"

107

row gives the degree of the ascendent in longitude figures that are rounded off to the nearest whole degree (except for the precise degree of Taurus provided by Nicholas of Lynn). The degree of Virgo has been arbitrarily placed at the center of that sign. The second row, beginning with Sunrise, gives the altitude angle of the Sun. The third row gives the time of day, with the chart adopting Nicholas of Lynn's times for Sunrise and Sunset as Chaucer might have done. The fourth row gives the longitude of the ascendmg degree of the ecliptic using the undivided 360" circle. This figure will be repeated with additions at the conclusion of Chapter 4 and again modified in Chapter 10. The Janus-llke reference to Mercury's two domiciles, referring simultaneously to the sky inside the tale and to the pilgrimage sky outside the tale, is no more obscure than the astrolabe dquised as a steed of brass or the constellation Pegasus invisible by day, but its presence is harder to prove. Yet it draws on a traditional device. The technique of such double "inside-outside" reference is common in medieval literature, though such references are normally bridges between the fiction and the world Inhabited by the author, rather than a bridge between a fiction and its own frame tale (in this case the world that the pilgrim narrator inhabits). Chaucer uses the device at the end of the Book of the Duchess to link "the man in black" with John of Gaunt; other authors use the technique specifically with astronomical imagery to begin their works or to link their presence as narrator within the tale to a "real world" date from their own 1ives.1~ This convention of alluding to the world outside the fiction is probably the main basis for J. D. North's allegorical interpretation of Chaucer's astronomical allusions as dating devices. Further support may be adduced for the idea that the Squire's Apollo passage is a double dating device, offering a date within the tale and another one outside i t The most obvious dues are the passage's rhetoric and grammar. As mentioned previously, attention is directed to the flamboyant lines not only by their position as final in the Squire's telling of his tale but also by their being the point where his eloquence is interrupted from outside. This position refers backward into The Squire's Tak, as the current chronographia balances the rhetoric of his first chronographia (SqT 47-5~)and it simultanously refers forward into the "realer" world of the pilgrimage. The reference to the Moon and Libra in The Parson's Prolope, which balances the "Ram in April" passage at the beginning of The Canterbuy Taks, is surular in

Hour

4:47AM

lOAM

2:23 PM

4 PM

7:13 PM

Ascendent

Taurus 6"42

Leo 3"

Virgo 15"

Libra 4"

Scorpio 6"

Sun's Height

Sunrise

45"

54"

29"11

Sunset

123"

168"

184"

216"

Ecliptic Long. 36"42

(The fourth horizontal row of figures indicates the Sun's position along the ecliptic on April 18th.)

4.7. Fitting Virgo into the Pilgrimage Day. Diagram by the author.

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE "BRADSHAW SHIFT"

109

that it is one of the markers leading us out of the pilgrimage fiction into a serious concern with eternity. Unlike the final passage of The Squire's Tale, however, it refers to a single hour and date. Nevertheless, both astronomical passages-at the end of The Squire's Tale and in The Parson? Prologue-may be described as liminal, that is, either a threshold between fictions or a threshold between fiction and reahty (unlrke the scene-setting chronographiae with which they are paired, SqT48-51 and GP 7-8, respectively). The semantic and syntactic structures of lines 671-72 of The Squire's Tale corroborate the liminAity or double reference of this passage. When the Squire says that Apollo whirls up his chariot "til that the god Mercurius hous, the slye," the reference of the phrase is ambiguous. The end of the sentence, were it not cut of6 would clarifythe meaning. Apollo himself may be the subject of "until," if the Squire intends to say the god's name in the next line, so that the passage would then mean that in the course of the year the Sun has driven his chariot along the ecliptic from Aries until he (Apollo the Sun) has entered Mercury's house Gemini, hence having moved along the ecliptic from March to May in the story. The Floure and Lt@epoet quoted above chooses the verb "entered" (entre4 line 3) to complete the syntax and make the Sun the subject. Alternatively, Mercury's house may be the subject of "til," which would mean that the Sun has risen in the pilgrimage day sign of Taurus, and moved across the sky in that sign, until Mercury's house Virgo is ascending on the horizon. This makes the hour, not the month, later. Chaucer has the Fr& cut the sentence off before the Squire is able to complete it, however, wluch keeps the ambiguous syntax open to both possibhties. Perhaps Chaucer is also eliciting a response to the hour's allegorical associations. Mercury is the planetary god whom the Wife of Bath has recently connected with clerks (WBProl 697-705), and at this time of the Pilgrimage day, when the ascending sign is associated in various ways with Mercury, the Franklin proceeds to tell the only one of the tales unambiguously "exalting" a clerk among those socially his superiors. Perhaps Chaucer even has this most astronomically astute of the pilgrims begin his tale when Virgo IS", the exaltation of the clerks' planetary god, is ascendmg. It seems more l&ely that the Franklin (or Chaucer) would recognize, perhaps with the help of an astrolabe, the Mercurial significance of the Sun's position as a suitable link to the following tale involving a clever and generous clerk than that

110

TAKING BEARINGS

the Franklin instantaneously perceives, from the position of the (invisible) planets, that the Squire's next subject is incest, as North proposes. Someone as alert as the Fr& to astronomical and astrological nuance would very lLkely be traveling with an astrolabe, that instrument useful for "first mover" astronomy, by which one can easily estimate the rising of the signs but not planetary positions (which must be observed). These speculations, both North's and mine, attempt to read Chaucer's mind In a more concrete manner, the M t - i n alternative readtng of the Apollo passage reveals it as a piece in a puzzle-when, as a reference to the time of day, it helps to schematize the pilgrimage. But tlvs is a subject for development in a later chapter. Bothersome but not irrehtable evidence against t h s "outside" hour exists within The Squirei Tab itself. At h e 73, in the midst of an enumeration of the glories of Cambyuskan's birthday celebration, the Squire interrupts himself:

1 wol nat taryen yow, for it is pryme,

A.M. (CP

And for it is no fruyt, but 10s of tyrne, Unto my firste I wol have my recourse.

WT3194-97) /not fruitfd /first [subject]

(SqT 73-75, punctuation emended).

In effect, "I must return to my first subject," he says after his brief clgression, and he then relates how, after the third course of the morning banquet, the knight rides into the hall upon the steed of brass (SqT76-81). Two possibilities that might obviate the necessiv for this word "prime" to refer to the frame tale may be considered here. The first, that tlus comment is an aside to the audience, may be a relic fiom a previous use of the tale. Perhaps the tale was originally meant to be told, or was in fact told, by Chaucer himselt; when occasionally as teller he would interrupt hmself to hurry h e l f along with the mock incompetence of the narrator of Sir Thoppar, in this instance by remarlung about prime (prime being a usual time to have a meal). Along similar h e s , David Lawton argues that the couplet may be scribal, added in order "to indicate a more specific occasion of performance" (126-27, quoted in Baker SquireiTab 145).The second possibiltv is that the reference to prime (or rather, that it is now the prime hour in the pilgrims' day outside the story) is merely another Chaucerian slip, because the most logical reference to prime

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE "BRADSHAW SHIFT"

111

is within the tale itself. References to the time of day within the tale, many of them in terms of astronomy, supplement the story's structure. Cambyuskaris birthday banquet begins as an amazing breakfast feast, in whch the hght's sudden appearance serves as a sort of entrms act between the c o u r s e s at "pryme," if one chooses thus to understand h e 73-and the feasting and dancing last until nearly daybreak the next morning.The revelers then retire to bed and sleep, briefly, it would seem, until "pryme" again (SqT 360). Both primes probably refer to 9 A.M. (Chauntedeer's prime is unambiguously at 9 A.M. in The Nun's Priest's Tak at h e s 3193-99, where the hour is astronomically defined by the angle of the Sun on May 3.) If the first "prime" may be imagined as w i h the tale, it appears the Squire is indudmg a schedule of activities-xpressed in both hours and celestial longitude-between the two references to prime that bracket Cambyuskan's birthday (at h e s 73 and 360). The further events of Cambyuskan's birthday on March 15 (Sun at Aries 3") support dus readmg of "pr&e" at line 73. hey could also provide a paradigm for the reckonings of time in the karne tale. The banquet begun at prime continues until past noon (SqT263). When the "gentil Lyon" is ascending on the horizon as the Sun passes the noon meridan, the hng, like Leo, "rises" to go to I s chamber for music (SqTz6347).The music seems "heavenly" (SqT 271), and "Venus's duldren" dance as that planetary goddess sits above in the Fish (SqI'z72-7j). Pisces is indeed high overhead in the sky when Leo is rising, as is easily seen on the astrolabe. When the Squire imagines the planet Venus in that sign, perhaps she is near her exaltation at Pisces 27". Though lines 264-74 are primarily allegorical, and Cambyuskan probably is symbolized by the royal lion, the lines also give the hour in specific astronomical terms. Once the Sun's degree (Aries 3") and the ascendmg sign (Leo) are known, the hour (noon) may easily be estimated with the aid of the astrolabe. The young people dance until time to go to supper, afier which they visit the temple for services, then return to eat again. It is still day (SqT 283-97). At "after-soper" the king and his court go to look at the steed of brass (SgT302-43), which disappears as the star Alpheraz moves toward the horizon afier the Sun descends at 6:07 P.M. (Eisner, ed. Kakndarium 79). They dnnk and feast hrther, "til we1 ny the day bigan to sprynge" (SqT 346), that is, until near daybreak. "The spryng of the dawenyng" (Treatise U.6) is a technical term for "the time the sun arrived within 18" of the horizon" (Eade,

TAKING BEARINGS

4.8. Noon on Carnbyuskan's Birthday, Leo Rising. Cardboard instrument set by the

author.

Sky 150; in which he comments on The Floure and the Lege poet's accurate use of the term). O n March 16 this "springing9'occurs at j:49 A.M. according to Nicholas of LF's Kaknddriurn (ed. Eisner, 79). T h e revelers go to bed and sleep "til that it was pryrne large" (SqT360),probably once again 9 A.M.,since

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE 'BRADSHAW SHIFT"

113

at the equinox the day's "quarter" of prime lasts from approximately six to nine in the morning. But the princess Canacee, who went early and properly to bed rather than feasting all night (SqT 362-66)) is up and out as the Sun rises in the fourth degree of Aries (SqT386-87), more exactly Aries 4035'at 531 A.M.,according to Nicholas of Lynn (ed. Eisner 77, 79). Cambyuskan9s court keeps a heavy schedule, and Chaucer keeps a close eye on it. If "pryme" at line 73 is taken as a reference to the hour in Chaucer's frame tale rather than as an internal feature of The Squire'sTab (or simply as a scribal error or scribal "emendation9"as suggested by David Lawton [126] and others, or even if it is an aside left over from a previous occasion), then either fragments D-E-F must go before the Host9s "ten of the clokke" in The introduction to the Man of h i Tab, or prime in The Squire'sTak must represent an hour in a different day, as most earlier twentieth-century readers assumed. (These different versions for the time of the pilgrimage are the subject of another chapter.)Yet if one were to imagine that the prime mentioned at line 73 andVirgo rising at line 672 are both understood as referring to the pilgrimage time, the telling of the short tale would take from approximately 9 A.M. until midafternoon. Since the festivities of Cambyuskan9sbirthday, when bracketed by references to prime, are shown to be plotted with such care, "pryme" at line 73 seems to point to the fiction within the tale and thus to minimize the problem for the tale's afternoon breaking-off point with Virgo rising, It must be admitted however, that the phrasing of line 73 points to the narrator's frame-tale time. The "9 A.M. until midafternoon" discrepancy between the length of the story and the time of the pilgrimage day could be compared to what similarly seems to be a mistake, or perhaps more accurately a loose end, in The Mancz$ki Prologue. Before the Manciple speaks, the Host starts pestering the hungover Cook to "telle a tale" (MancProl I ~ and ) teasing him for dozing on his horse "by the monve" (MancProl16).The time suggested by the word "monve" makes the Manciple's brief tale last from morning until the 4 P.M. time given directly after that tale. Moreover, the Cook has already told one tale, or the beginning of one, in the opening group of tales, before 10 A.M. Some evidence exists in the links both before and after The Mancz@i Tak that this tale has been moved to its present location from elsewhere; perhaps that move accounts for the discrepancy. Or

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TAKING BEARINGS

perhaps an earlier form of The Mancipk's Prologue was once part of the l ~ n kto the Cook's aborted morning tale as we have it, following Be Reeve's Tale The carefully accurate geography mentioned next in Be Mancipk's Probp suggests a late-afternoon setting, for the pilgrims have come to the little village of "Bobbe-up and-doun,/ Under the Blee, in Canterbury weye" (MancProl 2-3; referring to the h d y village Harbledon and the Blea Forest. This puts them very near the end of their journey. Might Chaucer at some time have considered having the Cook attempt in his morning tale to tell after the Reeve some version of what is now Be Mancipk's Tab19 After the Host's reference to "morning," there follows a dmussion about whether the Cook is too drunk to tell h tale. The Manciple speaks up, offering to absolve hun from h s duty by &g h s place. The Manciple then proceeds to tell a tale of only some 250 h e s , one of the shortest of all the tales (though longer than the Cook's), and in truth scarcely a tale at all. It is significant that the tale features a euhemerized Apollo, h s deity almost entirely suppressed, and it concludes with the Lnk already examined in Chapter 3:

By that the Manciple hadde his tale a1 ended, The some fEo the south lyne was descended So lowe that he nas nat, to my sighte, Degrees nyne and twenty as in highte. Foure of the clokke it was tho, as I gesse."

(ParsPr011-5) Modern editors and commentators (except for Frese 186-89) accept the 4 P.M. hour of Parson's Prologue 5 on the basis of only one manuscript (Christ Church, Oxford, 152). All other manuscripts record "ten." Ten A.M. is demonstrably wrong, for the Sun is said to be descendmg from the south h e marking noon, making the hour some time in the afternoon. Fortunately it is easy to see how this error could occur. As can be confirmed by looking at a medieval astrolabe engraved with Arabic numbers (or by looking at diagrams from Chaucer's Treatise, such as figure 7.1 in this book), the shape of the "new" Arabic number 4 could easily be mistaken by a scribe for the X of the Roman numeral 10. The Mancipk's Prolop, with its dissonant references to the Cook's turn for a tale and the morning hour, llke the "ten

MERCURY THE SLY AND THE 'BRADSHAW

SHIFT

115

of the dokke" in most manuscripts at line 5 of The Parson? Prolope, is another place in the Taks that requires tidying, where a change in Chaucer's planor in somebody's plan, or somebody mistakenly th~nkingthey understood Chaucer's plan, or a scribe simply getting it wrong-is evident and the matter has not yet been "knit up."The argument that the tales of the Squire and the Manciple fall on dfferent days of the pilgrimage creates more problems than it solves and has evoked some extraordinarily agile imaginings on the part of scholars for over a century, beginning with Furnivall in 1868. Furnivall quotes A. l? Stanley's assertion (to be dscussed further in Chapter g) that "the journey, although at that time usually occupying three or four days, is compressed into the hours between sunrise and sunset on an April day" (Furnivall, Empomy Pr$ace 12). He shares Stanley's disgust about the time scheme, unrealistic in one day given the distance to be covered, and spends much of his book arguing against the previous single day assumption and hatching his insidious four-day scheme (9-44). But Chaucer was not interested in dramatic realism for the journey's length. He was interested, rather, in a day constructed with celestial realism having symbolic application. If the Janus-ldse allusion to the time at the end of The Squire? Tak refers to the same day as the 4 P.M. in The Parson? P r o 1 0 ~and if coherent sequence is at all Chaucerb concern (as his toying with astronomically defined time suggests that it must have been), then the Bradshaw shifi is es~ential.~~The Virgo allusion suggests that Group F, containing the Franklin's c u r t a h e n t of The Squire? Tak, is separated by no more than an hour or two of storyt e h g from the later Group I, containing The Parson? G k .This makes it most improbable that the six long tales of the "Contrast" group (B') would intervene as they do in the Ellesmere ordering. But does the pilgrimage in fact take place all on the same day? How realistic is this pilgrimage meant to be, and how accurate the times and places? One more passage possibly bearing on the latter question can be examined now.The artificial day, a technical term used by Harry Bailly for the arc of day, was encountered in the last chapter where Chaucer has the Sun arc up past 10 A.M. and downward to 4 P.M. (see fig. j.9). The hint in The Squire? Tak about Libra rising offers another bearing on that day in early afiernoon, and it is now possible to propose a fourth marker for this arc of the artificial day.The noon meridan at the apex of the arc, where the Sun reaches the - -

-

-

116

TAKING BEARINGS

highest and southernmost point of its course across the sky, marks the end of the sixth hour of the day. In Il Convivio Dante digresses from discussing the four ages of man to compare the human lifespan to the arc of day. He explains that Christ chose to die in his thirty-fourth year, near the apex of his life, and that Luke says that it was almost the sixth hour when he ded, that is to say, the apex of the day [diceLuca che era quasi ora sesta quanto morio, che d a dire 10 colmo del die], . . . because it would not have been fitting that his divine nature should begin to decline [chi non era convenevole la divinitade stare en cosi discresione] (N23; Simonelli, 199). J. A. Burrow refers to this passage as an example of the medieval use of the ascendmg and descending arc of the Sun as an obvious metaphor for human life (58), and it should be no surprise to find Chaucer alluding to the same metaphor in both temporal and geographical terms. When Harry Badly calls attention to nearby Rochester in The Prologue of the Monk's Tale (1926), that city marks the indisputable geographical midpoint of the journey. The pervading thematic image in the Monk's series of little "tragedes" is the fall f?om the apex of the wheel of fortune, much as the Sun descends from the meridian at noon. In almost every picture of the wheel of fortune, the wheel is shown rotating dockwise, the direction of the Sun across the sky, as in the picture of the wheel of fortune on the north wall of the choir in Rochester Cathedral (see fig. 4.9). If the midway Rochester point is meant to suggest noon, when the Sun crosses the meridan and begins its descent to the west, and when, therefore, the Monk begins his sequence of "fall from fortune" tales, this noontime point of the artificial day may explain the host's "wilde leoun" metaphor in The Prolope of the Monk's Tale (MkProl1~16). The astrolabe shows why Chaucer might have been thlnking of lions at this point: on the day that the Sun is at Taurus 6") Leo is well ascended upon the eastern horizon by noon, and Treatise 11.3 shows Chaucer's almost casual awareness of ascensions when using the astrolabe.The same zodiacal allusion also draws attention to the nature of the first two heroes whose stories the Monk tells after the requisite stories of Lucifer and Adarn. Sarnson and Hercules were both famous lion slayers; in Troilus and Crisyde (IV32) Hercules is associated specifically with the sign Leo. (Further possible implications of this Monk's Tale ascension of Leo w d be explored in Chapter 9.) Most important for the purpose here, the midway position of Rochester offers yet another celestial coordinate for

4.9. The Wheel of Fortune. Wallpainting in Rochester Cathedral. Photograph by

HenryTeed,used by permission of Canon John Arrnson on behalf of theTrustrees of Rochester Cathedral.

Hour

4:47 AM

10 AM

12 Noon

2:23 PM

4 PM

7:13 PM

Ascendent

Taurus 6"42

Leo 3"

Leo 20"

Virgo 15"

Libra 4"

Scorpio 6"

Sun's Height Sunrise

45"

90"

54"

29"ll

Sunset

Ecliptic Long. 36"42

123"

140"

168"

184"

216"

4.10.Fitting the Meridian into the Pilgrimage Day (Leo emboldened). Diagram by the author.

MERCURY THE SLY A N D THE 'BRADSHAW SHIFT"

119

the single arc of day. If one accepts either or both of the celestial coordinates suggested in this chapter, the scheme now supplements the geographical order that it appears Chaucer was considering for the Taks, at least at one time in his composition of them. By no means do these coordinates reduce the pilgrimage to the simple "roadside drama" enjoyed by Furnivall and others, nor, on the other hand, do they turn it into allegory.They do, however, suggest an order for the tales toward which Chaucer was consciously working at one time.'^ The next section, titled Applications, w d examine some of the ways in which Chaucer uses astronomically verifiable celestial features, along with other astrolabe-related features of a more astrological kind, to provide an added symbolic dimension in at least three of his individual tales.22

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PART 2

APPLICATIONS

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CHAPTER 5

TH E AMPH ITH EATER THE KNIGHT'S TALE

Having fixed upon the principle center, draw a line of circumference equivalent to what is to be the perimeter at the bottom, and in it inscribe four equilateral triangles, at equal distances apart and touching the boundary of the circle, as astrologers do in a figure of the twelve signs of the zohac, when they are making calculations from the musical harmony of the stars. Vitruvius, Instructionsfor Building a Theater

The d e r of I l e Recuei Tale taunts the visiting Cambridge derks about being adept at makmg mountains out of molehds by offering them a challenge about their sleeping accommodations: Ye konne by argurnentes make a place A myle brood of twenty foot of space. Lat se now if this place may suffice, O r make it rowrn with speche, as is youre gise.

/Let's see /spacious, custom

RvT 4123-26 This joke gains humor if one realizes that in the previous Knight's Tale Chaucer has already exploded dimensions far more outrageously than what the sarcastic d e r suggests the Cambridge derks do with their clever talk.

124

APPLICATIONS

In creatingTheseus's amphitheater Chaucer has made "a place a myle brood" from a mere few inches of space. He has based the design of Theseus's huge amphitheater on readings taken from the hand-held astrolabe, perhaps a pocket astrolabe like that described in the Treatise. By deviating from his source story in various ways, Chaucer considerably complicates that story's amphitheater's simple design. When Chaucer came to write The CanterburyTales, it appears he already had some form of The Knight? Tale ready to hand, for in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Wmen he mentions having written a poem about the young heroes of the tale: "al the love of Palamon and Arcite" (line 420/408). He may not have originally intended to use his "epic" story retold from Boccaccio (and Statius) for the first of the tales,l but perhaps he discovered what various commentators have shown so clearly, that the story makes a good beginning for a general movement of the tales, from secular to spiritual love, at least in the fixed clusters at the beginning and end. The Knkht? Tale provides an ideal "secularf'opening tale; set in a pre-Revelation Classical world, it concerns the passion of two equally matched cousins for a single young woman, in the springtime llke the pilgrimage itself.The plot presents the sort of quandary that Chaucer enjoyed exploring in h s fictions, and he was no doubt delighted to &scover the astrolabe's invitation by means of its dagrams to add a fourth god to resolve the difficulty of the sexual triangle of characters aligned with Venus, Mars, and Diana. When the opposing planets Venus and Mars make conflicting promises to their respective petitioners, Saturn negotiates between them to solve their crisis at the expense of the humans. This plot split between two realms provided Chaucer with several opportunities. It allowed him to introduce the concepts of fortune and free wLU, to portray thwarted human attempts at controlling destiny and to have h s paganTheseus develop a "Boethtan" insight about the power of &vine love to direct the cosmos. 1t-also allowed ~ h a u c e rto design-a building that would represent graphically the conflict of the two equal lovers in the story and provide the means of that conflict's solution as well. The construction of the building and the account of worship in it, the main subjects of Part j of Zlw Knight? Gle,are added by Chaucer to Boccaccio's story, and probably to h s own previous version of the story as well, where such elaboration would not be needed. Chaucer must have added this focus on the amphitheater when he decided -

-

THE AMPHITHEATER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE

125

to place this story first in his sequence of tales, perhaps displacing, as has been suggested, The M a n of Law's T a k 2 Theseus's amphitheater is among the features of The Knlght's Tale that make t h s story appropriate to be placed first. It is typically Chaucer's practice, and that of the dream allegory genre to whch the opening of The Canterbury Tales has been shown to be related (see Cunningham), to place a symbolic building near the beginning of the narrative.3 Chaucer does this repeatedly. A walled garden with "images and peyntures" is introduced at lines 136-47 of his translation of the Roman de h Rose. A chamber with scenes from the Roman de la Rose painted on the walls and the story of Troy in stained-glass windows comes early in the Book of the Dtlchess (lines 3z~-34).Venus's temple of glass containing the story of Dido and Aeneas comes early in The House of Fame (lines 11~-475),and the walled park with the inscribed gate in She Parliament of Fowls is also encountered early in the vision in that poem (lines 120-54). With these predecessors, each appearing early in the "inner" story of the dream and each calling for interpretation in different terms for both the inner and the outer stories, it comes as no surprise to encounter such a building as Theseus's amphitheater in the first of The Canterbuy Tales. Chaucer adorns it with decorated temples (perhaps taking his cue from the Roman de la Rose) and story-transcending astronomical and astrological symbolism. The symbolism of that building is the subject of this chapter. A. W Pollard expresses the opinion of many concerning the astronomical and astrological elaboration of Part 3 of The Knight's Tale when he says, "There is an absence of economy about it all which is very unusual with Chaucer" (xi). Understanding what Chaucer is doing with this material, however, provokes interest rather than perplexity or distress. His additions in this section of the poem deviate from Boccaccio's Teseida (his main source, which on the whole he follows fairly closely) in four major ways, and a fifth apparently minor way, as follows:

(I) In The Knight? TaleTheseus builds the arnphitheater, whereas in Boccaccio's Teseida it already exists in the landscape.V A. Kolve considers this "the most important change" that Chaucer makes in "his elaboration of Boccaccio's theatre" into a major narrative image, and the one "from which all the others follow" (Imagery 105).

126 (2)

APPLICATIONS

In The Knight's Tale the three oratories to the gods are built into the amphitheater and related to the planetary hours; in Boccaccio's version the temples are scattered around Athens and the planetary hours are not relevant.

(j) In

The Knight's Tale Chaucer adds to the plot a fourth planetary god not found in Boccaccio, Saturn, who cruelly resolves the conflict in heaven while at the same time completing the amphitheater's cruciform internal design. Boccaccio has Venus and Mars come to an agreement on their own.

(4) In The Knight's Tale the east-west associations of the two young knights---one the knight of Venus and the other the knight of Mars-are

reversed fiom

those in the Teseida, and the date of their conflict is changed fiom autumn to spring. This h a 1 change, or set of paired changes, of drrections and date appears to have come later than the other three changes and seems the most arbitrary of

all. Yet it marks a sophisticated development in Chaucer's use

of astronomy in The Canterbury Tab.

(5) The addrtion of a tower in honor of Diana at the north side of the amphtheater relates to the fourth change concerning the switchrng of the two gates opposed at east and west.

The rest of this chapter will discuss these five changes to Boccaccio's tale, beginning with Theseus's design and its basic relation to the astrolabe.,

(I) THESEUS'S AMPHITHEATER AND THE ASTROLABE. Boccaccio describes the building that Theseus uses for the tournament, a secular if ornate "sports stadium,'' in BookVII of the Teseida thus: The circular arnphtheater was situated a little way outside the city. It was not an inch less than a d e all around; its marble wall with its tablets of polished carving rose so high into the sky that it almost strained the eye to look at it, and it had two entrances with strong and most finely wrought gates.

Of these, one with its great columns was set to face the rising sun, whilst the other looked towards the west and was made exactly like the first. All had to enter through these and not from any other side, for there was no entrance on those. In the middle there was a perfectly circular arena, spacious enough for any noble festival and surrounded by terraces which made, I believe, more than five

THE AMPHITHEATER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE

127

hundred circles before reaching the summit of the wall. And there were broad steps of marvelously fine stone upon which people sat to watch the fierce gladiators or others engaged in any sport, without at any point getting in each other's way. (Havely translation, 134)

The preliminary description in The Knighti Tale of the amphitheater that Theseus builds, condensed in comparison to Boccaccio's description, is bracketed by references to the impossibility that such a building could exist in the real world at all. For once the impossibility topos takes on more than rhetorical value: [Slwich a noble theatre as it was,

I dar we1 seyen in this world ther nas.

/such /say, was not

The circuit a myle was aboute, Walled of stoon, and dyched a1 withoute. Round was the shap, in manere of compas,

fd of degrees, the heighte of sixty pas

/stone /Ike a circle /paces (KnT 1885-0)

Estward ther stood a gate of marbul whit, Westward right swich another in the opposit. And shortly to concluden, swich a place Was noon in erthe, as in so litel space.

/just such /such /none (KnT 1893-96)

This "little spacev is indeed more significant than a few acres of earth, for it represents the ecliptic itself, the circle marked out by the Sun's course through the sky, as demonstrated by certain slmdar wording in the Zeatise on the Astrolabe. In his description of the zodiac band on the rete of the astrolabe (see fig. 1.1)) Chaucer tells little Louis, h s son: But sothly [truly] the eclipt~klyne of thy zodtak is the utterist bordure of thy zodtak there [where] the degrees be marked. Thy zodak of thin Astrelabie is shapen as a compas [circle].

(I:21)

128

APPLICATIONS

Earlier Chaucer described the degrees of the signs marked on the back of the lnstrument: [Tlhese degres of signes ben everich [are each] of hem [them] considered of 60 mynutes, and every mynute of 60 secundes, and so hrth into smale fracciouns infinite (M), The description of the amphitheater seems loosely to echo these two Treatise descriptions, or vice versa: Round was the shap, in maner of compas, Ful of degrees, the heighte of sixty pas.

/l&e a circle

(KnT 1889-90) Figure 5.1, a suggestive photograph of a model of the Roman Colosseum (misleading because in reality the building is oval rather than round as it appears here), should be compared to figure 3.2, the back of the main plate of the astrolabe that is engraved with the zodiac, round and "ful of degrees," as Chaucer says of the amphitheater. Like that slightly different angle of the same model of the Colosseum in V A. Kolve's Chaucer and the Imagey of Narrative ( I O ~ )this , photograph offers a remarkable visual analog to the astrolabe. Kolve observes that Boccaccio may have based Theseus's arnphitheater on this building in the Eseida, Chaucerb principal source for The Knighti Tab (Imagey 105). The visual similarity between these two objects would not have gone unremarked by Chaucer, had he remembered seeing the Colosseum on one of his several trips to Italy,5 or having seen a plan of it in a text like the thirteenth-century Graphia aureae urbis, or if he had even seen one of the lesser but s t d remarkable ruined amphitheaters in southern France or Spain. When seen from above, the Roman amphitheater at Arles, France, displays an even more remarkable likeness to an astrolabe than the Colosseum. Such arnphitheaters were in medieval times used for bullfighting or bull-baiting (as that in Arles is still), and the traditional Spanish bullring in fact is modeled on the amphitheater design; these associations might even have made a link in Chaucer's mind with the bull-subduing

5.1. A Model of the Roman Colosseum. Photograph fiom the Deutsches Archaological Institut in Rome; used with their permission.

130

APPLICATIONS

Theseus. In earlier works, The Book of the Duchess (line 570)) The House of Fame (line I ~ ~ Iand ) , Boece (3.12.156)) Chaucer alludes either to the famous building in whchTheseus fought with the half-bull half-man Minotaur, or to its famous builder, and the Minotaur adorns Theseus's banner in The Knight's Tale (KnT978-80). Whether Chaucer associated the bullring withTheseus9s Minotaur fight is sheer speculation, but the building that Theseus orders constructed for the tournament in The Knight's Tale clearly takes its design in part fiom an ancient amphtheater. It is neither a labyrinth of the h d associated withTheseus even in the later Middle Ages, nor the usual purposebuilt wooden "corrals," called "lystes" (lists) in Middle English, in which tournaments usually took place. While serving as Clerk of the h g ' s Works horn 1389to 1391,Chaucer hself was responsible for overseeing the buildmg of such lists. We might call a person in that position the building contractor, though, as Margaret Hallissy shows, Chaucer's responsibhty was more complex than the designation implies. Hallissy also associates the craft of building with that of writing (240, cp. 254-56)) so that "Chaucer's godlke creativity surpasses Theseus's in Athens and the Master Builder's on a construction site" (256). Persons hearing Chaucerb poem around this t h e would have been even more llkely than Hallissy to make the connection between the builder-poet and the builder Theseus, especially had they been able to connect the astrolabic aspect of the amphitheater with the idea that Theseus's construction was a reflection, remarkably inflated, of the type of construction that Chaucer supervised. (2)

THE THREE ORATORIES. The visual similarity between the astrolabe and

ancient amphitheaters such as the Colosseum corresponds to a suggestive verbal smdarity between The Treatise on the Astrohbe and Chaucer's description of the amphitheater in The Knight's Tale. Medieval writers considered the Colosseum itself a tmplum Solis designed to represent the "solar wheel" and a pagan equivalent to St. Peter's Basilica (Di Macco 34-37, citing and quoting extensively Graf 96-98; and Lyle 35-47). Even so, the s~rmlarities between Theseus's amphitheater and the astrolabe, taken alone, could be merely fortuitous.They do not prove that Chaucer recognized them as similarities. Confirmation that he &d so is offered by the locations at which he

THE AMPHITHEATER IN T H E KNIGHT'S TALE

131

adds the three oratories dedicated to pagan gods, adornments that Boccaccio's buildmg lacks. In a curious and complicated way these three oratories serve the same purpose in Chaucer's poem as Boccaccio's Christian glosses do in the TPsPida, the position of the oratories in relation to the astrolabe demythologizesthe pagan gods into planets. This revision of pagan understanding occurs only from the point of view of our stance outside the world of the story, just as glosses are read "outside" the story. In The Knight2 Tab, where symmetry is important both to plot and meaning, Chaucer hasTheseus add to his amphitheater the three oratories at carefully calculated locations.Theseus places an oratory dedcated to Venus over the eastern gate, one dedicated to Mars over the western gate, and one dedicated to Diana, goddess of the Moon, in a tower on the northern wall: H e estward hath, upon the gate above

In worshipe of Venus, goddesse of love Doon make an auter and an oratorie;

/in honor /ordered made, altar

And on the gate westward, in memorie

Of Mars, he maked hath right swich another That coste largely of gold a fother. And northward, in a touret on the wal,

Of alabastre whit and reed coral, An oratorie, riche for to see, In worshipe of Dyane of chastitee, Hath Theseus doon wroght in noble wyse.

/just such /great amount /tower /white and red /in honor /ordered made, style.

(KnT qo3-q) Margaret Halhssy has "drawn with modern equivalents of medteval builders' instruments" (250) the arnphtheater's design in figure 5.2. Hallissy points out the symbolism that Chaucer makes of Theseus's carefully balanced desrgn: L k e a master builder, too, Chaucer has designed with an eye to structural syrnbolism. T h e buildmg's "round

. . . shap" connotes virtue. Above the east gate are the

"auter and . . . oratorie" of Venus (A 1905); on the west gate, those of Mars. The oratory to Diana is not spatially related to a gate because of the inappropriateness

APPLICATIONS

5.2. Hallissy's Plan of Theseus's "Noble Theatre." Used with permission from Margaret Hallissy.

of associating Diana with a structural symbol of sexual accessibility; as Kolve observes, "one may enter the arena of passionate experience by the gates of Mars and Venus, but not through dedication to Diana, not through chastity" [Imagery 1141. Instead, her place of worship is in "a touret on the wal" on the north side. T h e inaccessibility connoted by the turret links with the cool north to put the worshipper of Diana in the proper state of mind for preserving chastity; the valuable materials ("alabastre whit and reed coral" [A 1~101)stress purity's beauty and value (Hallissy 251).

THE AMPHITHEATER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE

133

The change that Chaucer makes from his source when he incorporates the three temples into Theseus's amphitheater is a major one. Instead of having his protagonists pray to their respective gods in the amphitheater and be answered there, Boccaccio has the two knights' personified prayers seek out the distant home of Mars inThrace and that of Venus on Mount Cithaeron (Teseida W).He locates these sites in the landscape of myth rather than in either the earthly or the stellar realm. Chaucer incorporates the mythical sites of the Teseida in his descriptions of the paintings inside the amphitheater temples, being especially faithful to his original in the description of theThracian temple of Mars. The distance from the scene of the action of these gods' abodes in the Gseida evokes comment from Kolve: "Although Boccaccio's planetary gods wdl influence what happens at the theater, just as they do in Chaucer, their houses bear neither spatial nor symbolic relationship to it" (Imagery 114).The quartering on the front of the astrolabe by directional linesdescribed in the Treatise (LgFmight have suggested to Chaucer the idea of quartering the arnphitheater by locating the temples of the three planetary gods and inferring a fourth at the four equidistant cardinal points. The location of the gates at east and west (KnT189j-96; p o t e d above) and of Diana's tower at the north is of primary importance for the thesis of this chapter, as is the fourth significant location at the south, where there is no oratory. (j) THE ADDITION OF SATURN. Though Chaucer does not say so, the position where Theseus sits with his court to watch the tournament must be at the south, where the Sun wdl circle behind them. South marks the fourth, undedicated point, where Saturn makes his power felt later in the poem. As Eade says, the configurations of the temples and the lack of one at the south point "entails the presence of Capricorn on the meridian-astride the heavens, as it were [at dawn]; and there is a ready appropriateness in this. Capricorn is Saturn's mansion, and it is Saturn who will determine the outcome of the contest" (Sky 122). What Eade does not say is that, below the heavens, at ground level in Athens, the location where this god determines the outcome by sending a fury to frighten Arcite's horse must be the area in front of the viewing stand. Saturn's association with this south point is part of the plan of the amphitheater as Chaucer neatly quarters the circular

APPLICATIONS

5.3. The Directional Lines on the Astrolabe. Diagram from Chaucer's Treatise 1.15.

building by having the temples andTheseus'sreviewing stand associated with the four cardinal directions.The unmarked entry point of the god of doom and misfortune is also an important element of Chaucer's theme. Accordmg to an increasing number of scholars, the addtion of Saturn is crucial to the meaning of The Knight's Tab and, one might suggest, to the meaning of The Canterbury Tabs as a whole. However intently humans try to control fate (or art), they w d be likely to overlook some vital element, thereby creating an opening-forthe unexpected, the chaos of Saturn's realm. As previously mentioned, the dscrepancy between human expectation and event is an important recurring theme in The Canterbury Tales.

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A closer connection can be seen between the four points of the compass in the amphtheater and the equivalent four points on the astrolabe. One can observe that the hectional lines on the front of the instrument (see fig. 5.1) mark the first degrees of each of four zodtacal signs (see fig. 1.1, remembering that up is south).Three of these are tradrtionally associated with the three planetary gods to whomTheseus has dedtcated his temples: Anes is the domicile of Mars, Cancer the domicile of the Moon, and Libra the domicile of Venus. Capricorn, the domicile of Saturn, lies at the fourth point, about which the story is silent. Although these four points have an astronomical relationship to each other, they have nothing to do with the actual locations of the planets themselves, merely with their mythological relationshp to the sections of the ecLptic called signs.Thus the association between the planetary gods and their "domiciles" is not an astronomical one, but astrological, and indeed it will have consequences for human destiny in the poem. Within the fiction the amphitheater is designed by the thoughtful and pious King Theseus, who has provided temples for pagan worshp of the classical gods and is not thmking of the sky or planets at all; yet beyond the king's understandmg, Chaucer associates the building with astrology, a belief system that he ascribes to pagans (Treatise 11.4). By malung the ampltheater "astrolabic" and at the same time inscribing within it an astrological element in order to authenticate the ancient pagan world of his fiction, Chaucer is creating a building that has a function both inside that fiction and outside of it in his own Christian world. That is, the fictional amphitheater constructed by Theseus that incorporates provisions for pagan prayer is located in ancient Athens, but its astrolabic function, i n c l u h g the zodiacal locations of the temples, applies to southern England, with a two-fold meaning that reminds one of the double function of the final chronographia in The SquireiTak By establishing the connection between amphitheater and astrolabe, Chaucer reverses usual literary procedure by adapting an astrolabic scheme to an astronomical purpose. (More often astronomy serves astrology in litterature; see Eade.) How Chaucer does t h s can be followed in stages. First he identifies the temples as zodtacal signs by their relation to the planetary gods they honor. Figure 5.4, a chart displaying the zocLacal signs in sequence from Aries to Pisces, shows each sign paired with the planet that traditionally claims it as domicile. Chaucer significantly switches the implicit domiciles -

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136

I

Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Scorpio

Sagittarius

0Venus

Mars

3 Jupiter

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

Capricorn

rti Saturn

Saturn

Jupiter

5.4. T h e Signs as Domiciles of the Planetary Gods. Diagram by the author. of Mars and Venus when he reverses the two knights' gates from his Boccaccian source. Boccaccio's arrangement of the amphitheater would associate Mars with Aries andVenus with Libra; Chaucer's scheme associates these gods with their other domiciles4corpio and Taurus, respectively. It wdl be remembered fiom previous cLscussion in Chapter 4 that each domicile is a sign in whch the planet is considered "at home," its d u e n c e there especially strong. (Domiciles, also called mansions or houses, are not to be conb e d with the "houses" on a horoscope, located relative to a particular date of birth. The domiciles under cLscussion here are unchanpg zodiacal signs.) h e s , the March-April sign, comes first on the chart because that signifint point represents the vernal equinox, whch opens the celestial year. Figure 5.4 shows that, of the four planets relevant to the amphtheater, the Moon has its domicile only in Cancer, whereas Mars, Venus, and Saturn have two domiciles each. The two domiciles of Mars are Scorpio and Anes, those of Venus are Libra and Taurus, and those of Saturn are Capricorn and Aquarius, alternatives that wdl prove important. Thus, Diana the Moon in her tower on the northern wall of the arnphtheater is the sole point of certain reference for any attempt to visualtze the arnphtheater gods in association with the zodacal circle. -

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I

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When the rete or star chart on the fiont of the astrolabe is placed in its "home" position (with the denticle of Capricorn, the little tooth on the outside of the zodiac circle, pointing straight up) that first point of Capricorn, domicile of Saturn, lies on the south h e (at the top of the astrolabe, "up" representing south). One can see in figure 1.1 that, when proceeding clockwise around the zodac circle, the first point of Anes, domicile of Mars, lies on the east h e (to the left); the first point of Capricorn is south (straight up); the first point of Libra, domicile of Venus, lies on the west h e (to the right); and the first point of Cancer, domicile of the Moon, lies on the north h e (at bottom). Slidmg the label (the attached ruler) around so that it lies h e a l y on the east-west h e (Oriens-Occidens) that is engraved on the plate beneath the rete, makes it point to the first degrees of the symmetrically placed domiciles of Mars in Anes and of Venus in LibraThus the zodac is quartered, like the plate beneath it, to correspond to the four main points of the compass. Identdjing these astrolabic correspondences as the scheme of Theseus's amphtheater is an exciting dscovery-until one notices that the planetary gods' domiciles at east and west do not correspond to the locations of their temples at the amphtheater gates, though Diana's domicile at north is positioned accordmg to the poem.

(4) REVERSING DIRECTIONS. The fourth major change that Chaucer makes in the amphitheateri design is the change that makes his design astronomical. He reverses the two directions from which the opposing knights Arcite and Palarnon enter the amphitheater on the morning of the tournament. Whereas Boccaccio has Arcita, worshiper of Mars, enter from the east and Palemone, worshiper of Venus, enter from the west, Chaucer instead fixes Arcite's entrance at the west and Palamon's at the east, yet a third time laying emphasis on these compass points: And westward, thurgh the gates under Marte, Arcite, and eek the hondred of his parte, With baner reed is entred right anon; And in that selve moment Palamon Is under Venus, estward in the place, With baner why, and hardy chiere and face.

/Mars /also, party /at once /same

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This reversal confirms that Chaucer is consciously setting up his design, and it offers addtional food for thought. Had he not tampered with Boccacciob entrance gates for the two knights, the scheme of the amphtheater would have corresponded perfectly to the astrolabic rete at rest, as shown in figure 1.1. Why, then, did Chaucer move away from Boccaccioi original once again? W h y &d he not keep the original Boccaccian entrances of the two warriorsArcite under Mars at the east (where his domicile Aries lies on the astrolabe), and Palamon under Venus at the west (with Libra)? Perhaps this was precisely what Chaucer chose to do at the beginning, and indeed why he chose to incorporate the temples into the walls in the first place: Boccaccio$ scheme was latently "astrolabic." Perhaps Chaucer was even aware that certain churches and earlier temples were astronomically oriented, as this buildmg at first appears to be, upon the first point of Aries, marking the rising of the Sun at the vernal equinox? A glance at his astrolabe would have shown that the entrance of the heroes in Boccaccio's story made that instrument a perfect model for the amphitheater, since it already was full of degrees, had a shape hke a compass (Boccaccioi amphtheater was also circular, unlke the elliptical Colosseum), and its signs were oriented in the directions associated with Boccacciofs two knights9 entrances.7 But Chaucer must have made a calculation and discovered that if he got the date just right, the astrolabic arnphitheater could be made to reveal a scheme far more subtle, a scheme connected, moreover, with the real English sky that was interesting him so much at the time, not merely associated with the abstract schematization of the ecliptic on the back of the astrolabe. H e therefore moved the date of the tournament fiom Boccaccio's late summer to early May in order to have the arnphitheateri great eastern gate set to face the rising sun in a suitabk sign. When Chaucer reversed Arcite's and Palamon's entrances from Boccaccio in order to align them with the alternative domiciles of Venus and Mars (see KnT1971-74 and fig. 5.4)) this move associatedvenus withTaurus in the east and Mars with Scorpio in the west, placing these planetary gods in their "favorite" mansions. Taurus rising in the east at dawn also reflects the date in early May to which Chaucer changed the tournament. T h s date in turn echoes the "monve of May" (KnT1oj4) when the two Theban cousins first saw Emelye in her garden and their fight over her began. (This earlier date

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corresponds to the one found in the Teseida; the date of the tournament does not.) Some years ago when he began analyzing Chaucer's allusions to the sky in search of the dates of composition, which he felt certain were embedded in the texts, J. D. North observed that the zodiacal arrangement of Theseus's amphitheater corresponds to a May date. At dawn on 5 May 1388, which that year was a Tuesday (the day of the week given for the tournament in the tale), the skies displayed: a point of Taurus (domicile of Venus) rising in the east; a point of Capricorn (domicile of Saturn) culrmnating; a point of Scorpio (domicile of Mars) on the western horizon; and a point of Cancer (domicile of the Moon) at imum medium ~oelum.~ North's intentional vagueness in designating "a point" of each sign (that is, any one of h t y possible degrees in the designated portion of the zo&acal band) seems at first to beg the question so far as the symmetry of Theseus's arnphitheater is concerned, and the signs North designates seem inconsistent with the cardinal directions about which Chaucer shows such concern. As one can see in figure 5.5, a line drawn across Chaucer's "Circle of the Signs" fiom the first degree of Taurus (following Aries) to the first degree of Scorpio (following Libra), or indeed between any corresponding degrees of these two signs, does not intersect the circle at a right angle to the north-south h e (as does a h e fiom the first degree of Aries to the first degree of Libra). Thus, taken at face value, North's arrangement appears far from symmetrical. It is misleadmg, however, to placevenus, Saturn, Mars, and the Moon where merely naming their "home" signs would locate them; more is involved than is immediately obvious. J. C. Eade, having no vested interest in establishing that a particular date during Chaucer's writing career corresponds to the configuration of the skies memorialized inTheseus's amphitheater, nevertheless agrees in principle with North's reasoning and gives more specific information than North's four purposely vague "points." As Eade says, "If we allow the tournament to occur at any time within the first week of May-an acceptable margin-then (in Chaucer's day) the sun will lie between Taurus 19 and Taurus 24'' (Sky 122). One can glance at the back of the astrolabe to confirm that statement. Just as Aries straddles March-April, Taurus straddles April-May. "In this period," says Eade (referring to the &fference between Chaucer's calendar and ours), "the configuration of the -

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5.5. The Simple Circle of the Signs. Diagram from Chaucer's Treatise 1.8.

zodiac at sunrise wdl range as follows: Capricorn 23-25") Taurus 19-24", Cancer 23-25O, Scorpio 1~-24O.)' Again this placement of the signs does not substantially alter the asymmetry found with reference to figure 5.5. It is clear, then, that the astrolabe must be used in a more sophisticated manner to achieve Chaucer's symmetry. In order to see how Chaucer might have been using the astrolabe to place Taurus and Scorpio where they would quarter the sky with Capricorn and Cancer, it is necessary to return to a concept briefly introduced earlier in connection with discussion of azimuth and the observer's horizon (see Chapter 3). The observer's horizon is represented by the third (and last) of the representative circles upon the standard diagram of the cosmos. The cardinal

THE AMPHITHEATER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE

5.6. The Celestial Sphere with the Observer's Horizon

directions of the signs built into Theseus's amphitheater are not based upon the evenly divided abstract zodiac, the simple design engraved on the bads of the astrolabe, but rather on the signs as they ascend above the horizon at an oblique angle, a particular degree of the sign ascendmg at a particular moment specifically at the latitude of the observer. As J. D. North observes, Chaucer's "astrolabic truths," as he calls the orientations in The Knight'sTale, are "dependent on the story's being interpreted for an English latitude" (Universe 4.1~). By turning the movable zodiac on the rete on the front of the astrolabe across the appropriate latitude plate, one can see how Chaucer imagined this phenomenon. Being relative to latitude, the east-west orientation of the arnphrtheater, with the temples correspondmgto the signsTaurus at the east and Scorpio at the west, in fact "places" the observer. This relative position of the observer's view of the sky is the reason that several climate (that is, latitude) plates are included with a properly equipped astrolabe (see Treatise

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q);clfferent latitudes require clfferent plates to take into account the angle of the equator overhead. Chaucer explains how to find the ascensions of the signs specifically for the observer's horizon in Part 2 of h s Treatise, operations 26-28, where he pauses to comment, however, that this calculation is useful m a d y to astrologers (26). Before attempting to discover how the observer's horizon is relevant to the design of the arnphtheater, it w d be usefd to review the simple basic concept that Chaucer is using here. T h s means giving attention to the observer's horizon circle of figure 5.6 whch is at an angle fiom both the celestial equator and the echptic (the path of the Sun).Ths &d great circle represents the observer's horizon as it would be seen from absolutely flat terrain, a ring around the observer of whch all points were equi&stant fiom the observer situated at the center. Keeping in mind dus concept of the observer's horizon, one can make the easiest and in some ways most satisfjmg calculationpossible with the astrolabe, satisfjmg because it is entirely relative to the viewer: &&g one's latitude. One need not in fact use an instrument as complex as an astrolabe for dus exercise; any implement that measures angles in degrees, even a protractor, w d do. The zenith, that point directly above the observer's head, makes a right angle with the horizon, which may be considered as a flat plane extendmg from the point underfoot as far as may be seen in all directions. The body of a person standing makes a right angle (go degrees) to that plane. In order to find local latitude, the first step is to take a sighting on the north star, Polaris. (If necessary one can use the last two stars of the basin of the Big Dipper, called the "pointer stars" to draw a line to it. Contrary to popular belief, Polaris is not a particularly bright star.) Next, measure the height of Polaris in degrees above the horizon, flamboyantly with an astrolabe if one is at hand, otherwise by some more modest means. This gives the angle of altitude. Finally, subtract the number of degrees in this angle fiom the go degrees of the zenith. The result is the degree of latitude. Chaucer knew this standard formula: Latitude equals 90 degrees minus the altitude angle of Polaris (see Treatise 11.22). The writer of Mandmilk'r SraveL takes delight in just this operation, using his astrolabe to find latitude:

For I haue ben toward the partes of Braban and beholden be [by] the astrolabre that the sterre that is clept [called] the Transmontay-ne [Polaris] is liii. degrees high,

THE AMPHITHEATER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE ZENITH

NORTH

SOUTH

5.7.The Observer's Horizon. Diagram by Steven Oerding based on figures 10-zo in H. A. Ray's The Stars: A New Way to See Them, 110,112. and more forthere in Alrnayne and Bewrne it hath lviii. degrees, and more forth toward the parties septemtrioneles [northern parts] it is lxii. degrees of heghte and certeyn mynutes, for I myself haue mesured it be the astrolabre. (Seyrnour, Travek 133)

Sixty-two degrees puts our traveler north of Oslo and Leningrad. In figure 5.8 the zenith angle lying between 45 and 50 degrees situates the observer somewhere near the latitude of Milan, whch is 45 degrees north. The horizontal blank strip in the figure represents the horizon. The two circles of the celestial equator (or equinoctial) and the zocLac are at their usual angles to the pole. One might note that the latitude of the real-world Athens is 38 degrees north, about the same latitude as San Francisco, Cahfornia (37045'p'T) T h s is not the latitude that Chaucer builds intoTheseus's amphitheater. The

5.8. The Earth Encircled by the Observer's Horizon at Latitude 45ON. Woodcut from T h e Cosmological Ghses, folio 50. Used with permission from the Folger Shake-

speare Library.

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relevance to the amphitheater of the latitude calculation wdl soon become clear. Without the basic concept of the relativity of the observer's horizon in terms of due east and due west, what follows would be incomprehensible, angle athwart the celestial equator, for the ecliptic circle, slanted at a 23 ascends more steeply across the sky (thus upward across the observer's horizon) the farther north one goes. The fact of &S oblique angle of the rising echptic leads to one of the more complicated portions of Chaucer's Treatise and thus of amateur observational astronomy. In terms of the amphitheater design it amounts to this: Taurus, a "sign of the north," which always remains above the celestial equator from a point of view in the northern hemisphere, rises much more steeply than does Scorpio, a "sign of the south," which always remains below the celestial equator. For latitude 52 degrees north (which is close to Oxford at 51~46' N) Skeat gives one hour four minutes for the rising of Taurus and two hours forty-eight minutes for the rising of Scorpio (Geatise 36). Because of their variant rising times, at northern latitudes these two signs may be observed standing above the horizon at east and west at the same time, even when Cancer and Capricorn are due north and south. (One can actually observe this situation in the night sky overhead by substituting the two easily recognizable constellationsTaurus and Scorpio for the signs named after them, at an appropriate latitude and a date adjusted for precession.9) From the observer$ point of view the ecliptic circle has swung off-center. This is demonstrated on the astrolabe by the ilfference between the observer's horizon with its spiderlike radiating azimuth lines centered on the south line above the middle of the astrolabe's main "mother" plate, and the circle of the signs on the rete, which in figure 5.9 is swung out slightly to the right. Taurus may be seen ascendmg steeply from the horizon in the east, and Scorpio settling down more gradually in the west. Perhaps Chauceri very act of drawing t h s particular figure sparked h s idea for the astrolabic design of the arnphitheater. At his approximate Oxford latitude of 52 degrees north, the directionally quartered plan of the amphitheater-with the signs in each direction indicated by the planetary lords of those signs-is a true reflection of the sky at dawn on May 5. In the real Athens, much farther south, the sky would not appear quite the same.

5"

5.9. Taurus and Scorpio Standing above the Horizon, Taurus rising. Diagram fiom

Chaucer's Treatise (11.3).

Why does Chaucer take such pains to establish this complicated dateand-latitude-based scheme for the amphitheater? Several possible reasons come to mind. At the story level, the association of the three protagonists of ThP Knight%Tale with their planetary gods has the effect of elaborating their characters, as Mahrnoud Manzalaoui elegantly observes: Into the action-poetry of the narrative intrudes the largely original Part 3, in which the poem alters manner, becoming pictorial, heraldc, and largely static, and revealing the protagonists, not in horizontal relationship with each other, but in separate

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vertical relationshps with their titulary spirits. . ..The astronomicalgods are amoral powers; it is their human devotees who can turn these potentials ad bonum or ad malum. Astrologically, the temples (North, "Kalenderes" q 9 f ) are the zodacal houses of the three planetary deities. The three devotional night visits . . [are] a portrayal for poetic purposes of forms of worship which have never historically existed, but whlch, conceivably, Chaucer imagines to represent ancient pagan worship. One of its literary functions is to depict the inward reality of the three protagonists where

.

the narrative method of the other parts of the poem left them as flat characters: to reveal the Emelye who is elsewhere a lay figure, and to dknguish the two young men who are elsewhere scarcely dfferentiated. (Manzalaoui 245-46)

In connection with this "vertical" elaboration of character is a heraldc color symbolism associated with the principal protagonists. In addition to being an allusion to colors worn by opposing charioteers in the Roman circus ("At first there were but two colors, white and red" -TertullianlO) the colors in Chaucer's story offer the plot a pageantry so formalized that it becomes a dance, a dance orchestrated byTheseus but transcendmg h s mundane sphere of influence. Even Saturn participates in the color imagery. When he enters the action to create his own unpleasant resolution to the two cousins' conflict, fulfding the scheme of the cardinal directions by the location where his effect enters the arnphitheater, Saturn is also resolving a planetary opposition of colors-Mars red and Venus white. These are the physical colors of the two planets, as may be confirmed by observing them in the night sky. As in The Cmplaint of Mars, Chaucer is using observable astronomical facts to enhance his story about pagan gods. Saturn says to Venus and Mars: Bitwixe yow there moot be som tyme pees,

A1 be ye noght of o compleccioun.

/must be sometime peace /although/not/one ( K n 2474-75)

Lines 2581-86 describe Arcite entering the lists from the west under a banner of Martian red at the same moment that Palamon enters the lists from the east under a whte banner, signifying his association with Venus. White contends with red. Earlier in the story Theseus's banner was described as

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displaying the red figure of Mars upon a white ground (K~zTg~5-~6). Presumably his colors at the tournament are again a mingled red and white. Emelye is likewise associated with these two colors in combination as she gathers flowers "party [mingled] white and rede/ To make a subtil gerland for hire hede" (KnT 1053-54). The tower of her patron goddess Diana, positioned at the north across from Theseus's reviewing stand, is constructed of materials bearing the same two colors, "alabastre whit and red coral" (KnT 1910). Thus in the pattern that Chaucer has had his Athenian ruler create, the planetary opposition of the two knights is expressed both by the colors of the actual planets in the sky and by the east-west locations of their domiciles. The resolution of that opposition also is expressed in the orderly mingling of the two colors in Diana's temple and in association with Emelye and Thesus, no doubt seated at the south in Theseus's cosmic amphitheater." In terms of the astrolabe, the conflict in the story occurring on the East-West horizontal plane is resolved, albeit violently, on the NorthSouth axis. This circular image of the amphitheater with its crossing lines of influence shadows forth two further images. One is the image of the celestial ecliptic that may be associated with the philosophical meaning of The Knight%Tak, in particular with the Prime Mover of lines zg87-jo40, a personified disposer of "dayes and duracioun" (KnT zg96) at a level far above the planets and their influences. The planets are real gods in the pagan world of Athens, while the vaster Prime Mover lies beyond the comprehension of all butTheseus; finallyTheseus is able to perceive "him" slightly, and he identifies him as Jupiter (KnTjo35). We know differently.Thus the image of the ecliptic with its planets, or at least with the domiciles of its planets (all represented as actual "houses" of sorts around the arnphitheater), has meaning outside the story, opening up another vertical perspective for Chaucer's audience. The second image associated with the circular arnphitheater is that of the astrolabe itself, the instrument that offers orientation to the audience outside the tale and does not exist at all within the Athenian world of the fiction. Both images-ecliptic band and astrolabe-are ironic in terms of the pagan and antique dunensions of the story, where they do not, in a sense, exist. Only the arnphitheater exists within the world of the story.

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Between the time he dscovered the astrolabe as a possible model for the amphitheater, and when he reversed Palamon's and Arcite's entrances to make the plan reflect the May date under his own sky (and possibly, as North argues, to reflect a meaningful date in his own life), Chaucer must have grasped the potential of t h s plan as a Janus-image, operating both w i b the story and outside it and expressing different meanings in each re& (much &e the persona of himself, and possibly of others recognizable to his audence, introduced as characters w i b the Tabs). The date provided by the amphtheater is a graphc analogy to the contemporary dates and names more commonly smuggled into medeval fiction by means of puns or icons, Use the Anglo-Saxon Cynewulf's signmg of h s poems with words standmg for runes, and Chaucer's own smuggling of h s patron's identity into the last part of the Book of the Duchess. Ernst Curtius describes such lightly disguised signatures, pervasive in medieval poetry, as "veiled expressions of the author's name" (515). Like the design of the amphtheater, these hdden signatures are Januslke, worlung as elements to establish a situation w i t h the world of the work while offering the audience additional information outside that fictional world. But Chaucer's introduction into The Knight's Tab of clues that reveal a latitude, and thereby provide a veiled expression of a contemporary date based on h s own observer's horizon, is surely a contrivance unique to b. While it must have amused Chaucer to turn his borrowed story into a personal artifact, that appropriation probably was not the main purpose of his astrolabic amphitheater.The most important effect achieved by the correspondence between the amphitheater containing the tournament in She Knight? Tak and the ecliptic containing the planets above it is to introduce a scientific image of the cosmos unavailable to the pagans in the story world and encompassing even their gods. Chaucer then elaborates on this image by introducing the concept of the planetary spheres, which w d be examined in the next chapter, at the end of which the implications of this larger scheme are explored. The order that Theseus imposes upon the conflict of the two knights over Emelye is greater than Theseus hunself imagines, and ultimately out of his control.Theseus as designer of a buildmg is also a two-fold representation of Chaucer: as Clerk of the King's Works and as the "godlike" (H&ssy 256) designer of the worlds both w i t h The Knight?Gle and beyond it in the Pilgrimage fiction.

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(5) DUNASTEMPLE. Finally we come to a detail as rich in imaginative potential and as curious in its explosion of size as is the tiny horse wedge transformed into a steed of brass in The Squiret Tale. The existence of this detail, moreover, proves beyond a doubt that the astrolabe played a major role in Chaucer's conception of the design of the arnphtheater. The only one of the planetary gods to have an oratory built in a tower is Diana, at the building's north point: And northward, in a touret on the wal, Of alabastre whit and reed coral, an oratorie, riche for to see, In worshipe of Dyane of chastitee, HathTheseus doon wroght in noble wyse.

/ordered made (KnT 1909-13)

When the steed in The Squire? Tale is untypically made of brass, the anomalous detail alerts the reader. In a srndar vein, when the goddess Diana, of negligible importance to the plot of She Knight? Tak, is singled out for the special recognition of a unique tower, it must give us pause. At the top specifically of English astrolabes (therefore unrnentioned by "Messahalld'), there is a swiveling bar that allows for free play of the ring. In his Treatise Chaucer calls this bar "a maner turet [a kind of tower] fast to the moder of thyn and dus is the only time he uses the word "turet" in h s Geaastrelabie" (E+), tire (though he refers to Mercury's zodacal domicile as "Cilenios tour" in The Complaint ofMars, line 11?).This "touret on the wal" (KnTr909) of the astrolabe lies directly above where the first point of Cancer, domicile of the Moon, is engraved on the back." But the top of the astrolabe represents "south," whereas the first point of Cancer, lying always upon and describing the Tropic of Cancer, marks the middle of "the signs of the north" (Treatise 1-17, 11.28). At this point one can imagine Chaucer regarding his astrolabe with surmise. By seeing how the temples could have been laid out in reference to the astrolabe only-that is, the instrument itself, not its operations-ne can follow Chaucer's mind at work as he makes the instrument serve as a plan or model of the building. The back, with its clearly marked zodiacal signs

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(east for Arcite's Mars, west for Palamon's Venus, and even a southern "curet" for Emelye's Diana), would have provided a perfect model correspondmg to the amphitheater of Boccaccio's tale, while diverging from it by bringing the gods onto the site of the action (a move that Kolve praises in Image9 114). But Chaucer must have considered Lrther. In the Teseida, Boccaccio, with the aid of a hghly wrought chronographia, has the tournament take place at the end of the summer: The sun had already passed the eighth hour of the day when the battle, which had begun at the third hour, came to an end; and already the cupbearer of Jupiter who had taken Hebe's place [Garyrnede, i.e., Aquarius] was visible above the horizon, andvenus's twin fishes were making haste to &splay [themselves in] the starry sky.

(Teseida, Book IX, trans. Havely 140)

Earlier in the story Boccaccio had the imprisoned knights first see Ernelye in her garden during the springtime, when the Sun was in Taurus. This allowed him the pleasure of creating a chronographia to provide the information: Phoebus, as he ascended with his steeds, was following the celestial sign of the humble beast [the Bull] which without resting bore Europa to the place that bears her name today. And withtn it the degrees by whchvenus ascends were bringing her into a favorable position, so that the sphere of Arnmon Dupiter], which was meanwhile near Pisces, was disposed to be completely benign.

(Teseida, Book 111)

Boccaccio's astrological reading of the configurations of signs and planets conforms more to the usual application of the chronographia figure than Chaucer's does. For Boccaccio and most others, the only reason for phrasing time in this way (other than establishing the season in a decorative manner) is to introduce an astrological nuance, here the benign Jupiter near Pisces is in favorable aspect withvenus. Nevertheless, Boccaccio's periphrases would have attracted the attention of Chaucer as an astrolabist, and he may have thought: If one were to keep that "morwe of May" as a feature throughout the story, unity of season would make the tale more effective. First the two knights would see Emelye in May, then seven years later they would meet in

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APPLICATIONS

the woods and do battle there in "faire, fiesshe May" (KnT1p1; see also lines 1462-6~);a year later they would fight in the amphitheater thatTheseus had freshly built upon the same site.13There is a pleasing syrnmetry in this continuity of the time of year. But if the month is May, what must the skies look llke? Chaucer turns his astrolabe around and finds out. With only a minimum of further manipulation of Boccaccio's story, by swinging the planetary gods in their domiciles right around the sky so that Diana's tower lies where her sign of the north belongs and the heroes' gods have moved to their alternative "sovereign" domiciles in Taurus and Scorpio,14one could even incorporate a date, and a latitude, and perhaps other more significant details, as in a horoscope (though, unllke the arnphitheater, horoscopes were drawn square in Chaucer's day). In order to situate "Diana's touret" (understood as her sign, Cancer) in the north, Chaucer had to turn his rete halfway around. His reference to this tower may represent an earlier state of his design in which Diana's tower was located at the south along with the turet on the astrolabe, showing Chaucer at work in stages as he changes his source story. The lesser and pagan cosmos of the stars and planets symbolized in the story by means of the amphitheater design may be equated with time and human destiny, while God's vision or foresight ("the sighte above") operates outside of time and controls destiny (KnT166~-~2).ThisBoethian vision of the divine lies beyond the imagination of all but Theseus and the narrator, yet rituals and allusions in the tale continue to evoke the spiritual (though not Christian) dunension of the life-drama on earth. Chapter 6 discusses the rationale and the significance of one such ritual, the pagan hours of prayer, the calculation of which was once one of the Arabic astrolabe's most important bctions.

CHAPTER 6

THE SPHERES AND PAGAN PRAYER IN THE KNlCHT'S TA1E

Plato calls them "ideas," signifying that they are forms or universal figures. The pagans call them gods and goddesses, although they lacked t h s philosophical conception of them which Plato possessed; they worshipped their images, and erected immense temples to them. . . . Clear evidence of such behaviour and of such views is found in the writings of the poets, who in certain parts of their works portray the way of life of the pagans as regards the sacrifices offered and the religious beliefs they held. Dante, L1 Convivio

The ancient Greek protagonists of Chaucer's Knight2 Tale appropriately conceive of the supernatural in terms of the gods of Greek mythology.The Latin names of these gods also reveal them as the planetary gods of astrology. Although the protagonists of the story clearly expect celestial action on their behalf, the gods are seen acting beyond the range of vision of those in the story world of Athens. In that antique worldTheseus alone appears to have any inkling of a higher deity, as near the end of Part 4 when he speaks of "the Firste Movere of the cause above" (KnT 2987). Yet a discrepancy exists between his vision and ours, because we immediately associate that First Mover with both the outer ninth sphere of the medieval cosmos and God's "purveiaunce" or foresight that the narrator has mentioned

at h e 1665, that is, with the all-seeing "sighte above" of h e 1672(an ambiguous phrase that borrows meaning fiom line 1665).Theseus, however, t h d s that the First Mover must be of a divine, not planetary nature: "Juppiter the kyng" (KnT 3035). Theseus's attitude toward the divine, his grasping after truth in the direction of Christianiry even though he is a pagan, reminds one of the Christian Icelander Snorri Sturluson's prologue to his thirteenth-century Prose Edda, in which, following a Latin tradition, Snorri describes his pagan forefathers as having had among them certain wise men who perceived that there was someone who guided the stars, but to whom the identity of that Mover had not been revealed. Snorri then explains that the gods of Asgard were really men, euhemerizing them as heroes from Asia (hence, he implies, their tribal name Aesir), and he proceeds to tell their tales, known today as the Norse myths.'When the pious but menlightened Greeks in the world of Thp Knight'r Tale pray to the only gods they know, we recognize these gods as planets and with that recognition may even perceive the situation as rather a joke on the Greeks: we know something they don't know. Both of those Christian storytellers, Snorri and Chaucer, manage to relegate the gods of their pagan story worlds to a mundane or at least a lesser sphere than the one the protagonists in the story world t h d their gods inhabit, thus leaving room at the top for the true God who guides the stars. The medieval view of cosmology facilitates such a strategem. Since "thilke Moevere [who] stable is and eterne" (KnT3004) clearly inhabits a realm well beyond Jupiter's, in The Knight%Tale the planetary or astrological effectiveness of the classical gods has the curious function of "de-paganizingMthe world-or, more accurately, the cosmos-in which they act.' Even the order of their actions, as shall be seen in due course, confirms the Christian concept of the hierarchical cosmos. Within the story world the planetary gods do act.The prayers before the decisive tournament are effective: as a result of these prayers, Venus promises Emelye to Palamon, Mars promises victory to Arcite, and Diana promises one of the two warriors to Emelye, whether she likes the idea or not (KnTq51). The apparent incompatibility of the promises of Mars andvenus-promises "in opposition," just as the two gods' oratories in the amphtheater arestirs up their ever-ready antagonism in Heaven until Saturn must intervene to

THE SPHERES A N D PAGAN PRAYER I N THE KNIGHT'S TALE

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resolve the conflict. Even this short sketch shows how the gods function as projections of the characters' desires, as well as machinery for the plot. As H. M. Smyser observes, however, "The descriptions of the temples of Venus and Mars and Diana, which are astrological descriptions of the gods themselves, and especially the sonorous and terrible pronouncement of Saturn, sitting in final judgment, are much more than mere machinery; they give the poem much of its special dignity and power" (j68). Much of the special dignity and power with which the pagan gods invest the poem comes from their dual associations, on the one hand with the realm of philosophy and speculation approached by metaphor, and on the other hand with the physical universe in which they are planets. While this duality has been observed by every thoughtfd reader of the story, the enormous discrepancy between these two associations has not been fully appreciated. As well as - addmg a psychomythical "heavenly" dimension to the plot by providing the characters with semi-allegorical advocates in heaven-a dimension that offers entry to a transcendent Boethian view of fate and divine foresightChaucer has also adueved the remarkable feat of lmkmgTheseus's amphitheater, with all its suggestiveness, back to the physical universe of his own everyday England. The features of the astrolabic amphitheater observed in Chapter 5 strictly concern the way the ecliptic crosses the observer's horizon, that is to say, they refer to a sky that someone standing at a particular latitude (as in fig. 5.8) at a certain hour would actually observe when looking to the cardinal directions, if the stars could be seen by daylight. The recognition of the signs by their currently resident stars would mark the observer as adept at celestial navigation, a skdl based on the same basic model of the cosmos as Chaucer's and valid for as long as the stars hold to their courses. A paradigm shift in t h h g about the cosmos comes, however, when addressing the planetary hours and their nomenclature. From the stlll-valid and useM idea of the celestial sphere, today recognized as imaginary even though made visible by the stars "fastened upon it, we move to the ancient and now-redundant idea of the seven planetary spheres circling within that greater sphere. Today our earth has been relegated to the position of the third planet in a solar system somewhere near the edge of our galaxy, and we are brther humbled by knowing that the galaxy itself is only one of a countless number .

156

APPLICATIONS

in a countless number of universes.3 N o one even knows where the center of the universe is, disorienting us further. In contrast, the celestial sphere of the navigators tells us exactly where we are. It gives us a location and a stance. Jonathan Raban has his hero's navigation teacher say in Foreign Land, "Navigation may not be the queen of the sciences, but it is, of all the sciences, certamly the kindest to man. For only navigation puts the earth slap bang in the middle of the universe" (111). The celestial sphere in fact places not only the earth but the observer at the center of everything. People in Chaucer9sday, however, did not know that the celestial sphere was irnaginary. Having no other resource, ordinary people believed what their eyes told them: that the stars circled the earth, as did the Sun, the Moon, and the five visible planets, all at dfferent speeds. Because these latter bodes moved along the ecliptic band in a way clearly different from that of the stars, the ancient Greek astronomers assigned to the Sun, Moon, and planets indwidual spheres that were believed to rotate independently within the greater sphere of the fmed stars. This Greek geocentric system of the cosmos, elaborated by the Alexandrian philosopher and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy in the second century c.E., was rehscovered by Arab astronomers and transmitted to Europe through Muslim Spain. Thus Ptolemy's system was the idea of the cosmos familiar in the ~ i d d l Ages.+ e Long before Ptolemy, Plato provided the simplest visualization of this system in his myth of Er at the end of B e Republic. He offers a picture of the cosmos as a sequence of eight nested spheres turning around the Earth. The first seven spheres bear the Sun, the Moon, and the planets, and the eighth bears the fixed stars.5 This scheme bearing Ptolemy's name had a long history. The order of the planetary spheres is not arbitrary but determined by the scientifically observable orbital time of each body, based on the sequence of planetary ascents as seen from Earth. The fastest orbits are dose in and the slower ones farther out. Thus by exdudmg the Moon and substituting the position of the Earth for that of the Sun, the scheme reflects the true order of the first six planets in our solar system and represents a notable achievement on the part of the ancient scientists. Expressing the &Stance from the Earth to Sun by the astronomical unit I, the first column of figure 6.2 shows the actual sequence and relationships of these planets and is compared to the Ptolemaic order in the second column. There the Sun

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6.1. The Ptolemaic Cosmos. Drawing by Steven Oerding based on a diagram by Johann Baptist Homann in his Gosser Atlas (1748) in the Library of Congress,Washington, D.C.

takes the place of Earth, as it must if the sequence is based on the apparent orbital durations. (Obviously, the real period of the Earth's annual orbit around the Sun is equal to the apparent period of the Sun's annual orbit around the Earth.)The outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, awaiting

158

APPLICATIONS

Sun at Center (True Order and Approximate Distance from Sun) Mercury 0.39 Venus 0.72 Earth 1 Mars 1.5 2.8) (Asteroids Jupiter 5.2 Saturn 9.5

Earth at Center (Ptolemaic Order) 1 Moon 2 Mercury 3 Venus 4 Sun 5 Mars 6 Jupiter 7 Saturn

6.2. The Planets inTheir Heliocentric Order andTheir Ptolemaic Order. Diagram

by the author. the advent of the telescope to effect their discovery, are not relevant to this ~cheme.~ The reader attentive to numbers will observe in the first column an interesting sequence in the distance ratios from the Sun outwards.The thenundiscovered asteroids are included in figure 6.2 to fill out the intriguing mathematical sequence known as Bode's Law.7 The one clear reference made to these seven spheres in Thp Knight's Tab occurs in the lengthy and "chiIling" (North Universe409) speech by Saturn. His sphere of the seven is the farthest away from Earth and hence has the largest circumference, a vastness that supposedly gives hmysterious powers. O f this he assuresvenus (calling her "daughter" not as her father but as her elder):

THE SPHERES A N D PAGAN PRAYER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE

159

"My deere doghter Venus," quod Saturne,

"My cours, that ha& so wyde for to turne, Hath more power than woot any man."

Beyond Saturn's sphere lay the eighth sphere with its fixed stars, and behind and above that, in a model becoming increasingly complex as time passed, lay the ninth sphere. Whereas the stars and planets may at least be seen, everything about this outer sphere is invisible and mysterious. It is known simply because of the equinoxes, those nights equal in length with day that occur in spring and fall. Early astronomers marked this date by the rising at dawn of certain constellations, but the equinoxes moved very slowly through the ecliptic constellations, "precessing" in a direction opposite to the annual movement of the Sun (or backward, in terms of the signs of the zodiac). Thus the ninth sphere bears the invisible circle of the ecliptic, Chaucer's "equinoctial," which he tells us in his Treatise "is called the girdle of the first moving of the first moveablef'( I : I ~ )The . ~ relationship between the eighth and ninth spheres is stated clearly in the "Alnath" passage in The Franklint S a k and explained here more fully than in Chapter I above. The clerk of Orleans is h d i n g the best time to create what Chaucer prepares us to thlnk wdl be an dusion of flooding seas: And by his eighte speres in his werking H e knew !& we1 l how fer Alnath was shove Fro the hed of thllke fix Aries above That in the ninth spere considered is.

/calculations /far /from, that /sphere

(Frank T 1280--83)

In other words, taking the eight spheres into his calculation, the clerk in the tale knows how far the star Alnath (or here actually the first mansion of the Moon, "called Alnath from the name of the starH),9which is visible and fixed on the eighth sphere, has moved away over the ages fi-om the first point of Aries, which lies on the ninth sphere as a point ''fixed" onto the invisible ecliptic that draws it laggingly along beside the star-studded (hence visible) ecliptic. One can conceptuahze this relationship between the two spheres by

6.3. The Nine Spheres of the Ptolemaic Cosmos. Drawing by W W Skeat based on MS Cambridge 1i.j.j (cp. Chaucer's Treatise 1-17)

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looking at figure 6.1 and imagining that the stellatum with its visible constellations is the eighth sphere of the fixed stars, and lying just outside it is the ninth sphere "girdled" with the invisible zodiac. Slicing through the cosmos lke an onion, one could imagine the nine spheres with Earth at the center as in figure 6.3, a simpler version of the concept dagramrned in figure 6.1. C. S. Lewis imagines the Ptolemaic cosmos more vividly than any other modern writer, evoking it in his adult fantasies and explaining it in The Discarded Image. In this engaging if idiosyncratic introduction to the philosophical backgrounds of medieval literature, Lewis explains the "architecture of the Ptolemaic universe" as follows: The central (and spherical) Earth is surrounded by a series of hollow and transparent globes, one above the other [fiom our perspective standmg on Earth], and each of course larger than the one below. These are the "spheres," "heavens," or (sometimes) "elements." Fixed in each of the first seven spheres is one luminous body. Starting fiom Earth, the order is the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the "seven planets." Beyond the sphere of Saturn is the Stelhtum, to whch belong all those stars that we still call ''fixed" because their positions relative to one another are, unlike those of the planets, invariable. Beyond the Stelhtum there is a sphere called the First Movable or Primum Mobik T h s , since it carries no luminous body, gives no evidence of itself to our senses; its existence was derred to account for the motions of all the others. And beyond the Primum Mobile what? (5)6).

According to Aristotle, no b o d y mass and "neither place nor void nor time" (De cadq 279 [McKeon, ed., 4181) exists "beyond the Primum Mobik," but Christian cosmologists had another opinion.The medeval controversy about the eternal existence of the AverroYst Aristotle's universe is beyond the scope of &S book; Chaucer, for all h s interest in the sky, never refers to it, He refers only to the visible eighth and detectable ninth spheres, the latter called the Primum Mobik ("First Mover") because it gives motion to all the others:~ In figure 6.4, a famous and much published pseudomedieval picture, a seeker of the secrets of the cosmos breaks through the stelhtum or the eighth sphere to discover the truth beyond the stars.~~ This stellaturn is the sphere upon which Geffrey, the narrator of The House of Fame) fears that Jupiter intends to "stellify" him, that is, turn him into a constellation, when he is

6.4.Breaking out from the Visible Cosmos. Woodcut by Camde Flammarion in his Poplar Rrtronomy (1880) (see Ashbrook, “Woodcut).

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borne up to the heavens by the golden eagle of that god (line 586). It appears fi-om lines 996-98 of this poem that Chaucer at the time of writing it has not yet differentiated between the two outer spheres. The eighth sphere is also where the spirit of the slain Troilus ascends at the end of Troilw and Crisqde, in a scene that originally belonged to Arcita at the end of Boccaccio's E~eida.~~ Although we are not told t h s explicitly, Troilus as a pagan is probably unable to ascend beyond the eighth sphere. From the huge concave he looks back to "tlus litel spot of erthe" (Troilw and CrisqhV, 1815) where he rnas betrayed, and, now able to see it in better perspective, he laughs.13Chaucer seldom uses Ptolemaic cosmology so effectively as in this conclusion to Troilus's tragedy, but he uses it distinctively and with sophistication in The Knigbti Tab, first in the concept of the planetary hours and then in the drama of the planetary gods. In The Knight's Tale the three young lovers, Palarnon, Emelye, and Arcite, each pray for help at the appropriate "inequal" hours associated with their respective gods:Venus, Diana, and Mars, in that order. Chaucer has changed the sequence of their prayers from the order given by Boccaccio in the Teseida, BookVII, Mars, Venus, Diana, to Venus, Diana, Mars, in order to accornrnodate his introduction of the planetary spheres into the amphitheater scheme through the device of the inequal hours. In changing the order of the Boccaccian prayers to make them conform to the tradrtional sequence of the named hours, hence i n v o h g the planetary spheres (as shall be seen), Chaucer elaborates further the vertical &ension i d "higher" meaning that he has added to hts source. The inequal hours, dfferent in length day by day except at the equinoxes, are hours named afier the planets according to an endlessly repeating sequence based on the Ptolemaic spheres. Before examining the hours sequence itself, it will be usefd to review the concept of the inequal and equal hours, the latter a relatively recent development arising from the invention of mechanized instruments to measure and regulate tirne.14With the advent of the familiar clock and its mechanical regulation of the day into twenty-four equal sixty-minute hours, we have lost horn our lives the seasonally determined longer and shorter planetary hours that formerly replated people's lives according to the hours of daylight (&g winter more manageable for those h d m g the longer dark hours dfficult--one was "naturally" allowed to sleep more). Tlus way of drviding

164

APPLICATIONS

the day into hours the length of which varied according to the season is mentioned or alluded to many times in early literature. Probably the allusion most familiar to many people in our culture is Jesus' parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, told in Matthew 20, with its third hour, sixth hour, ninth hour, and eleventh hour of the day, that "eleventh hour" entering our language as a proverb. In Jesus' Jerusalem (latitude 31O47'N), the daylight and nighttime hours would be nearly equal for most of the year. But as anyone knows who has traveled north or south any considerable distance, latitude can make a great difference in the length of the day. At Chaucer's 5z0Nlatitude, the daylight hours in summer would be considerably longer than their nighttime equivalents, and vice versa for winter. Figure 6.5 represents the unequal hours in early May at approximately the latitude of Oxford, Eng1and.The top set of twelve hours represents dawn to dusk, and the bottom set represents the shorter equivalent hours of night. Each set is divided into twelve equal parts based on the angle of the Sun's rising. Chaucer tells how to f h d this angle in Treatise, IL7. Although the biblical parable gives evidence that these unequal hours were used to schedule time in even the humblest walks of life, probably the most rigorous use made of them in the Christian Middle Ages (and in Islam as well) was to determine the canonical hours of prayer.li Thereby an authoritative structure was given to the day of those medieval Europeans who lived either in religious houses or widun hearing range of their bells. The monastic call to prayer now rings accordmg to the equal clock hours. Islamic culture remains closer to time as defined by the Sun,16although, as David A. King lnforrns us, "Recently, electronic clocks and watches have appeared on the market whch are programmed to beep at the prayer-times for dfferent localrties" ("Astronomy and Islamic Society7'183-84). In any case, it is not the duration but the planetary sequence of these hours that is important in The Knight$ Tak, because that sequence determines when the younger protagonists go to pray. As one may see in the righthand list of figure 6.2 (a Ptolemaic sequence repeated in another form in fig. 6.6), Venus, to whom Palamon prays, rules the third sphere; Diana, to whom Emelye prays, rules the first sphere; and Mars, to whom Arcite prays, rules the fifth sphere. In the discussion that follows, the Ptolemaic sequence of the spheres is of primary importance. In addtion to associating the young people with their gods, this sequence asso-

THE SPHERES AND PAGAN PRAYER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE

NOON

MIDNIGHT 6.5. The Unequal Hours in Early May at Lat 5z0N.Diagram by the author.

ciates the days of the week with the We know from the story that the prayers begin on "Sonday nyght, er day bigan to sprynge" (KnSzzo9), whch in our terms means before dawn on Monday.Thus when Emelye prays to Diana during the first hour after dawn ("Up roos the some, and up roos Emelye"; KnT z ~ 7 ~this ) , is the Moon's hour from which Monday takes its name, Figure 6.6 offers, in the order of the spheres, first the French weekday names to show their relationship with the Latin names of the gods associated with the planetary spheres (the two names altering the system are within parentheses), then the names of the four Germanic gods that early writers thought to be equivalent to the classical gods of the weekdays, and finally the English weekday names.17

166

Spheres 7 Saturn 6 Jupiter 5 Mars 4 Sun 3 Venus 2 Mercury l Moon

APPLICATIONS

French Days (Samedi) jeudi mardi (dimanche) vendredi mercredi lundi

Germanic Gods nla Thor Tiw n/a Freya Woden n/a

English Days Saturday Thursday Tuesday Sunday Friday Wednesday Monday

(Earth) 6.6. The Planetary Spheres by the Days of the Week. Diagram by the author.

Comparing the first column in figure 6.6 with the last column, one can see that the planetary days proceed in a leapfrog order in relation to the Ptolemaic order of the spheres. This is not so arbitrary as it seems. The sequence of the days of the week is linked to the order of the spheres repeated endlessly through the twenty-four daily hours, that is, the order of the seven spheres may be magically "transformed" to the order of the days of the week through the rotation of twenty-four. In the sequence laid out in figure 6.7, every twenty-fifth hour marks a new division of this infinite series, and it happens that when the first hour begins a particular day of the week, the twenty-fifth hour following (that is, the next "first" hour) begins the following day, so that if you read down the chart as in an acrostic you have the sequence of weekdays. The twenty-fifth hour of Saturday, always the Sun's hour, is the first hour of Sunday, and obviously, when one proceeds by sevens, the eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-second hours of Sunday also belong to the Sun. After that twenty-second hour follows the twenty-third hour, belonging to Venus; the twenty-fourth hour, belonging to Mercury; and the twenty-fifth hour, belonging to the Moon, which hour is the first hour of Monday; and so on. Thus, presumably, it has been since the beginning, and thus it ever shall be, "through starry compul-

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sion," says John Livingston Lowes, until the world comes to an end (11). Lowes says this with more charm than accuracy, for the actual stars have little to do with it:8 The first "inequal" hour begins at Sunrise.That hour is the planetary hour of the god for whom the day is named. Although the chart in Nicholas of Lynn's Kahdariurn (Eisner, Kahdariurn 176-77) begins on Sunday, Lke the week of our modern calendars, a more traditional scheme begins the sequence of hours with dawn on Saturday (as in Chaucer's h t i s e 11.12).The system laid out in Lynn's hagram in figure 6.7, however, is easier to follow than Chaucer's detailed explanation. (Much use w d be made of this chart in this chapter and the next.) The relevant hours are those of Venus (Sunday 23), the Moon (Monday I), and Mars (Monday 4). The planetary hours are represented schematically on the astrolabe. In the Treatise diagram for 1I:rz (reproduced in fig. 6.8) the first three planetary hours of Saturday have been written in on the plate where the hours of daylight are engraved. These hours are numbered from one to twelve, each at an angle representing the nadir of the Sun at that hour, like a sundial. (In fact, the principle is much the same as that of the sundial.) The entire arc of inequal hours from Sunrise to Sunset is called, confusingly, the "artificial day," and the much more artificial twenty-four equal hours of the clock is called the "natural day." (This subject was raised in Chapter 3.) The diagram is presented upside down in order to give the effect of the day arching overhead llke the path of the Sun.The inverted words "east horizon" written in at the right (rightside up when the figure itself is inverted, as here) suggest that the illustrator turned the diagram over as well, in order to write in the names of the gods of the hours. (For a rightside-up view of the planetary hours on the astrolabe as given in the Treatise, see figure 7.1 in Chapter 7.) At the beginning of the fourth and last part of The Knight's Talt; we are told that the contest in which Palamon and Arcite will fight for Emelye's hand, assisted by their respective parties of one hundred knights each, is to take place on Tuesday (KnT 248j-90). In the early hours of Monday, the day before, each of the three protagonists makes a request to his or her patron deity about the outcome of that fight, beginning, as we have seen, before dawn on Sunday night (or in our terms, Monday morning). Just

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APPLICATIONS

Tabula ad sciendum pro qualibet hora diei vel noctis quis planeta regnat Hore Solis D1 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Lune

Sol Luna Venus Saturnus Mercurius Jupiter Luna Mars Saturnus Sol Jupiter Venus Mars Mercurius Sol Luna Venus Saturnus Mercurius Jupiter Luna Mars Saturnus Sol Jupiter Venus Mars Mercurius Sol Luna Venus Saturnus Mercurius Jupiter Luna Mars Saturnus Sol Jupiter Venus Mars Mercurius Sol Luna Venus Saturnus Mercurius Jupiter

Martis

Mercurii

Jovis

Veneris

Saturni

Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus

Mercurius Luna Sat-urnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus

Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol

Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercurius Luna

Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercuriu: Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercuriu, Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercuriu Luna Saturnus Jupiter Mars

'

6.7. The Sequence of the Planetary Hours. Chart from Eisner, ed.,

The Kalendarium

of Nichoh of Lynn. Used with permission from the University of Georgia Press.

two hours before dawn ("Although it nere nat [was not] day by houres two";

K n T r m ) , Palamon comes to pray to his goddessvenus, whom we know as the luminous body of the planet of the third sphere: And in h r houre he walketh forth a pas Unto the lystes ther hire temple was.

/where

( K nT 2217-18)

THE SPHERES A N D PAGAN PRAYER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE

6.8. The Planetary Hours of Saturday on the Astrolabe. Diagram (inverted) horn

Chaucer's Treatise 11x2.

After his prayer, Palarnon receives an apparent answer from Venus that he interprets as satisfactory. On the third hour following (and including) this one, which is the filst hour o f Monday, Emelye comes to pray to Diana: The thridde houre inequal that Palarnon Bigan to Venus temple for to gon, Up roos the some, and up roos Emelye, And to the temple of Dyane gan hye. And

fmally:

The nexte houre of Mars folwynge this, Arcite unto the temple walked is

170

Of fierse Mars to doon his sacrifise, With alle the rytes of h s payen wyse.

APPLICATIONS

/doon: do /pagan Way (KnT zz71-74,2367-70)

Figure 6.9 schematizes this sequence differently, using the numbered spheres of the Ptolemaic cosmos to represent the planetary hours of The Knight2 Tak for that Sunday and Monday. As may be seen in figure 6.1, when counting the planetary spheres outward from Earth, the Moon is associated with sphere I, Venus with sphere 3, and Mars with sphere 5. In figure 6.9, the hours at which the three petitioners go to their respective gods' temples are enlarged and bold. It must be emphasized that, despite the fact that they are named after planets, strictly speaking these hours have nothing to do with either astronomy or astrology.Theydo not mark the actual visible positions of the planets in the heavens or any angular relationship between them. Although they memorialize the sequence of the planetary spheres in Ptolemaic cosmology, as do the corresponding names of the weekdays, the planetary hours may be considered simply nomenclature for portions of time. Nevertheless, many believed that at a planet's hour, just as on a day associated with a particular planet or the annual day of a planet's exaltation (Eisner, Kakndarium 18o), the power of that planet's influence on human affairs was augmented. If one were to ask the medieval Emelye why she chose the first hour of Monday to visit the temple of Diana, her answer might well betray astrological reasoning. Chaucer's own attitude toward planetary influence has been long debated and is the subject of Chapter 8. In his Treatise he disavows any belief in ju&cial astrology in phrasing very llke his description of Arcite's "sacrifise,/ With alle the rytes of his payen wyse" at the temple of Mars ( K n I ' ~ 3 6 ~ 70): He says of the fortunate and infortunate aspects of the ascendent, "These ben observaunces of judicial matere and rytes of payens, in whiche my spirit hath no feith" (Treatise 11.4). He often uses these particular "rites of pagans" ironically, as when he allows the Wife of Bath to offer astrological excuses for her sexual passions (WBProl6o9-z6). Similar irony is also present in Be Knight2 Tak when the planetary gods (and perhaps the related paintings in their temples) serve as projections of the feehgs and aspirations of the protagonists. Because these pagans believe that they are -

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171

Palamon goes to the temple of Venus (Sphere 3) before dawn on Sunday night (that is, early Monday morning): Sunday Planetary Hours

12 daylight hours 432176543217

12 night hours 654321765432

Emelye goes to the temple of Diana (Sphere 1) at dawn on Monday. Arcite goes to the temple of Mars (Sphere 5) at the next hour of Mars on Monday morning: Monday Planetary Hours

12 daylight hours 3765432 17654

12 night hours 321765432176

6.9. The Temple Visits at Hours Corresponding to the Numbered Spheres. Diagram by the author.

fated, they seek with their "pagan rites" to influence the astral controllers of their fates. Their self-reflective understanding of the universe reinforces the pre-Christian cosmology of this tale set in ancient Greece, a cosmology that Theseus transcends so far as is possible for an uninformed pagan "at the threshold of enlightenrnentl'19 Theseus's philosophical speeches do not represent the only threshold of enlightenment in the tale. The three young lovers' ritual devotion to their native gods at the appropriate hours is in a sense, like Theseus's First Mover speech, anticipatory, a foreshadowing or prefiguration of a truer practice to come.Their hours of prayer are not, of course, the same as those for the devotions of Christian monastics, whose night prayers are scheduled accordmg to the Roman watches of the night (Burrow 66), but they are s d a r l y conceived and ordered. All four of the major characters of The Knight? Tak are doing the best they can in their pagan world. Chaucer mocks them, as, with paroiles of Christian ritual and poetry, he mocks the contemporary characters in the fabliau that follows.The mockery in TbP Knight? Tak is very different in mood from that in The Milkri Tak, however. Despite their respective

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vested interests, the characters in The Knight'sTale may be understood as stumbhg forward in the darkness, whtle the lovers in The MilM lhk,in the full light of day, are simply turning their backs on what they know or ought to know. In Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio, David Wallace observes: Chaucer and Boccaccio do not seek to h s e or integrate the beliefs and practices of Christian and pagan worlds

. . . they seek, rather, to explore the uncertain spaces

between them. (It was to hrther such an exploration, C. S. Lewis suggests, that Chaucer turned to Boethius.) Their depiction of such a space encourages us to admre the high moral integrity of pagan protagonists in their simultaneous pursuit of love and truth. And such adrmration for the "shadowy perfection" of the pagans, shared by theologians and poets alke, brings us into contact with one of the more generous aspects of late medieval thought. (Wallace 72)

The space in which such "shadowy p e r f e c t i ~ n "may ~ ~ develop is ideally represented byTheseusls amphitheater, which he builds in a shape representing the cosmos for the purpose of imposing order upon the human passions of Arcite and Palarnon. The cosmos in the tale is apparently controlled by the pagan planetary gods, while actually ordered and moved, as a meleval Christian would understand and Theseus dimly does, by God. YetTheseus forgets, or does not know about, Saturn, god of chaos.W i t h the circumference of Theseus's representative ecliptic, the significance of whch not even he could possibly imagine, the three young lovers pray at hours whose ordering evokes the planetary spheres. The ritual timing of the hours of prayer aligns the devotions of these pagan petitioners with the Christian universe that surrounds them, though the space between the two realms is dark with uncertainty. Out fiom that uncertain space, almost as if evoked by the unintentionally occult power of the dagrarn that Theseus has inscribed upon his land in his amphitheater's design, Saturn (via Pluto) sends an ernissary to carry out his purpose at the unassigned fourth cardinal point, perhaps even in Saturn's own hour at dusk on Tuesday (see fig. 6.7) and at a location correspondmg to his designated mansion (see K n T 2637, 2675, and 2685). Echoing Manzalaoui's references to vertical and horizontal relationships (quoted in Chapter F), and without reference to the celestial scheme

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that occupies our attention here, Paul Strohrn finely sums up the way the plot is enhanced and its meaning broadened by the perspective thus obtained: In its formal dimension The Knight%Tale represents a fkion of the temporal with the extratemporal, of essentially horizontal narrative (that moves-albeit haltinglythrough a series of events in the lives of its protagonists) and vertically interrupted narrative (~unctuatedby fissures through which the audience gains glimpses of a consequentiallyinvolved heavenly hierarchy). The Knight's narrative fmally rejects a conception of history as a record of human accomplishments and embraces a conception of providential history subject to intervention fiom above.+l (Social Chaucer ~p-y).

Saturn may even be said to be piercing through the carefully constructed horizontal world thatTheseus creates and seeks to control. From his &vine perspective above that world ("in the hevene above"; KnT ~ 4Saturn ~ has~ Pluto send a fury to rise up from below and cause Arcite to fill from his horse (KnTz684-85). As Brown and Butcher, as well as others, have shown in detail unnecessary here, Saturn takes control of destiny within the pagan world of Chaucer's tale," but when they say that "in reading Saturn's speech one has the sense of entering another level of understanding, of being given the key to the mechanisms of the t a r (213; my emphasis), they speak more precisely than they realize, for Saturn's influence is felt at the astrolabically inevitable location in the amphitheater: due south. The precedmg two chapters have covered a vast amount of material, slumming over the whole of the medieval cosmos. It would be well to review in some detail what Chaucer appears to be doing with hts references to time and space in The Knight's Tale, especially in terms of medieval astronomical "mechanisms." Previous to composing the tale for his Canterbury pilgrimage, Chaucer had Boccaccio's Eseida at his disposal and had already done some work with the Italian's tale set in the pagan world of ancient Athens. In the TPrPida the major protagonists pray to their pagan gods before the decisive tournament, Arcita to Mars, Palemone to Venus, and E d a to Diana, in that order. The gods Mars andVenus then determine between them the outcome of the ensuing battle. At first Mars and Venus quarrel over whether

)

~

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APPLICATIONS

his Arcita or her Palemone is to have the victory and its prize, E d i a , then they agree on a compromise that is carried out: Mars$ Arcita wins the victory that he has prayed for, after which Venus sends a fury to frighten his horse into falling on him fatally, and Palemone gets E d i a , the answer to his prayer. In Boccaccio's story, Theseus the king observes that the gods alone are responsible for events (IX.54-62)) and Saturn does not appear. Chaucer ''edghtens" dus pagan story by placing it within a herarchical Christian universe. He does t h s by introducing into it medeval astronomy based on the Ptolemaic arrangement of the cosmos. Chaucer's Theseus, the champion of order, constructs an arnphtheater, which in the k i h was already present, and into the encirdmg wall he builds temples to honor three of the pagan gods, temples that in the Teseih were scattered around Athens. Probably influenced by the emerging zocLacal design, which may at first have been coincidental rather than contrived, Chaucer then adds Saturn to the schematic plot to solve the ddemma of the confict between Mars andVenus on behalf of their quarrehg knights. To reflect the date of early May, he reverses Boccaccio's entrance of the two knights into the amphtheater fiom east and west, and he accordmgly relocates their gods' oratories, so that the orientation of the three temples plus the location of Saturn's intrusion into the action is based on an observer's sky at Chaucer's own specific latitude. This stelhtum (or firmament of the stars indudmg the zodacal constellations) was thought to be fixed in the eighth cosmic sphere, but Chaucer expresses the sky in the amphitheater in terms of the zodiacal measurements of the invisible ninth sphere, measurable by the astrolabe. AdcLtionally, by means of the sequence of the hours at which the protagonists pray (a sequence based upon the Ptolemaic order of the seven "planets"), and then by introducing Saturn, Chaucer evokes in h s fictional cosmos the planetary spheres fiom the Moon outward (as in fig. 6.1). With these adcLtions the pagan universe is complete. Chaucer even manages to name the other three gods of the planetary spheres: Mercury (not in Boccaccio's poem), Phebus the Sun, and Jupiter ( K n l ~ & , 1493, 2442, respectively), all three of whom are active in The Knight'sTak but not connected widl theirplanetary hours. At the end of the tale, the pagan view of the cosmos is transcended whenTheseus personifies the outer sphere as "the Firste Moevere of the cause above,'' who binds the cosmos with "the faire cheyne of love" and who establishes "in this wrecced world adoun/ Certeyne dayes

THE SPHERES AND PAGAN PRAYER IN THE KNIGHT'S TALE

175

and duracioun" (KnS 2987-88, 2995-96). At line 3035 he confuses this Mover, in his pagan ignorance, with "Juppiter the king.'' Although spoken by a pagan, Theseus's words can be understood from a Christian perspective. Whereas the lesser and pagan cosmos of the stars and planets may be equated with time and human destiny, both symbolized by the amphitheater's design, God's vision or foresight, the Boethian "sighte above," controls (KnT 1663-~2) and transcends the design. God moves the outermost sphere of the cosmos, and thus a picture of the cosmos emerges that corresponds to that of Isaias 4 0 : ~ "It ~ : is he that sitteth upon the globe of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as locusts: he that stretcheth out the heavens as nothing, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.'"3 Later in The Man $Law's Tdk, where dn-ect Christian reference becomes appropriate, God (or Christ in that tale) is called the "lord of Fortune" and the "kyng of Hevene" (MLT 448,458). heaven in this context referring to the sky above as well as to the spiritual paradise. But in I l e Knight's Tak, He who binds the cosmos is concerned with days and duration, with the measurement and ordering of time associated specifically with the First Mover, and thus with the dominating image of the story, the "cosmic" amphitheater. The cosmic action, moreover, is firmly hierarchical in nature. Saturn of the "highestHand outermost planetary sphere has the most decisive role, Mars of the fifih sphere is allowed to keep his promise beforevenus of the third sphere keeps hers, and Diana of the smallest and innermost sphere is neglected in the action of the story. Thus the sequence of the spheres becomes more integral to the plot than the scheme of the planetary hours alone would suggest, elegantly addmg force to Theseus's perception of the "faire cheyne of love" with which the Creator binds the cosmos. John Norton-Smith, who writes so well on The Knight? Tale, puts this tale into the perspective of The Canterhy Tales as a whole: The deliberate position of the tale within the journey sequence suggests that Chaucer wished the first pilgrim to provide a representation of experience in a unified, coherent account-where

this account would bring together the three branches

of philosophy, metaphysical, natural and moral, in order to explain the composition of our universe.

(126)

H e also points out that, in the view he proposes, There is no astrological scheme at the heart of the Knight's Tab. The astronomy is used quite conventionally to support the physical working out of the philosophical pattern, lending to this Boethlan or neo-Platonic pattern of a whole, perfect and connected universe, the satisfying, minor d e t d s of its physical operation in terms of natural science. (126; emphasis added)

This statement is correct, with the addition that the "minor details" of the physical operation of the universe, of the cosmos as seen from earth in this story, are chiefly astrolabic in nature. Much l~kethe w i n W under the walnut shell of Colle the magician in The House of Ihme (lines 1280-81), which Donald R. Howard glosses as a representation of the cosmos in the brain (Lqe 445). and also lke the labyrinth design in which Howard proposes that Chaucer might "have envisaged the General Prolope, the sequence of tales, and the ending" (L$+p-qz), the amphitheater and the astrolabe alke represent all of creation enclosed within the "compass" of a human artifact, an ideal image for the concept of the world of story, and a perfect mire en abimez+ to place near the beginning of The Canterbuy Tabs. Theseus's astrolabic amphitheater points, moreover, to the use of the astrolabe as an ordering device in the pilgrimage to come, some examples of which have already been seen. The highly philosophical narrative level of Be Knight's Tab, however, is not maintained on the pilgrimage. Immediately following The Knight's Tak comes the Mder's "quiting" (requiting topping) of that tale in a fabliau that is in many ways a grotesque parody of this "noble storie" (MilProl ~ I I ) , though there is philosophy even in the Mder's story of which that narrator is unaware. The scheduling by planetary hours is one of the features parodied (as Chapter 7 shows). Yet even in this wonderfully outrageous story, and despite the parody, God remains, s t d hidden from Chauceri fictional protagonists and retaining his pyvetee, in his Heaven.

CHAPTER 7

COSMIC RETRl BUTION IN THE MILLER'5 TALE

For mighty words and signs have power O'er sprites in planetary hour: Yet scarce I praise their venturous part, Who tamper with such dangerous art. Sir Walter Scott, Lay

of the Last Minstrel

In Time Wars the popular writer Jeremy R i b informs us that "the schedule, more than any other single force, is responsible for undermining the idea of spiritual or sacred time and introducing the notion of secular time" (80). Chaucer turns t h s notion upside down in the most secular of his greatest tales, as Nicholas, the overconfident main protagonist of The Milhri Ek, brings supernatural doom upon hunself by inventing on Saturn's day (Saturday; MilTjjg9) a devious plan that schedules an event for the hour of Saturn on Monday. When he tells i s landlord John that a second Flood w d come on "Monday next at quarter-nyght" (MilTj516), the fourth hour after dusk or the sixteenth hour after dawn-using the old Roman method of quartering the night in aims to occupy the older man so that he can enjoy John's "watches"-Nicholas young wife, ALsoun. By e v o h g dus hour, apparently unaware of its more &e associations (see Monday's sixteenth hour in fig. 6.7), the clerk schedules the gods into his affairs though he intends merely to perpetrate a human

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APPLICATIONS

scam. Yet Nicholas aspires to know about such things, or wants to give the impression of knowing about them:

A1 his fantasye

/imagination

Was turned for to lerne astrologye, /knew, operations

And koude a certeyn of conclusiouns To demen by interrogaciouns,

/find out

If that men asked h p , in certein hares, Whan that men sholde have droghte or elles shoures.

(MilT 3191-96;

/else emphasis added)

The placement of this phrasing at the beginning of The Milhr2 Tale should alert us to the possibility of a parody of the +netary hours mentioned in The Knight2 Tak Yet, b h d e d by the pilgrimage drama, most of us read this earthy tale without a thought for its cosmic level, that is, for the "sighte above" ( K n T 16~2)in any of its manifestations. Paul Strohrn expresses well the point of view the tale inspires: The self-sufficient narrative world of I l e

Miller's Tale frustrates any inclination to

look for norms or causes beyond its chronological and spatial bounds. Intimations of transcendence, to be sure, ficker through the tale, in the incongruous idealrsm of Absolon's small-town love language, in the ironic echoing of language from the Song of Songs and other biblical detds, in John the Carpenter's readiness to believe in a new providential intervention in human affairs. Yet such allusions are no great challenge to the sufficiency of t h s world. In h s sense, the exegetical critics who have usefklly traced the biblical echoes within the tale have gotten their effect exactly wrong.These references to trouthe in love service, to pure spousal, and to God's providence make no dent in the materiality of the tale. Mocked, rather, is the very possibility of transcendence.

(Social Chaucer 1 ~ 6 )

l? A. Kolve assesses s d a r l y the vision of the world of the tale: "It finds the physical world enough" (ImageT 215, cp. 16o).The characters' smug earduness is a call for trouble, however, and it is the gods themselves, introduced in Be Knight2 Tah and st~llhovering, who do the modung.

COSMIC RETRIBUTION IN THE MILLER'S TALE

179

The "noble tale" with whch the Miller claims he will "quite" (requite) The Knight? TaL (MilTj1z&z7) parodies that previous story by means of a number of more or less obvious and contrasting parallels: the love triangle of two young males in pursuit of one woman, contrasting the antique nobles (and their true courtliness) in The Knight?Tdle with the contemporary townspeople (and Absolon's pseudo-courtliness) in The Miller? Tale; the "real live, sensual" Alisoun, baring her buttocks and despising chastity, in contrast to the knight's idealized Emily who prays to remain a virgin (Beidler 93); an older man as "builder," contrasting wise Theseus with sely or foolish John; and the identical line "allone, withouten any compagnye" applied to Arcite tragically in his grave in The Knight? Tale (KnT z779) and to the elite privacy of Nicholas in his bedroom in The Miller? Tile (MilT3204).1Perhaps the most telling detail specifically for the purpose of this chapter, however, is the iconographic contrast between the great amphitheater with its three ornate temples dedicated to the pagan gods, symbolizing Theseus's concern for community and his respect for the supernatural, and the three separate tubs up under the carpenter's roof, symbolizing Nicholas's desire for pyvetee and his disdain for the supernatural. But Thomas J. Farrell finds even the narrative technique in Be Miller? Sale to be a parodic inversion of The Knight? Tale and adamantly claims that "mey aspect of The Knight? Tale is quit by the Mdler" (790; his emphasis).' One might not wish to go that far, but there are certady aspects of the parody that have been overlooked. One aspect that has not previously been recognized is pertinent to the concerns of this book: the way the quartering of the night by Nicholas associates the Monday night action in The Miller? Tale with the planetary hours used for pagan prayer in She Knight? Sak The aim of this chapter is to make that correspondence visible. As Paul Strohrn has suggested in his observations about the "horizontal narrative" of The Knight's Sale with its "vertical" interruptions (Social Chaucer 130-31, quoted in Chapter 6), the thrust of the pagan hours of prayer in that tale is vertical in that they point to the "sighte above" (KnT 1672). Thus when the planetary hours recur implicitly in The Milh? Tale they place Nicholas's activities in the context of the Mdler's injunction about invasion of Goddes pyvetee (MilProl 3164). Nicholas is far less informed than he thinks himself or pretends to be, when he claims to be in the confidence first of

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APPLICATIONS

Christ (MilTj504), then of God (MilT 3558). Contrary to Strohm's opinion about transcendence being mocked by its absence in this tale, an attitude that the tone of the story certady cultivates, The Milkri Tak is vividly distinguished from the usual fabliau by its pervasive metaphysical element, an element normally alien to the genre. Farrell points this out, quoting Joseph BCcLer's assertion that the fabliau by its nature "lacks metaphysics": "The fact that Nicholas invokes a concept as obviously metaphysical as 'Goddes pryvetye' first sets the stage for the later dwuption of typical fabliau action, as Beher's insight-'il manque de mCtaphysique'-could have warned us" (Farrell 733). For Nicholas the practice of astrology has thoroughly euhemerized the gods by mahng them planets, and the hour that he evokes at line 3516 is for him merely a counter in a fortune-telling game, perhaps in connection with the astrolabe "longynge for [belonging to] his art" (320~);see figure 71.He does not consider it a true meteorological portent, nor does he appear to thmk of the hour's dangerous ruler, Saturn. Whereas the temples that Theseus builds in The Knighti Tak and the worshiping there by the three young protagonists reveal a sense of cosmic amplitude not quite understood, smallminded Nicholas is totally devoid of any sense of higher forces, willing though he is to invoke them magically.Therein lies h s weakness. Using a theoretical understandmg of the planetary hours governing weather both wet and dry (the Middle English word "droghte" did not then imply the extended duration that it does now, nor were "showers" necessarily as tame as now), Nicholas adapts the gestures of this lore to get Alisoun's husband, John, out of the way. He proceeds to prophesy "showers" that wdl become a second flood, correctly at Saturn's hour, but with never a thought of real rain, and certady none of drought. Nicholas chooses to warn John about "showers" to frighten him because as a carpenter (MilTpp, 3474) John would have been a member of the guild responsible for putting on The Phy $Noah when the mystery plays were performed., It is fitting, therefore, that Nicholas should refer to the one story he might assume that John would know. But John, who mentions having seen such plays ''M yoore ago" (3537), apparently does not remember them or their point well, or he is quite easily led, because he does not imrneLLately reply to Nicholas that, in the mystery plays (the Chester andYork cycles) as in Genesis, God has given his rainbow as a promise not to send another flood,

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181

at least until Doomsday.+Although John's powers of association do not allow him to refute the clerk's prophecy, he is not entirely devoid of such powers, as the following anecdote shows. When the servant boy Robin, apparently the M d e r himself as a youth, reports finding Nicholas staring upward in a supposed trance, "As [iq he had kked [gazed] on the newe moon" (MilT ?445), John tells a smug tale denouncing astrologers, an exemplary tale about getting caught up in theory to the point of overlooking what may prove painful in the real world. John's astrologer is so intent on watching the stars that he stumbles into a marl-pit; "he saugh nat that" (MilT1461). John applies the story to Nicholas, supposedly gone mad watdxng the stars, but Nicholas is shamming. Yet John's story of an astrologer walking blindly into trouble does in fact apply to Nicholas in a larger sense about which neither character has any d i n g , because the young derk gets so caught up in his own contrivance that he does stumble, metaphorically speakmg. He overlooks the possibility of a truth in his deception, and his oversight costs him the most painful moment in the tale. John's story also dearly reflects back upon the ignorance and silliness of John himself, but above all the story about an astrologer offers a parable for the "sense of human limitation" that Kolve describes as "at the heart of" the previous Knight? Tale (Imagey 86). A much greater sense of human limitation is at the heart of The Miller? Tak, expressed several times by John himself specifically as a limited understandmg:

A man woot litel what hyrn shal betyde. . . . Men sholde nat knowe of Goddes pryvetee. . . . H e saugh nat that.

/knows, b e f d /privacy /saw not (MilT 34509 34541 346')

"He saugh nat that" could serve as a motto both for Nicholas and for John, in this ironic tale where both men's trivial flaunting invokes their appropriate punishment. As Farrell says, "The two schemers against Goddes pyvetee both receive a sharp physical rebuke for their supposed metaphysical calculation" (780). The way that Nicholas uses Mondafs quarter-night "bhdly" without regard for Saturn who rules the hour markmg it, is a drrect reference back to the way Theseus overlooks Saturn in The Knight? Tale. In building his amphitheater

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APPLICATIONS

Theseus neglects to provide a temple for Saturn at the fourth cardmal point at the south (corresponding to the god's zodiacal mansion Capricorn), in conformity with the other temples corresponding to the zodiacal mansions of Venus at east, the Moon at north, and Mars at west. Theseus is probably unaware of any celestial aspect in his arrangement of the temples, and he obviously cannot be aware of the northern latitude it implies; as we have seen, the astrolabic aspect of the buildmg is the English poet's "signature." Nevertheless, Theseus might have placed a temple at the fourth cardinal point simply for symmetry. Having failed to do so, he leaves an opening at the site belonging to Saturn, at which that god of chaos subverts the controlTheseus has attempted to impose by his act of building and his injunction against "destruccion of blood" (KnT 2564). Although Nicholas does not mention Saturn by name, he too implicitly incorporates hun into the structure of hts madunations by evolung an imaginary flood "on Monday next at quarter-nyght," that is, on the Moon's day at Saturn's hour. Nicholas believes, d lcontrol over the action in h s tale. hke Theseus, that he has f It is now well known that Chaucer uses the Kakndarium of Nicholas of Lynn for the shadow scale calculations in The Introdution to the Man of LW's Tale,The Nun's Priest? Tale, and Tbe Prologue to the Parson? Tak (Eisner, Kakndarium 29-31). It follows that in writing The Knight's Tale and The Miller's Tile he uses the same book's chart of the planetary hours reproduced in figure 6.7 (cp. lkatise 11.12).There column 2 for Monday night shows that the first quartering of that night sigIllf;cantlyyokes together the watery forces of the Moon and Saturn: the Moon's day with Saturn's hour.To dus degree, at least, Nicholas has done h s homework. Saturn hunself ~nforrnsus in The Knight? Tale that he is the god of "drenchmgs" (KnS2456), and in a brief tract abstracted from Messahalla we are told that "in water signes sothly he sipfieth mychenesse of reynes" (quoted by North, Universe 372, and e&ted at 530). We do not know under what sign the events of The Milkr? 7hk occur, but in any case, as WJLam Langland tells us more simply in Piers Plowman, Saturn is harbinger of floods and rain: Thoruh flo[od] and foule wedres fi-uytesshul fade, And so sei[th] Saturne and sente you to warne. (B-version: Passus W, 325-26 [p. 3681, "yogh" normalized to "h"and "thorn" to "th")

COSMIC RETRIBUTION I N THE MILLER'S TALE

183

The Moon, too, into which Nicholas pretends to have peered so intently and on whose night he schedules the flood, is linked with the movement of waters as in tides. In the best-known of all Chaucer's astronomical passages (Troilus and CrisTde I11 624-25) the rare conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon in Cancer (a water sign) supposedly brings on the heavy rain that provides Criseyde with an excuse to stay at Pandarus's house all night, and perhaps allows us to date the poem or certady to date this unusual astronomical event in it.5 The exclusion of such planetary information from the description of events in Be Milhri Tak, taken together with the early description of Nicholas's own astrological s k d emphasizing "houres" (MilT j195), directs our attention to the planetary hours themselves, which we can now examine m sequence. If Nicholas had crehted h s astrology with any v&&ty at all, perhaps he might have worried about what was coming. But he does not for a moment really believe in the flood that he foretells or in the gods' intervention in human affairs-at least in his own casual love affair. He has taken notice of Saturn's watery hour (perhaps accidentally, at that) only in order to manipulate and gull John, and he has not explored beyond that point the potential meaning of the night's hours. He arranges it so that he, John, and Ahsoun each get into their respective tubs "aboute corfew-tyme, or litel moore" (MilT j645), that is, "at dusk," according to Douglas Gray's note on t h s h e in The Riverside Chaucer (Benson 847). John, exhausted by h s labors of hanging their lifesaving equipment up under the roof, falls to sleep snoring. Irnrnehately then: Doun of the laddre stalketh Nicholay, And Alisoun f d sofie adoun she spedde; Withouten wordes mo they goon to bedde.

/off /more, go (MilT 3658-50)

Figure 6.7 shows that the first hour afier dusk (or "curfew"), the thirteenth planetary hour of Monday, is appropriately the hour of Venus. The Middle English translation of the work of the Muslim astrologer Al-Qabisi of Aleppo, whom Chaucer names Alkabucius in h s 7ratise (U), tells us that the planet Venus has "of rnaistries . . .multitude of coitus and alle rnaner ky-ndes of lecherie" (North, Universe 206). Of course Nicholas is far too preoccupied

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APPLICATIONS

with Alisoun and a "multitude of coitus" to notice such an ominous coincidence as Venus's lordship of the hour when "they goon to bedde."Yet later on Saturn's hour passes uneventfully, despite the prophecy. (The god is lying low, perhaps instigating others, as before.) Midnight at the second quartering of the night also passes uneventfully, and Nicholas and Alison continue making love until "the belle of laudes" (MilT 3655) rings the canonical hour, perhaps announcing, as Chapter 8 of the Benedictine Rule prescribes, first light (what Chaucer calls "the spryng of the dawenyng9'in Treatise I1.6), or some two hours before Sunrise. Precisely determining this hour is impossible in the later Middle Ages, as Gerhard D o h - v a n Rossum argues forcefully in his History of the Hout; for "even within monastic communities the temporal location of the Hours [was] not precisely fixed and could be moved" (33). All we can say for certain about the time from this reference to lauds is that it must be after midnight.6 Now planetary Influence may be mounting as wild-card Absolon, Alisoun's other suitor, decides to court Ahsoun on t h s Monday night. On an earlier occasion Absolon was associated with cockrow (MilT3357);now, as before, he ~ l a n to s go "at cockes crowe" (3657), and he rises on schedule when "the firste cok hath crowe" (3687). Although we today associate cockcrow with Sunrise, there is a more Eely meaning for the term as it is used here, one from whch we have been long led astray by Walter Skeat. Edtors of Chaucer have for a century followed &S great nineteenth-century scholar in adducing the Renaissance dctum, based on dock time, that cocks crowed "at rnidnyght, at three, and an hower ere day."7 Perhaps there was a s d a r understandmg (not dock based) of three cockcrows current among rural folk in Chaucer's time. More relevant to t h s tale, however, is the fact that learned clerks would have understood cockcrow specifically as gallicinum, the thlrd watch of the night, according to Roman usage. A contemporary of Chaucer explains:

A nyht is partid in foure houres, as evenynge and rnidnyht,codus crowinge and morewnynge. (Burrow 67; "yoghs" standardzed to "h") Bishop Brinton of Rochester, in a 1376sermon on the theme "Vigilate," uses the four watches of the night as a metaphor:

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Per quattuor vighas noctis, schcet conticinium, intempesturn, gallicinum, antelucanurn, quattuor principales etates hominis describuntur. [By the four wat&es of the night, evening, midnight, cockcrow, and first light, are represented the four principal ages of man.] (Burrow 67) These "watches" are the hours that mark each quartering, and they enable us to see what may be another joke by Chaucer, or simply further alignment with the planetary hours of The Knight's Tale In the passage above from Brinton's sermon, "evening" corresponds to Latin conticinium, glossed by Lewis and Short ( A &tin Di~tiona~) as "the time when all becomes stdl," not "curfew)' but the first quartering of the night, or hour 16, around the canonical hour of complme (Saturn's hour in &S secular tale). If rnidmght (and matins) marks the second quartering at Monday's hour 19 (not remarked on in the story), the third quartering of Monday night, hour 22, is associated with Luna, as may be seen in figure 6.7, the Kakndarium chart Chaucer may have been using. On t h s evidence it would seem that Absolon rises at his cock'scrow hour halfway between midnight and Sunrise, which would be the hour marking the fourth quarter-night, and he aims his kiss at Alisouns bottom sometime during the twenty-second hour of Monday. Alisoun bares herself at the window at the hour of the Moon on the night of the Moon, but it is "derk as pich" (MilTj7y) with no actual Moon in the sky. Reference to "mooning" appears in a television commercial current at this writing, and indeed the verb "to moon" (bare the buttocks) does seem to be exclusively American and modern. But the connection of the pale buttocks with the Moon-as a noun-appears to go back as far as one might wish, and even Chaucer associates the Moon and buttocks in The Parson's Tak8Speaking of persons scantily clad, he says, "And eek the buttokes of hem faren as it were the hyndre part of a she-ape in the M e of the moone" (ParsT 4z3). Thus Alisoun in The Miller's Tale "maketh Absalon hire ape" (MilT&; the idiom means "to dupe someone") in more ways than one as she thrusts her buttocks out of the window. Kolve provides the medieval iconography for this ape-buttocks association in lmagely (181-~2 and notes),g and he also draws attention to a passage in Trivet's Chronicles (on which Chaucer based his Man of h i Tdle) where King Alla's subjects moon him in mockery Kolve

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APPLICATIONS

comments on the disdain traditionally associated with this gesture and calls the act "bum baring (ImageryI ~ I ) . ~ O As often happens when Chaucer makes h s most debased joke in a tale, the point of the joke is more elevated than its hurnor. By the time of Ahsoun's mooning, no one in the story is &hg of a n y t h g so elevated as the planets and their hours, and thought of the "drought and showers" that are supposedly Nicholas's special study has evaporated fiom his mind, and horn ours too. In a fine example of tirning (as in performance theory), the tempo of the storytelling speeds up." Absolon is Lrious both at being hurmliated by lassing Alisoun's "nether eye" and at being misled by h s own earlier portents of hssing and feasting (MilTi682-84banother example of focusing attention on the wrong object and getting tripped up as a result-and he goes off to borrow the red-hot coulter. He promises to explain his purpose to the smith Gerveys "to-morwe day" (MilT i784), that is, in the morning after Sunrise. He returns to the house, calls out sweetly, and, thinking to avenge himself upon Alisoun, instead smites Nicholas (MilTj810). "The hoote kultour brende so h s toute" (MilTj8n), says the story, that Nicholas shouts his famous cry, "Help! Water! Water! Help for Goddes herte" (MilTj8~5).This cry announces for hun,for Absalon, and for John, who is awakened by it, not the general flood but a personal and hudiating drought."There is no water to be had Saturnian prognostications (and the suggestive "thonder-dent" of the fart [j807]) are proved false as no water is available to soothe Nicholas's hurt,'? to wash out Absolon's mouth, or to catch John's plummeting tub as he cuts it loose accordmg to plan.The chaos is Saturn's, but the hour belongs to another, the final planetary god needed to make the parallel with 7hr Knight's Tale complete. "Certainly Absolon's aim was accurate!'' observes Farrell (794), and it must be growing light by now, for the neighbors who rush in toparen (look) are able to peer up into the roof and see the other tubs hanging there (MilT &.I). Dawn has come on Tuesday morning. Again the hour is appropriate, for the fist hour of Tuesday belongs to Mars. Drawing upon Alkabucius to describe the medieval properties of the planets, J. D. North lists Mars's properties as "all we should expect of the warrior planet-masculine, evil, hot and dry. . . he was supposed to denote various sorts of work of smiting'and injuries of wrecchide men'" (Universe 206). Absolon's smiting results

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both in the hot and dry "droghte" that Nicholas, to his misfortune, did not foresee with his "a~trolo~ye," and in wretched John's injury. The clerk's cry for water not only brings together the two folklore motifs of the "Misdirected &ss" and the "Second Flood," it joins them to a schedule of the planetary hours as well. Moreover, as figure 7.2 shows, the quarter-night hours of Venus, the Moon, and Mars, at which the actions of Monday night take place, are evoked in the same sequence as The Knight's Tale prayers of the lovers to these same three gods, bothsequences added by ~ h a u c e rto his derived Here it seems expedient to pause in the argument and remark that without The Knight's Tale and the Mder's promise to "quite" it one would not venture to put forward the proposal that Monday night in The Mill& Tale is scheduled by the planetary hours. Taken out of context the tale does not contain sufficient evidence that such scheduling was Chaucer's intention. As J. D. North says in the course of another argument: "There are cases where Chaucer gives us no dear idcation of intent, and where an astrological reading might well be a product of our own imagination" (Universe 26?). Yet, he continues, "this is not to say that the absence of firm criteria for the rightness of any particular reading is ever entirely hopeless, for lke the horses in certain stables, our interpretations wdl lean to some extent on each other. By the dscovery of patterns running through the extensive corpus of Chaucerb writing, it is possible to raise the degree of confidence we have in our ability to explain its separate parts" ('Universe 26?).The pattern of the planetary hours in Shr Knight's Tale is s t r h g and indsputable. In view of the announced relationship between that tale and The Miller'sTbk, and Nicholas's use of the hours to calculate the weather, it seems probable that the shadowy design of sirnilar celestial activity dscernible in The Miller's Tale was also Chaucer's intention. This superimposed celestial element is intuitively grasped by two of Chaucer's most perceptive critics. In The Riverside Chaucer Larry D. Benson devotes two paragraphs to introducing The Miller's Tale and quotes E. M. W. Tillyard's description of the conclusion of this tale as "sublime" in its inevitability, "asif the heavens opened up and the gods looked down and laughed at these foolish mortals" (Benson 8). Tdyard also speaks of "feelings akin to religious wonder" at the denouement (Tillyard 92). That effect is precisely what Chaucer has contrived through his references to Goddes

188

APPLICATIONS

pyvetee and h s scheduhg by selected planetary hours that happen to quarter the night Oblivious to Chaucer's schedulng rnaneuver, Benson continues, "The heavens actually did open at the dunax of She Knight's Tale, when Saturn intervened in the tournament Neither Nicholas nor Theseus can Mycontrol the chain of events each puts in motion" (8). Because the celestial element of the plot of She Milkr's 7hk is arcane, neither critic perceives that, at the h a x of t h s tale, as well, "the heavens actually &d open)" not with rain in the way that Nicholas falsely prophesied would happen, but in a way that he, foreteller of droughts, should have foreseen-just as Theseus, designer of the incompletely quartered amphtheater, might have anticipated the need for a fourth deity's oratory. But the events, and an understandmg of what causes them, appear to be beyond the grasp of both protagonists attempting to seize control: beyond the one because, though noble, he is a pagan, and beyond the other because, perceiving himself unusually clever, he is a self-deluded fool. One of the several themes that She Knight's Tale and She Miller'r Tale have in common is the way the characters' lives are controlled from beyond their imagination and expectations. This is the theme of limited understanding referred to above: "We witan nat [know not] what thing we preyen heere" (KnTrzbo).Yet the very characters' expression of their desires seems to arouse destiny, appropriately scheduled. The frame tale of the pilgrimage is itself scheduled in a s d a r way, m a d y unnoticed by the pilgrims as they travel along. When the celestially defined "moment of truth" comes upon them late in the day, therefore, its advent is as sudden as in these first two tales, and almost as unprepared for, despite such cautionary tales as these that they are supposedly hearing. The fmal moments in the Canterbury fiction are unexpected both by the pilgrims and by the reader, as generations of anxious or annoyed responses to the last group of tales and to Chaucer's Retraction demonstrate. The genre of Thr CanterburyTabs itself seems to forbid such a reversal from game to high earnestness. But just as in Tbe Knight? Tale and She Miller? Tale, the schedule of the larger celestial structure does demand a shift of focus. These matters wdl be discussed in the last chapter. Despite the evocation of Saturn's hour, it would be rnisleadmg to suggest that Ihe Milkr's Tak merely offers a schedule for chaos. More accurately it may be said to provide a secular analogue for eschatological time. In these first two tales Chaucer builds into the structure of the pilgrimage the appearance

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of indeterminacy, the unexpected hour of the vengeful god, even though we are told soon after, as a higher truth, that Christ is "Lord of Fortune" ( M U 448) and that God "Dooth thyng for certein ende that ful derk is/ To mannes wit" (MLT481-82). All destinies, all fictional gods as planets, are under the control not of "Juppiter the kyng," asTheseus believes in his pagan ignorance, but of the Creator.The Creator is behmd the scenes in The Miller's Tale only by implication, as the Mder, Nicholas (indirectly), and John all refer to Goddes pyvetee. But, as Farrell reminds us, the tale shows how God's plan for the world overrides human initiative: "In all its attempts to divert our attention elsewhere, the tale cannot quite cover what it rather obviously tries to conceal"-or what it perhaps urges us to seek: the sense of Goddes pryvetee as that Boethian providential design which orders the world even if humans cannot see how and in spite of whatever efforts they may muster against it. That "God ledeth and constreyneth alle thingis by ordre" (Boece, prosa I, 4 ~ - p is ) an excellent example of Goddes pryvetee considered as a "sacred

v

mystery [or] divine secret" (MED, "pryvetee" n.3). (Farrell 785)

Why does Chaucer go to such lengths to incorporate into his pilgrimage fictions schemes that are not ordinarily discernible, like the astrolabic arnphitheater and the Monday night planetary hours? Nicholas himself can furnish one answer. As Kolve points out, Nicholas, the nye she, is often around the house when John is away for as long as a day or two at a time. H e "has ample opportunity to lie with Alisoun without her husband's knowledge . . .but he chooses instead to earn her by means of a 'queynte cast,' a parodic restaging of Noah's preparations for the Flood. The difficult and elaborate game is invented for its own sake" (Imagey 1851).15Chaucer seems equally to be enjoying himself by superimposing his own celestial plot on that of his mischievous plotter Nicholas. Once The Miller? Tale is examined with the chart from Nicholas of Lynn's Kalendarium in hand (fig. 6.7) to schedule the planetary hours of that passion-filled Monday night, it becomes impossible to think of the tale without including Chaucer's non-fabliau element of calendric mitaphysiqueand envisioning the arc of celestial time looming above the action, an arc of nighttime hours s~rmlarto the month-arc in

APPLICATIONS

7.1.The Planetary Hours

on the Astrolabe. Diagram fiom Chaucer's Treatise II:2.

one of the Duke of Berry's famous calendar pages (see fig. ?.1).16 At the same time, the several references to Goddes pyvetee, implying a divine and private agenda unknown in the tale but manifested in the significant arc of hours proceehg above it, remind us of what is serious, with an elevated perspective that, as many have observed in other contexts, heightens the human s h e s s

Dawn

Nightfall

X

Sun

Venus Merc Moon Monday Night 7.2.

X

Sat Quarter Night

X

Jup

Mars

Sun

Venus Merc Moon

X

Sat

Gallicenum (Cock's crow)

Mars

Jup

Tuesday Morning

The Twelve Hours of Monday Night in The Miller'sTale. Diagram by the author.

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played out beneath it. The judgment that smites Nicholas at the planetary hour of "hot and dry" Mars is not one of doom17but rather an appropriately farcical comeuppance for someone so oblivious of higher forces as to venture to fantasize about Goddespyvetee) and to make the mistake of timing his fraudulent prophecy to coincide with the hour of a planetary deity under God's ru1e.1~ The question of human ignorance under the perspective of the wiser heavens receives far more serious treatment in The Man of Law? TaS to be explored, along with further investigation of Chaucer's attitude toward astrological attempts to invade Goddespyvetee) in the next chapter.

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PART 3

IMP L ICAT10 NS

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CHAPTER 8

CHAUCER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD PROPHECY AND PLANETARY INFLUENCES

Away with astrologers! The augur is deaf, the soothsayer blind, and the prophet demented. It is permitted mankmd to know the present, and to God alone to know the Lture. Geoffiey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova (ca. 1210c.E.)

According to Geoffrey of Vinsauf and others, the future is Goddes pyvetee. During Chaucer's lifetime religious cautions flourished against engaging in astrology to discover the future, from Bishop Bradwardine's 1344 treatise on free wd (De Causa Dei contra Peh.ium) and his sermon after Edward III's victory at the Battle of Crecy in 1347, until the death of Richard I1 in 1399 (see Carey 79-106). Hilary M. Carey explains the bishop's main objection to the practice, an objection expressed surularly by others throughout the century: T h e practice of astrology is repugnant to Christians because it seems to deny the orthodox doctrine of the freedom of the w d . Hence Bradwardine, who is cluefly concerned to defend the Augustinian emphasis on the power of God at the expense of untrammelled human freedom against the new "Pelagians," c a r e m y rejects astrology along with other determinist creeds. (84)

Nevertheless, Nicholas of The Miller'sTale is only one of many who wish, and consider themselves qualified, to pry into Goddes pyvetee. The main question to be addressed is whether Chaucer himself believes in the vahdity of prognostication by the stars. The subject of this book demands this digression from the more concrete and demonstrable interest of Chaucer in graphic (that is, mathematical) expressions of time. The problem is actually too complex for a single chapter, since a person's belief (and level of belief) can vary over a lifetime or even during a brief mood, and astrology itself meant, and s t d means, different t h g s to different people.] It is important, therefore, to narrow the terms of discussion as far as possible. For our purposes, belief in, specifically, the v&&ty of astrological prognostication may be said typically to rest on two related but separate assumptions: that influence upon human affairs and terrestrial events emanates from the shifting positions of the planets in relation to the zo&acal signs, and that this influence can be discerned and interpreted by those having the slulls to do so.tThe following passage fiom a translation of a work on eclipses ascribed to Messahalla (now designated pseudo-Messahalla), the author of the treatise on the astrolabe upon which Chaucer m a d y bases his, is representative of the first of these astrological assumptions: [The Creator] made the'four realms, namely, minerals, plants, animals, and sentient beings, all of whch change with the variation in the power of the seven planets. The ascendmg node [of the moon], the signs of the zodiac, and all the stars have power with the seven planets which influence the world, llke the stone called magnet which attracts iron towards it. So all the plants and trees on the earth were created, and motion of the stars, and every coming-into-being and every passing-away as well as all the events in the world come under the influence of the stars.

(The Book $C Eclipses of Masha'alhh, translated fiom Abraharn Ibn Ezra's Hebrew by Goldsteinn, 208-zog)

Through interpretation of such apparently influential events in the sky astrologers believe that the funre may be revealed and the past explained. In particular, they believe that the destiny of any individual may be divined by analyzingthe arrangement of the heavens at the hour and latitude of that person's birth, and also that the success or failure of a projected enterprise

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may be divined by analyzing the arrangement of the heavens at the hour of its inception. The first of these two major types of astrological prediction is called natal astrology, what Chaucer calls "nativitez," and the second, designated horary astrology by modern practitioners, is what Chaucer calls "elecciouns of tymes." He defines elecciouns further as "observauncez of judicial matiere and rytes of payens" and adds that he has no faith in them (Treatise K+). As Wood says, "Chaucer's own position, then, may definitely be charted as bearing more resemblance to that of Oresme, an opponent of astrology, than to that of the Wife of Bath, who is probably a believer in the simplest sense" (County I ~ ) But . Chaucer's dissociation of himself fiom "rites of pagans" does not reveal the whole of his attitude toward astrology. The pagans of The Knight? Tale believe in planetary influences. To put it more accurately, they believe in the gods of their culture, who are revealed to Chaucer's audience to be planets through the device of the astrolabic amphitheater and Saturn's own reference to his orbit (KnT 2454). In the fictional world of that tale, where the planetary gods intervene in h&nan affairs, such belief is justified. Early in the story Arcite urges his friend Palarnon to be patient about their imprisonment, saying: Fortune hath yeven us this adversitee. Som wkke aspect or disposicioun O f Saturne, by som constellacioun, Hath yeven us t h s , although we hadde it sworn;

/given /wicked /conjunction /given, forsworn it

So stood the hevene whan that we were born. We moste endure it; h s is the short and playn.

(KnT 1086-91) Later, to be sure, we observe Saturn makmg the decision to bring adversity upon Arcite once again, not maliciously but indifferently,in order to resolve the strife between Mars andvenus. Within the world of the tale the astrological mfluence of the gods (who are also planets) is shown to operate effectively; hence a belief in that force is demonstrably valid. What is interesting is the subtlety with whch the narrator keeps that influence and attitude hited to the world of the story and, indeed, htances hunself fiom his "pagan" characters, specifically in regard to their belief in these gods, wMe yet giving

those characters credit for their piety. Arcite, for example, goes to the temple of Mars to "doon his sacrifise": With alle the rytes of h s payen wyse, With pitous herte and heigh devocioun.

/pagan custom /pious

(Knl-2370-71) Such dmretion is not a feature of Boccaccio's Eseida, where, as the passage quoted at the end of Chapter 5 demonstrates, the narrator endorses the astrology in the story, himself speaking of Venus in a "favorable" planetary position and of Jupiter "disposed to be benign" in the vicinity of Pisces. Chaucer has come to The Knight's Tale with considerable practice in astrological allusion b e h d him. The two most famous of these allusions in his earlier work concern heavenly conjunctions that scholars have shown actually to have taken place around the time that Chaucer was writing the stories in which they occur. These two are the exact conjunction of Mars with Venus in her chamber painted with great white bulls, that is, in the sign of Taurus, in the lovers' allegory of The Complaint of Mars, a conjunction that occurred in 1385 "late on 17March" accordmg to J. D. North (Universe 320), and the much rarer triple, though not exact, conjunction of the Moon, Saturn, and Jupiter in Cancer that "causes" the rain bringing the lovers together in Troilus and Crisgde (111 624-25), occurring on 9 June 1385 accordmg to North (Universe 33-78). T h s latter conjunction is one of Chaucer's few allusions to weather astrology, the s k d in whch Nicholas seeks proficiency in The Miller? Tab (MilT 3191-96). This form of astrology will receive short shrift here, since it seems to have only passing interest f& Chaucer and little to do with the astrolabe, whch is not a tool for planetary calculations. Though "drought" is irnplicated in the story's dunax, even in The Miller's Tab Chaucer is actually delighting in the symbolism of the planetary hours rather than showing interest in the weather astrology that Nicholas pretends to use for John's benefit. The Troilus and Crisgde prediction is pure weather astrology, however. In the excitement of discovering that Chaucer worked a rare and datable astronomical event into Eoilw and Crisy4 scholars have tended to underemphasize the practical use to which the conjunction is put in the poem: to foretell a storm.? In fact, both Pandarus (see TC II 74-75 and 111 518, 532) and Nicholas are

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malung use of weather astrology for the same purpose, to provide an opportunity for a w l h g woman to meet her lover, although in Pandarus's case the astronomical element-a triple conjunction-is real in the sky outside of the text, whereas Nicholasi plot concerns only a wholly astrological "hour." Probably the most subtle of Chaucer's exploitations of astrological imagery is his description in The Knkhti Tak of the amphitheater where the gods rule specific signs and hours, but he also incorporates in The Canterlrbuly Tales allusions to astrology that are by no means so ingenious and obscure, and that express various practical and non-astrolabic uses to which astrology was put.Three of these, each quite dtstinct in kind, can serve as brief exarnples.They are the Wife of Bath's appeal to natal astrology, the horary astrology (really a type of weather astrology) in The Franklin's Tak, and the medical astrology used as a joke in The Nun's Priesti Tale. The locus classicw of natal astrology in medieval English literature is the Wife of Bath's claim that her horoscope causes her to follow her "inchations" in respect to s e x u a h ~ /Taurus Myn ascendent was Taur, and Mars thereinne. Allas! Allas! that evere love was synne! /always I folwed ay myn inchnacioun /arrangement of stars at birth By vertu of my constellacioun; /could not That made me I koude noght withdrawe /companion, fellow My charnbre of Venus from a good felawe.

(wprol613-18) Her argument that the stars compel (they "made me do it") is contrary both to the astrologers' creed, often attributed to Ptolemy, that vir sapiens dominabitur astris ("the wise man rules the stars"), and to SaintThomas Aquinas's sunilarly qualified acceptance of the validity of astrological predictions: The majority of men, in fact, are governed by their passions, whch are dependent on b o d y appetites; in these the influence of the stars is dearly felt. Few indeed are the wise who are capable of resisting their animal instincts. Astrologers, consequently, are able to foretell the truth in the majority of cases, especially when they undertake general prehctions. In particular prehctions they do not attain certainty,

IMPLICATIONS

200

for nothing prevents a man from resisting the dictates of his lower faculties. Wherefore the astrologers themselves are wont to say that "the wise man rules the stars," foreasmuch, namely, as he rules his own passions.

(Summa Theologica 1.1.115.4,Ad Tertium; emphasis added)

D. S. Brewer, who quotes this passage (from Wedel lx) as the orthodox meLLeval Christian opinion concerning astrology, adds that "Chaucer does not make his heroes wise men" (NewIntroduction 1 5 6 h o r in the Wife of Bath's case a wise woman, though she is an articulate and clever one. Chaucer is as ironic about her views as Edmund is ironic in King k a r about how "we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessit)r9Neither Shakespeare's Edrnund nor Chaucer accepts as an excuse "an enforc'd obeLLence of planetary influence" (bar 1.ii 118-25). There is irony of a LLfferent h d in The Franklint TUk, in a passage that is rarely read with care, when the clerk of Orleans incorporates horary astrology in h s "magyk natureel." ("Natural" magic, known today as "whtte" magic, is traditionally that which requires no Satanic bonding.) The Franklin denies knowledge of any "termes of astrologye" (Frank11266), and then proceeds to describe the clerk's methods in technical astronomical terminology more erudite than that in any other passage in Chaucer, or probably in any poetry anywhere. The discrepancy between the narrator's claim and his ensuing description is obviously meant to amuse us, though J. C. Eade demonstrates that "a person with some understandmg of the procedures the Clerk employs will h d these h e s to be orderly and comprehensible" (Sky 115; cp his article "We Ben to Lewed or to Slowe" 58-69). Eade shows how the clerk's complex calculations are aimed at h d m g a time of the Moon auspicious for w o r h g ~ create ) an dlusion that the rocks off the h s "heathen" magic (FrankT 1 2 ~to shore of Brittany have been submerged. (North also analyzes the passage in d e d , with some differences from Eade not relevant here [Universe 153-561;the reader who wishes an analysis should go to either of these authors.)The Moon that moves the tides is of obvious importance to the clerk's magical task, and the horary astrology is entirely relevant to the job. But Chaucer is clearly revelmg in abstruse technical jargon and teasing his audence with it. Those few who have the expertise (and stamina) to follow Chaucer's meaning, perhaps hoping to catch hun out, may be amazed as well as amused by

CHAUCER'S AnlTUDE TOWARD PROPHECY AND PLANETARY INFLUENCES

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his accurate use of these "termes of astrologye," as he apparently refers to a real and extremely unusual series of alignments of tide-raising forces that occurred in December 1340,possibly the year of Chaucer's birth (hence his attention to the astronomical configuration). The three recent discoverers of the actuality of the high tides of The Franklint Tale compare the trick of the clerk who computes them to that of Hank Morgan in MarkTwain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthr3 CourtI "who, because he is able to predict a solar eclipse, makes people believe he caused it" (Olson, Laird, and Lytle 47). But Chaucer is even cleverer than that He sets us up to believe it is nothing but a trick by describing first a series of possible dlusions (FrankT 1142-51), and then, in more d e d , the clerk's own presentation of dusions (118~1204). When it comes to the tides, Chaucer is then able through his illusionist clerk to create the dlusion of an illusion; though the date may be off by about a thousand years in terms of the tale of ancient "Armorica," in the Brittany of Chaucer's lifetime these tides are real. The trick reminds one of the way Chaucer planted an astrolabe set for his own time and latitude in The Knight3 Tale about ancient Athens. In the case of The fianklin's Tale tide, Chaucer is working fiom tables to adueve the accuracy of t h s supposed horary astrology.4 The third example of Chaucer's non-astrolabic use of astrology concerns the horary astrology used in medicine and comes fiom The Nun's PriestS Tale. When Chaucer jokes about h o r q astrology here, he is making a simple if now recondite allusion to the frequently portrayed figure of the "zodiac man" (alternatively called the "melanthesic man," referring to the use of the figure in surgery; see fig. 8.1). The medical practice utilizing this figure merits a dgression of its own. Readers of Chaucer will recall that the Doctour of Physlk was described in the General Prolope as "grounded in astronomye" (GP 4.14). that is, slulled in the astronomy necessary for astrological calculations, By such means:

d greet deel He kepte his pacient a f In homes by his magyk natureel. We1 koude he fortunen the ascendent Of his ymages for h s pacient.

/find, a propitious time for constructing tahsmans (images) (GP 415-18)

8.1. Zodiac Man. Adapted by W W. Skeat fiom Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.15.18 as figure 19 in his edition of Chaucer's Treatise.

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203

These lines refer to two different matters, both incorporating horary astrology. First, as in the case of the natural magic of the clerk of Orleans, astrological timing would be required for what we would perceive as the ordinary medical practices themselves, prescribing for a patient or operating upon a patient to keep him or her "in hours," that is, to lengthen the patient's life. Lines 417-18 refer more specifically to the casting of horoscopes to determine not only the propitious time but also the astrologically appropriate metal for the construction of medical tabmans. This is a practice in which Chaucer has shown a previous interest. Among other persons whom the narrator Geffiey encounters in the House itself in his poem The House of Fame are: [Cllerkes eke, which konne we1 A1 this magrk nature1 That craftily doon her ententes To make, in certeyn ascendentes, Ymages, 10, thrugh which magrk To make a man ben h001 or syk.

/also, understand /carry out their plans /under certain rising signs /i.e., talismans /be whole (healthy) (House of Fame, 1265-70)

Both medical practices-astrologically timed surgery and the making of images-would take into account the concept of the "zodiac man" that is central to medical astrology. The mecLcal use of the stars was lmked to the idea that each part of the body was related to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, in order, descending down the body: "As, Aries hath thin heved [head], andTaurus thy nekke and thy throte, Gemini thy armholes and thin armes, and so forth" (Treatise 1.21). Another treatise containing this list, not by Chaucer, adds that it is dangerous to touch a member of the body with iron when the Moon is in a sign corresponding to that b o d y member: "Let the surgen be ware."^ In making talismans to aid a patient's recovery, the physician would take into account the zodiac sign "ruling" the part of the body afflicted, the planetary lord of that sign, and the metal associated with that planet. The Canon's Yeoman, in connection with alchemy, gives the relationshps of metal to planet as follows (the list is rearranged here into the f d i a r Ptolemaic

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IMPLICATIONS

order of the planets): silver for the Moon, quicksilver for Mercury, copper for Venus, gold for the Sun, iron for Mars, tin for Jupiter, and lead for Saturn (CYT 826-28). T h s is standard astrological lore (referred to previously), and such lists w d be found in many sources both medieval and modern. Nicholas of Lym includes one in his Kahdarium (182-8j), which volume, as the reader wdl recall, Chaucer used for his supposedly astrolabic readmgs of the Sun's position on the Canterbury road (see Chapter ?).In addition to determining the metal appropriate to the sign that rules the fitted part of the body, the craftsman-physicianin order to make his images effective6would take into account other inclcations, such as the patient's natal horoscope. In discussing the zodiac in his Treatisp,Chaucer records without comment the essentially m e d d idea that the nature of a planet w d d u e n c e the nature of the sign it is in: "Whan an hot planete [lke Mars] comyth into an hote signe [like Aries], than encresseth his hete; and gif a planete be cold [lke Saturn], thanne amenuseth [dunmishes] his coldnesse, bycause of the hote signe" (1:21). Though he makes fun of the hen Pertelote's association of the hurnors with the planets in The Nun? Priest? Tale (~~54-s7),Chaucer does not express a personal opinion about medical astrology, though he does about the more general use of horary astrology. Probably he is more inched to adopt a critical attitude toward the latter practice because it raises crucial questions about destiny and free will, as medical and weather astrology do not. In a passage in The Parson? Tale inveighing against augury, Chaucer does, however, consider the possibility that perhaps God allows the efficacy of these magical images, for which He should be the more reverenced (ParsT 60+606).7 Chaucer's astrological joke in fie Nun's Priest'sTale concerns Chauntecleer's neck and involves medical astrology in alludmg to the "zodiac man." Chauntedeer was amply warned in h s dream that misfortune was to occur, and when the fox arrives the reader recognizes him as the same animal that appeared in the threatening dream. But this strutting horological rooster ("By nature he knew ech ascencioun/ O f the equynoxial in thllke toun," NPT 2855-56) might have done well to consider the implications of the date as well as the hourly location of the Sun. Chaucer elaborates that date into nine ornately worded lmes, a fanfare that condudes with the information that "the brighte some 9,

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205

In the signe of Taurus hadde yronne

/run

Twenty degrees and oon, and somwhat moore.

/one

( W T 3194-95) After the narrator has delivered this bookishly accurate announcement implying a date of May 3 (see Eisner, Kakndarium Q), the rooster meets his particular and appropriate fate: the fox grabs him by the throat when he stretches out his neck to sing (NPT333~-35). With the Sun in Taurus, what other part of Chauntedeer was more hkely to be at risk? Being a rooster he is skdled at discerning the hour, the Sun's apparent diurnal motion in its path across the sky, but he is not skdled at dmerning its annual progress through the invisible signs. Therefore Chauntedeer does not notice that the position of the stars, confmning his dream, has warned hLm not to stick I s neck out on thls wicked Tauran Friday. AU three of these examples suggest, in different ways, that in Chaucer's opinion we humans are not much better equipped than the rooster Chauntedeer to decipher the meaning of objects in the sky. As he makes clear, the real problem with any kind of prediction is the inadequate ability of a human interpreter to read the symbol correctly: "But that oure flesh ne hath Chaucer's skepno myght/ To understande hit aryght" (House of h e 4-0). ticism about human understanding is profound, and when his characters refer to astrological concepts in his poetry, he is usually emphasizing the inadequacy of human wisdom. A memorable statement about this inability to interpret comes in Troilus and Crisyde as Criseyde is on the verge of going home from Pandarus's h e r party, and the famous storm is about to break. The narrator exclaims: But 0 Fortune, executrice of wierdes,

0 influences of tluse hevenes hye! Soth is, that under God ye ben oure hierdes, Though to us bestes ben the causez wrie.

/fates /high /truth, you are our herders /beasts be the causes htdden

(TC 11161~-20) Here the narrator asserts that it is indeed the truth ("soth") that mysterious and incomprehensible planetary influences shower effects upon us, and we

206

IMPLICATIONS

are "herded" like ignorant beasts by those stellar phenomena. Since, as Aquinas says, "few indeed are the wise who are capable of resisting their animal instincts" (Summa Tbeologica 1.1.115.4)~the power of the planets is equated with our passions. This Thornist idea and its attendant imagery are behind one of the several possibilities that Chaucer offers for the meaning of the word zodiac in his fieatise: "When the planets are under these signs, they cause us, by their influence, behavior and deeds like the behavior of beasts" (I:21; translated). A predisposition toward "beastly" behavior, dictated by bodily appetites and apparently influenced by the animal-associated signs and the planets, directs those who do not rule their passions. In ThP Knighti Tak Chaucer aligns the human desires of h s protagonists with the planets they worship as gods in a way that suggests their passions are indeed their planetary deities. Only Theseus, himself aligned with benevolent Jupiter, so much as considers the notions of order and control or sees beyond the planets to "the faire cheyne of love" (KnT 15188))an image that Chaucer derived from Boethius9sConsolation of Philosoply (Book I1 meter 8). Boethius concludes the passage with a reference to "Love who rules the sky," a concept that takes us back to the quotation from Troilus above. The idea that Fortune, equated with the "influences of these hevenes hye" (TC I11 618)) operates under the hgher control of God is essentially a Boehan concept found in several passages where Chaucer refers to the celestial sphere. Boethius makes a basic and important dstinction between Fortune (or destiny), whose effects and operations are visible in the mundane sphere, and Providence, the higher power that governs Fortune with an orderly plan, "though to us bestes ben the causez wrie [hidden]" (TC I11 620). Thus in his more philosophical stories, fioilus and Crisyde and The Knight's Tak, Chaucer allows room for an essentially graphic vision of the cosmos, with the Prime Mover's sphere above and transcending all others, as a spiritual paradigm we are at liberty to adopt to aid us in guidmg our lives. N o power of a lesser sphere can "make" us behave badly unless we elect, lke Alison of Bath, to follow our in&ations.Ths vision of the cosmos contains the double perspective on destinal and providential time that Chaucer learned from Boethius, especially at the end of the Consolation Book I V There Lady Philosophy speaks, at the prisoner's request, of the "gretteste of alle thingis that mowen ben axed (Boece IV Prosa 6). T h s greatest of all

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207

discussable matters is the relationship between Fate ("destyne") and Providence ("purveaunce"). In describing the double perspective necessary for an understandmg of this relationship and its implications for our freedom of wdl, Lady Philosophy twice adopts the useful image of a watcher from a tower, perhaps corresponding to the position of the imprisoned Boethius. Here is Chaucer's translation of the relevant passage:

Thllke [that] devyne thought that is iset [placed] and put in the tour (that is to seyn, in the heighte) of the sirnplicite of God, stablissith [establishes] many maner gises to thinges that ben to done; the whiche manere whan that men looken it in thllke pure clennesse of the devyne intelligence, it is ycleped purveaunte [called foresight]; but whanne thrlke [that] manere is referred by men to thinges that it moeveth and disponyth [regulates], than of olde men it was clepyd destyne [called destiny] . . . Who is elles kepere of good or dryvere away of yvel but God, governour and lechere [healer] of thoughtes?The which God, when he hath byholdenfrom the lye tour of his purveaunce, he knoweth what is convenable [appropriate] to every wight [being], and lenyth hem [grants them] that he woot [what he knows] that is convenable to hem. Lo, herof comyth and herof is don this noble miracle of the ordye destynal, what God, that al knoweth, dooth swiche thing, of whche t h g unknowynge folk ben astonyd [astonished]. (Boece n/; Prosa 6; emphasis added) This encompassing view from the tower (that is, from on high) represents the same angle of vision as the "sighte above" (KnT16~2)in the passage that brings Theseus into the woods where Palamon and Arcite are fighting "up to their ankles in b l o o d (KnT 1660). Although the phrase "sight above" is ambiguous and could also refer to that "sight" that humans see when looking upward (that is, at the stars which supposedly control human destiny), what follows disarnbiguates it. Chaucer's fanfare always announces a significant passage, and the coincidence of Theseus's arrival just then is announced with a ten-line dgression using the vocabulary of the extract just given from Chaucer's Boere:

And forth I wol of Theseus yow telle. The destinee, ministre general,

That executeth in the world over al The purveiaunce that God hath seyn biforn, So strong it is that, though the world had sworn The contrarie of a thyng by ye or nay, Yet somtyrne it shal fallen on a day That falleth nat eft withmne a thousand year. For certamly, oure appetites heer, Be it of werre, or pees, or hate, or love, AI is this reuled by the sighte above. This mene I now by myghty Theseus, That for to hunten is so desirus . . .

/i.e., "over all creation" /seen before

/not again /here /war, or peace

( K n T 1662-74; emphasis added)

EvenTheseus is ruled by God's providence, "the sight above." As in the Troihs passage, here in I l e Knight? Tale "destinee" or "fortune" are once again seen operating, under God who rules from on high, to execute His purpose. In an admirable exposition tided "Chance and Destiny in Troihs and Criheyde and The Knight? Tale," JdMann explains that such shifts "from the human to the cosmological plane" as Arcite's fall from his horse under Saturn's influence allow us "a fleeting glimpse of the hidden causes behind what appears to the human onlookers as . ..chance" (89).The same principle applies when Theseus comes "by chance" into the woods where Palamon and Arcite are fighting. At such moments, Mann suggests, "we have a shift in perspective, not the complete vision whch belongs only to providence, seeing 'alle dunges to-hepe [together, at once].'We have left the human plane; we have not left the cosmos, or the realm of time" ("Chance and Destiny" 89-90). It is a fundamental aspect of our mortal condtion that "we bestes" may not leave the realm of time to obtain the complete vision, to share the sight above of the one order that "embraseth alle thinges" (Boece, Iv prosa 6). (Nevertheless, see Chapter 10 for a look beyond this limited perspective to explore another possibility.) But once we have conceived, even as mortals, of a timeless sphere in which "purveaunce" (foresight) is possible, the movement of the planets across the apparently fixed zodiacal signs becomes an apt metaphor for all that seems arbitrary and beyond our control or under-

CHAUCER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD PROPHECY AND PLANETARY INFLUENCES 209

standing in the sublunary world (literally, the world beneath the Moon's sphere). It seems then to many that what operates beyond our control, out there beyond the Moon's sphere, must control us, and the analogical reasoning of the ancients projected this control upon the planets. "0Fortune .. 0 influences of thise hevenes hye!" exclaims the Troilus narrator (TC I11 617-1818), and "Fortune hath yeven us hadversitee," says Arcite, who then lays the blame more directly upon Saturn (KnT 1086-S9). But Aquinas, like Boehus, points out that "nothing prevents one from resisting (Summa lleologica 1.1.115.q, quoted more fuly above). A full understanding of the implications for free will of the divine foresight is not germane to the purpose of this discussion, fortunately, because, llke the narrator of The Nun's Priest1Tale,

.

I ne can nat bulte it to the bren

/i.e., analyze it

As kan the hooly doctour Augustyn, O r Boece, or the Bisshop Bradwardyn, Wheither that Goddes worthy fonvityng Streyneth me nedely for to doon a thyng"Nedely" clipe I syrnple necessiteeO r elles, if fiee choys be graunted me.

More capable of bulting these particular matters to the bren are Jill Mann and Alastair M i n n i ~ . ~ In both Trailus and CrisTde and The Knight'sTale the problem of control over one's personal fate is of central importance, as are the ideas of Boethius on this subject. The radically dfferent tones of these two poems arise partly because of the personality through which Chaucer addresses the problem in each. Bumbling Pandarus is swept up in events that exceed his understanding when he tries to seize control of destiny on behalf of Troilus and Criseyde, by casting horoscopes and attempting to understand the stars, among other means. Theseus-while showing respect to the gods, though overloolung S a t u r n A e f l y tries to make a "virtue of necessity" (KnT304z). He attempts to assert control over chance events, but he compromises when

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IMPLICATIONS

he realizes that he cannot achieve that control, and then provides, as J d Mann observes, "a civilized context within which [chance] can operate" ("Chance and Destiny" 88). This explains his buildmg of an amphtheater featuring temples to the planetary gods for a battle of uncertain outcome between equally matched rivals. From our sublunary perspective, fortune must be the decidmg factor in such an evenly matched contest. In some sense fortune is represented in the amphitheater scheme by association of that building with the ecliptic and the major planets and their gods (except for Jupiter, who has a different status in the poem). Theseus's "Firste Moevere" speech makes it dear that he possesses an understandmg that Pandarus lacks in Troilus; at least Theseus knows that God knows "what therof he mente" (KnT 2989). Even when we cannot make out God's pattern ("To us bestes ben the causez wrye"), destiny, executing God's "pur~e~aunce," carries that pattern out. Theseus asserts that "maystow understonde and seen at ye" ("you can understand and see with your own eye[s]"; KnT3o16)the evidence for such patterns, and he then gives a list of examples of this evidence (KnT ?01~-34).J d Mann adds that "only fiom the perspective of the First Mover, which is forever inaccessible to mortals, could the h a l causes of events be understood, and the shape which would give them final meaning ~erceived ("Chance and Destiny" 90). Chaucer was intrigued by the emblem of order implicit in the dance of the planets against the stars and the mathematical problems provided by time and the stars. He was dearly also interested in the way others perceived &S celestial movement and the variant meanings they ascribed to i t A receptive attitude of mind is demonstrated in a passage that H. M. Smyser claims to be an "avowal of faith" in astrology by Chaucer himself, the apostrophe to the "imprudent Emperour of Rome" in f i e Man of h ' r Tale, In this passage which Chaucer added to his source, Smyser suggests, "Chaucer need not be suspected of playing a role when he expresses his opinion of astrology" (Smyser ?72).9 Leaving &S possibiliry of Chaucer's narrative stance for consideration below, let us examine the words themselves in this passage from I h e Man of h ' s Tale. It follows two other declamatory and astrologypacked stanzas as the emperor, ironically in view of the "purveiance" ascribed to hun at h e 247, sends his daughter Custance off to marry the Sowdan of Syria at an apparently inauspicious time:

CHAUCER'S A-TTITUDE TOWARD PROPHECY AND PLANETARY INFLUENCES

Was ther no philosophre m a1 thy tom? Is no tyrne bet than oother in swich cas? Of viage is ther noon eleccioun, Namely to folk of heigh condicioun? Noght whan a roote is of a b u d y yknowe? Alas, we been to lewed or to slowe!

211

/i.e., astrologer /better, such a case /voyage, choice /high status /moment of birth is known /are too ignorant

(MLT 31-15) Here the narrator laments, in his typically emotive style, how d~fficultit is to find personal guidance in the stars even for hgh-status people whose natal horoscopes are known. Instead of readmg Lke an avowal of belief in the truth of astrology, these lines convey a profound skepticismabout the human ability to ascertain the meaning of celestial objects. T k ability is needed, for example, in horary "eleccioun," using the stars to determine a propitious time for beginning a venture such as that of Chaucer. Chaucer emphasizes repeatedly that it is impossible for us, as pilgrims in our "unelected~~ voyage on earth, to know or to anticipate accurately what the funre holds. Sometimes t h s doubt comes from the protagonist's point of view: We witen nat what thing we preyen heere: We faren as he that dronke is as a mous. A dronke man woot we1 he hath an hous, But he noot which the righte wey is thider.

/know not, pray for /fare /knows /knows not (KnT 1260-63)

Sometimes the doubt is cast from an ironically more knowledgeable point of view, as when the Old Man in The Pardoner? Tak speaks to the three young rioters who are on a quest to slay a personified Death: "Now, sires," quod he, "if that yow be so leef To fjmde Deeth, turne up this croked wey . . . "

/eager

(PardT 760-6~) H e knows, but they cannot, that the death they w d meet in turning the way he suggests is not the "person" they have in mind.

Skepticism about the human ability to understand-both in this specific matter of foreknowledge and in general, both in earnest and in game-seems to be a firmly integrated part of Chaucer's personal philosophy, but such skepticism was also much in the air at the time that he was writing, especially in Oxford (see Delaney 1-35)).The very plot of lie Mhn $ h ' s Tak is based on the human incapacity to share God's foresight, developed, as V A. Kolve has shown, into an emblem of humanity adrifi (Imagey 297-358). When the old sultanness, the scorpionic "cursed krone" of that tale, slays her own son in order to take power in Syna then casts his widow Custance out to sea again, adrifi, the emotionally engaged narrator blesses the young woman by invoking God as the lord (controller) of Fortune: 0 my Custance, M of benignytee, 0 Emperoures yonge doghter deere, He that is lord of Fortune be thy steere!

/pilot

(MLT 447-49) This narrator's blessing may represent Chaucer's own answer to the problem that "We witen nat what thing we preyen heere" (KnT 1260, 1267). We are not good at &ding our way spiritually. Therefore it may be to our advantage to adopt, he seems to imply, an attitude of skeptical fideism, faith although, or even because, one does not know what fortune awaits, and to depend upon God as the Lord of Fortune rather than upon those lesser causes that are merely his "hierdes" (herders). Custance provides a model for this attitude. Other tales demonstrate Chaucer's opinion that it is foolish to think one can depend upon the planets, those delegated dispensers of fortune, because the "gods" lead us astray much as our own ignorance does. Arcite, for example, is twice misled, both by the promise made to him by Mars in The Knight%Tab (a man preparing to do battle who is promised victory by his god might expect to survive), and earlier by the messenger-god Mercury in a dream: Him thoughte how that the wynged god Mercurie Beforn hyrn stood and bad hyrn to be murie . . .

CHAUCER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD PROPHECY AND PLANETARY INFLUENCES

And seyde hyrn thus: "To Atthenes shaltou wende, Ther is thee shapen of thy WO an endel'

213

/shall you go /made for thee

(KnT 1385-86,q9r+p) Arcite goes to Athens having taken the dream advice from Mercury at face value, thus naturally assuming that, if he is commanded to "be merry," the promised end of his woe w d be joy. But Egeus, Theseus's father, supplements Mercury's prediction by saying later, "Deeth is an ende of every worldly soore" (KnTz850), and so it is for Arcite. Arcite's fLture is "shapen" (shaped) complete with its abrupt conclusion, and whether it is "by aventure or destynee" (chance or destiny), "Whan a thyng is shapen, it shal be" (KnS1465-66). In contrast to this dour view of destiny, Boethius says, and demonstrates by spectacularly arguing himself out of prison in spirit, "It is set in your hand . . . what fortune yow is levest" ("It lies in your own hand . . . what fortune you prefer" [Boece, n !Prosa 7]). Aquinas's point is much the same when he says that "the wise man rules the stars . . . forasmuch as he rules his own passions." These philosophers would argue that it is only appearance or oneb own weak w d that makes "the wey slider" (slippery; KnT1264), or makes it seem as though Thls world nys but a thurghfare f d of WO, And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and 60.

/is only /are

(KnT 2846-47) Chaucer's Parson on the Canterbury pilgrimage defines the spiritual journey's true end as the "Jerusalem celestial" (ParsProl51). The lesser end in "deeth that Theseus's father, Egeus, perceives for our "thurghfare ful of WO" is a moment about which the patrons of astrologers sometimes inquired most anxiously. Chaucer, however, as an intimate reader of Boethius, probably would ascribe any accuracy in a prediction about the hour of death to chance rather than to human "purveiaunce": Thdke ordenaunce [the "ordre destynal," or course of fate under God] moveth the hevene and the sterres . . . and this dke [same] ordre constreyneth the fortunes and

the dedes of men by a bond of causes . . . [which] passen out fio the begpnynges

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IMPLICATIONS

of the unmoevable purveaunce . . . And this ordre constreyneth by I s propre stablete [own stability] the moevable thingis . . for which it es that alle thingis semen

.

to ben [be] conhs and trouble to us men, for we no mowen nut considere thilke ordenaunce [we may not contemplate that order]. (Boece, IY Prosa 6; emphasis added)

Despite the innate inability of humans to understand divine order, the narrator of The Man of Lawi Tak speaks in favor of the idea that our lives, or at least our deaths, are inscribed in "thllke large book/ Which that men clepe [call] the hevene" (MLT 190-91): For in the sterres, derer than is glas, Is writen, God woot, whoso koude it rede, The deeth of every man, withouten drede . . .

/knows, whoever can /doubt

(M= 194-96)

SOfar as "nativitez" are concerned, this statement seems definitive. The narrator follows it with a confirming series of examples of famous menHector, Achdles, and so forth-whose dates of death were foretold "many a winter therbiforn" (MLT 197-202). In these lines Chaucer is paraphrasing a passage in the Megacosmos of Bernardus Silvestris, where Bernardus is definitely endorsing the validity of astrological divination. Bernardus concludes his series of predetermined deaths by saying: "Thus the Creator wrought, that ages to come might be beheld in advance, signified by starry ciphers" (Wetherbee, Cosmographia 76). Chaucer, however, substitutes for this conclusion a view that is directly opposite, denying the interpretive validity of astrology and saying instead, concerning the "book of the heavens," that Mennes wittes ben so dulle That no wight kan we1 rede it atte M e .

/are /person, entirely (MLT 202-2oj)

The heavenly book exists, but this fact has little to do with us for, earthbound, we are too dull of wit to read the celestial language.11

CHAUCER'S AlTlTUDE TOWARD PROPHECY AND PLANETARY INFLUENCES

215

Following soon after dus giving-and-takmg-away passage about the v&dity of natal astrology is the passage on horary astrology in which H. M. Smyser fhds implicit Chaucer's emphatic assent to the validity of that art. Everything about this passage (MLTz95-?r5) is more complex than the previous one, from tone to allegorical astronomical detad, but it ends on precisely the same note as the other. The narrator's question is what we have been asking Chaucer himself: "Of viage is ther noon eleccioun?"(MLTp2). Can we not select our time of voyage? Is it not possible to navigate through life by the stars?Again the answer comes pat and as discouraging as before: "Allas, we been to lewed or to slowe!" (MLT ?15). In the Man of Law's story about a castaway woman, the narrative stance itself reflects t h s human ignorance; because the teller hunself does not seem to be aware of the allegorical implications associated with h s own heroineprotagonist. AsV A. Kolve points out, the "Emperoures yonge doghter deere" (MLT447) whom dus emperor of Rome sends out "unto the Barbre nacioun" (281) is called also "the doghter of hooly chlrche" (675). This identification puts into somewhat different perspective the early reference to "a1 the purveiance/ That th'Emperour, of his grete noblesse, /Hath shapen for his doghterV(MLTq7-49). Here, as in many of the tales, and especially in the frame tale of the Canterbury pilgrimage, the narrative about a journey may be taken as a parable or exemplum. As duldren of Holy Church, all those in Chaucer's audence are in Custance's boat, apparently adrifi, and they must decide how to respond to that situation. Astrological "eleccioun" of &S voyage even for "folk of heigh condicioun" is irrelevant, because the course is finally set by God, not by the stars and not by us. Shaping our course (as Custance's mortal father, with less purveiance, shapes hers), God-

By certeine meenes eke, as knowen clerkts, Dooth t h p g for certein ende that f i lderk is To mannes wit, that for oure ignorance Ne konne noght knowe his prudent purveiance.

/means often /does things /for: because of /[man's wit] cannot

(MLT 48-83) Thus Chaucer demonstrates that "spheres" exist even at the mundane level of understandmg. The narrator of The Man $ L w t Tab, in keeping with the

216

IMPLICATIONS

credulity that is traditionally found in such tales,12 tends to see the lesser planetary forces at work on the romance level of the story: "0Mars . . . 0 fieble moone" (MIT 30?-~06).We, on the contrary, in learning that the exemplary Custance is being driven ashore in heathen lands for a purpose, have the option to read her story fiom a perspective more in tune with the "sighte above." Nineteenth-century scholars indined toward the condescending assumption that Chaucer, living in a superstitious age, shared those superstitions uncritically, as he indeed has some of his Canterbury pilgrims do. The current general opinion about Chaucer's own attitude toward astrology in The CanterburyTabs accords fairly well with that expressed early in this century by Florence Grirnm in her book Artronomical Lore in ChauceTthe first attempt to give this lore full attention. Grimrn concludes that Chaucer's attitude toward astrology "was about this": He was very much interested in it, perhaps in much the same way Dante was, because of the philosophcal ideas at the basis of astrology and out of curiosity as to the problems of fiee wd, providence, and so on, that naturally arose fiom it. For the shady practices and quackery connected with its use in his own day he had nothing but scorn. (58)

This sensible opinion, whtch nevertheless skn-ts the issue of whether Chaucer believed in planetary influences, was supplemented the following year by 1 0.Wedel. On the whole he argues for Chaucer's fatahsm but comments: "By the dose of the fourteenth century, the subject of free wdl and stellar influence had gathered about itself a whole 1iterature.Yet we find Chaucer deliberately ignoring all this!" (14~-48). Chaucer's reference to Bradwardine in The Nun's Priest's Tab (3242) assures us, however, that he was at least aware of that bishop's treatise on free wdl (De Causa Dei), and as h s rewriting of the passage fiom Bernardus's figacosmos shows, Chaucer does not ignore the argument so much as bend it to his own skeptical ends. That Chaucer believes our destinies are "shapen" seems pretty certain when he reiterates the idea so ofien in different ways. That he believes this shaping of the future is "ywriten," in the stars or otherwise, would seem to be suggested by the "sky

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217

is a book" passage of E3e Man of h ' s Tale.13That we cannot read the syrnbols accurately is something Chaucer consistently restates and dramatizes. The book of the fbture is open, but written in God's language, not ours. Planetary influences and gaining access to information about those influences are two dfferent thmgs, and it is by no means clear how much Chaucer believes in the former. As we have seen, Aquinas does believe. In respect to our bodily appetites, he says unequivocally, "The influence of the stars is clearly felt . . . Astrologers, consequently are able to foretell the truth in the majority of cases, especially when they undertake general predictions" (Summa Tbeologica1.1.115.4). When Chaucer refers to planetary d u e n c e s in h s Eeatise, he is reporting what "thse astrologiens" say, and dstancing hunself with disclaimers about "pagan rites." When he mentions such influences in his fictions they tend to be allegory, as in The Comphint of Mars (which mainly concerns planetary motions and courtly love rather than astrology per se); or an ironic narrative stance casts doubt on them, as in The Man of h ' s Tale; or they characterize someone, as in the case of the Wife of Bath; or they are an expression of the operation of Fortune as the executrix of the divine Foresight. In this latter case one becomes uncertain whether Chaucer believes in these influences as actual emanations proceeding toward us from an interaction between the planetary spheres, the eighth sphere of the stars, and the ninth sphere banded by the equinoctial and its signs, or whether he is using them rather as philosophical concepts to express the Boethian distinction between "destyne" and "purveiance." One thing is clear, however. Whether or not Chaucer believes with Aquinas that planetary influences affect our worldly appetites (though he probably does), and despite his belief in a supreme Being who controls the celestial movements and foresees what is to come, he has no faith in the practice of astrology as a viable access to God's foresight, that is, as a method of reading individual human fbtures in the stars. (Finding when the Moon will enhance a spring tide as in The Franklids Tale is different from seeking to know the destiny of an individual.) There appear to be two major reasons for Chaucer's doubt concerning our ability to interpret human fbtures fiom celestial objects. The first reason is pldosophcal. As "bestes" (sublunary creatures), we are too ignorant and

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our wits too dull to grasp a &vine knowledge and purpose that lies so far above our understanding. The future consists not only of "certeyne dayes and duracioun" but also of the First Moevere's "heigh entente" in establishing them (KnTq8y96). We cannot know that intent. The second reason is more specifically religious and returns us to the subject of Goddes pyvetee and the transgression of that sacred "privacy." It would not benefit us spiritually to be privy to knowledge about the future, especially to that concerning the duration of our own lives, because ignorance about the hture is an important element of our free wd. That uncertain9 itself alerts us to the importance of choosing well, because each of us, whde keeping in mind that greater Book in the hands of Godshal thynke that oure life is in no slkernesse [certainq], and eek [also] that alle the richesses in this world ben in aventure [are in the hands of fortune] and passen as a shadwe on the wal. (ParsT 1065)

Thus the spheres are kept aloof from us and their hierarchies maintained, rendering astrological divination theoretically possible but futile for ignorant humans and, more specifically, impious for Christians. We may gaze at the stars and take comfort there as they remind us of the peaceful order embracing the cosmos: Loke thou and behoold the heights of the sovereyn hevene. Ther kepin the sterres, by ryghtfd alliaunce of thynges, hir [their] oolde pees. (Boece,

n/: metrum 6)

But it seems that the b r e , the "purveiance" of God who has set those stars in motion and watches the plan unfold is, in Chaucer's view and that of most of his philosophical contemporaries, God's secret. John of Salisbury (ca. 1115-II~O),with whose Policmticus Chaucer appears to display some farniliarity,~4has an opinion about astrology and divination that closely approximates the one Chaucer himself seems to hold. It makes a good conclusion to this chapter:

CHAUCER'S ATITUDE TOWARD PROPHECY AND PLANETARY INFLUENCES

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There is indeed much that is common to astronomy and astrology, but the latter tends to exceed the bonds of reason, and, differing in its aim, does not edghten its

. . .As to the existence of an art by which one can give exponent but misleads b. truthfd replies to all the questions with regard to the hture, I am persuaded on the testimony and evidence of many things that either there is no such thing or that it has not yet been made known to man.15 (Markland 21, I

~ )

CHAPTER 9

THE "ARTIFICIAL DAY" OF PI LCRIMACE

Unstuck fiom objects, meanings are unsure. Gazing on unzoned stars the mind takes flightThe Astrolabe precisely marks each place. Gary Snyder, "Numerous Broken Eggs"

"Chaucer sought to imitate time's passage in only a broadly v e r i s d a r way," says V A. Kolve (Imagey 285). As he hrther explains in his note, "Chaucer's concern was to create the fiction of a chronology, not a realistic chronology per se" (474). This is certady true, and thejction of a chronology w d be the subject of t h s chapter. Although fictional, the chronology of Chaucer's pilgrimage is also authentic in so far as it is an actual record of the turning sky on an eighteenth day of April, one that w d be shown in the next chapter to be a particular April 18.This chronology is not applicable to an actual trip on horseback to Canterbury, however, so one must take seriously the point that Kolve is malung. The events framed by that celestially defined time are clearly not to be understood as representing a realistic schedule, any more than the harne tale is mimetic in many other respects. Chaucer's awareness of the principle of mimesis is demonstrated by the following passage from Troilw and Criseyde:

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221

/perhaps, expect But now, paraunter, som man wayten wolde That every word, or soonde, or look, or cheere /expression /should repeat Of Troilus that I rehercen sholde . . . /truly, before For sothe, I have naught herd it don er ths In story non. (Troilus and Cris~de,111, 4g1-gj, 498-5151) Chaucer does not intend to include everything that happens in h s Canterbury fiction either, only what pertains to his purpose. In l 3 e Canterbury Tah, meals and stopovers, sights along the way, and even to a great degree the characters of the pilgrims themselves, do not pertain to h s purpose sufficiently for Chaucer to give much attention to them. Although his frame tale is only sporadically mimetic, his pilgrims are primarily types rather than persons (Mann, Estates Satire), and in their tales "it is chefly the material that speaks, not in any highly characterized way the tellers through the material" (Kolve, Imagery 220). Nevertheless, in the sky above, Chaucer is presenting us with evidence of so authentic a passing of time that it may be measured with a scientdic instrument. Clearly the sky does pertain to h s purpose in some important way.Ths most authenticating of h s details is the main element whereby Chaucer leads us beyond the particular beyond its token pilgrims with their "distinction of stories,'' and beyond its day, to a retrospectively (but not rigid) symbolic understanding both of the frame tale and of the h a 1 sequence of tales that it frames. Earlier readers, if they thought about it at all, assumed that the pilgrims' horseback journey from Southwark to Canterbury took a single day, a journey possible only at a consistently fast pace without storytellmg.~Supporting this notion of a consistently fast speed is the Oxfmd English Dictionary's entry for the word "canter," defined as an "easy gallop"; it apparently originates in association with mounted pilgrims traveling to Canterbury (see also Onions, s.v. "canter"). In an 1855 lecture published in his Historical Memorials of Canterbury, Arthur P Stanley, Dean of Westminster, associates various words with pilgrimage: a "roamer" is someone who has been to Rome; a "saunterer" one who has wandered through the "sainte terre" or Holy Land (Onions does not agree with these); and, he explains, the word "canter" is "an abbreviation,

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comparatively recent, of the 'Canterbury gallop,' derived, no doubt, from the ambling pace of the Canterbury pilgrims" (Stanley 212). Perhaps the easy canter is an ideal pace for a serious pilgrim to sustain when bound for a s h e on horseback, though one could hardly get from London to Canterbury in a single day without some fairly hard ridmg and probably a change of mount as well. But even a fast canter is not a pace one can imagine being kept up by Chaucer's nine-and-twenty pilgrims plus the Host while entertaining each othera2Nevertheless, Arthur P Stanley observes that Chaucer's pilgrimage journey, "although at that time usually occupying three or four days, is compressed into the hours between sunrise and sunset on an April day" (215). This is as concise and accurate a statement as one could hope for from a reader not using an astrolabe. Unfortunately, by referring to a usual "three or four days" for the London to Canterbury journey, he opened the way to a century of romantic conjecture. The improbabfity of Chaucer's pilgrims travehg at a h h speed led late nineteenth-century scholars, trained by readmg novels to expect realism in narrative, to propose several days for the journey. Probably following Stanley, whose book about Canterbury was much respected, they usually proposed three or four days.Ths soon became dogma and the assumption std, to some degree, persists among scholars. Consider Albert C. Baugh's ( 1 ~ 6summary ~) of the situation: How many days the pilgrims were on the road and at what places they stopped for the night Chaucer does not tell us. They c e r t d y did not make the fifty-five d e journey in one day. We know of a dozen persons in real life who made the trip, and they took fi-omone to four days, dependmg on the need for haste. One of those who did it in a single day was Joan of Kent, the mother of Richard U: . . . who, menaced by WatTyler and his rebels in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381,made the trip fiom Canterbury to London without stopping. Most travelers took four days, with stops at Dartford, Rochester, and Ospringe, or three days with stops at Dartford and either Rochester or Ospringe. It is not necessary to be dogrnatic.To the present ecLtor the probability seems to favor three overnight stops (the intervals are then about fifteen rmles each), with ten d e s to go on the fourth day, but the possibility of a threeday journey is not to be denied.

(233)

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223

Baugh seems to derive most of his information from John S. P, Tatlock's 1906 PMLA article, "The Duration of the Canterbury Pilgrimage." There Tatlock, deriving important support fiom Stanley's account of hstorical trips to and through Canterbury, develops the scheme of a four-day journey with stopovers for the night at Dartford, Rochester, and Ospringe. The whole article has merit, but Tatlock relegates what may be his most persuasive datum to a footnote (485): "Twenty d e s a day in winter, and durty in surnmer, were in the sixteenth century reckoned in official accounts a day's journey. Members of Parliament were paid on h s basis" (he cites Porrit, 157). Chaucer's pilgrims, however, were not on business. They were enjoying their journey all too much, it would seem, in the Parson's view. It is likely that in real life, compared with those members of Parliament, they would go about half the speed or less, traveling not at a canter but at a more leisurely amble. Tatlock and Baugh both base their "historical" visions of the pilgrimage on F. J. Furnivall; attempt in his Tmporary Prgace of 1868 "to show the right Order of the Tales and the Days and Stages of the PilgrimageH(his subtitle). Furnivall was perhaps inspired to compose h s enthusiastic reahstic fourday travelogue by considering Stanley's remark (quoted above) in the context of Charles Dickens's first novel, l 3 e Pickwick Papers. T h s novel was published serially in 1836 and 1837, and then in book form in 1837. It was immediately popular; in fact the editor of one edhon (republished in 1993from a much earlier one, with no date given) fondly believes it to be "widely regarded as the most famous of all pre-Victorian novels" (n.p.). In Furnivall's nineteenth century, many male readers may well have regarded it thus. Chapter 2 of the book, titled "The First Day's Journey, and the First Evening's Adventures; with Their Consequences," gives an account of the travels of Mr. Pickwick with members of h s "club" along the main road fiom London to RochesterChaucer's road. Although Skeat's endorsement of Furnivall's scheme more than anything else probably influenced Chaucerians to accept the four-day journey (Skeat, Complete Works I11 375-76), Dickens's title for his congruent journey in this extremely popular novel may also have had some influence in fostering an expectation of Dickensian realism in Chaucer's work. Dickens's chapter title, "The First Day's Journey," echoes throughout Chaucer studies to this day.

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The question is, how realistically are we meant to look at the Chaucerian journey and, above all, to dock it? In reality it is impossible for thirty pilgrims on horseback each to tell a story so that the whole company could be entertained and informed by it, all the while ridrng along a track sometimes narrow and often muddy from April showers. Nevertheless, the nineteenthcentury "three or four days' journeyMhad gained so much authoriq by the mid-twentieth century that even fairly recently one may come upon pronouncements concerning "the tales of the first day" and the lke. Yet, as Baugh observes, Chaucer himself says nothing at all about separate days. The scheme of several days is completely the result of fabrication, probably supported by analogy with the several days of Boccaccio's Decameron or Dante's weeklong pilgrimage, or perhaps with the first outing of the Pidcwick Club. Discussions that s t d persist tend to concern the number of days and the timing of the journey, but the scheme of several days remains doctrine. For example, when Larry D. Benson introduces Fragment 11, he comments, "why Chaucer specifies this date [April 181 and whether he intends it to be the first or second day of the journey are not known" (Riverside Chaucer Even more recently Derek Brewer asserts that "the astronomical timing described in The Parson5 Prologue shows that it was about four o'clock in the afternoon on 20 April" (New introduction yp>--that is, two days later. Brewer, hke many before hun, has been led astray by the calculations of astronomers. (See Chapter 3 for discussion.) Figure 9.1 presents an "Imaginary Log of the Canterbury Pilgrimage" developed years ago to accompany Baugh's edrtion of Chaweri Major Poety for classroom use. Since Baugh incorporated the Bradshaw shift (which gives the tales a geographical ordering), it was easy to impose an order of days upon this itinerary. Reassuring to students though it may have been, the log now looks h o s t as dated as Furnivall's much more elaborately schematized concept of the journey ( k p o r a y Pr$me 42-43). Nevertheless, the geographc context remains usefd as a paradigm into which may now be inserted the times of day that are mentioned or otherwise inhcated in the Salts.Times expressed unambiguously in Chaucerystext are shown in parentheses, times expressed obliquely are bracketed and questioned, and times that pose problems (both occurring in the morning) are bracketed and asterisked. All references to time on the pilgrimage appear in bold type so that the sequence

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'~abard,mi. 0

"1st Day" Tales of the Knight, Miller, Reeve [about 6:30 AM], Dartford, mi.l 6 Cook. Halt for the night at Dartford. "2nd Day" Tales of the Man of Law (10 AM), Shipman, Prioress, two by Chaucer, Monk [Noon?], Nun's Priest. Rochester, mi. 30 Halt for the night at Rochester. "3rd Day" Tales of the Wife of Bath, Friar, Summoner, Clerk, Merchant, Squire [*9AM/2:45 PM?] and Franklin Ospringe, mi. 47 Halt for the night at Ospringe. "4th Day" Tales of the Physician, Pardoner, Second Nun, Canon's Yeoman, Manciple [*AM], Parson (4 PM) Canterbury, mi. 57 Arrival at Canterbury (not mentioned in the text).

9.1. Four-Day Imaginary Log of the CanterburyPilgrimage. Diagram by the author.

they present and the problems they create may be dearly &splayed. The order here places Rochester before Sittingbourne and 10 A.M. before afternoon, both intuitively correct, but it w d be recalled that the mid-afternoon hour indicated by the abrupt interruption at the end of The Squire'sTak, which allows for this arrangement, is ambiguous. In the "Sittingbourne" crux that some critics seem to find the most irritating problem in Chaucer's works, the Summoner promises to requite the Friar for his insulting tale before reaching that town (WBPr01846-47)~and then he affirms that he has done so just before they arrive "at town" (Sum1 2 ~ ~ 4In) .his four-day scheme Furnivall sees the travelers stopping for "&ner" (i.e., a hearty lunch) at rmle 40 (Sittincgbourne) on the h r d day. In 1965 Kenneth Sisarn wrote that "conjectural interpretations are an unsafe foundation to build h g h on" in analyses of medieval literature (Strutwe 6o), yet in the 1923 introduction to his edition of The Ckrki Tale he had himself used the several-day scheme as the foundation for buildmg a little drama around Furnivall's lunchtime possibility:

The Wife of Bath had begun the h r d day with her prologue proclaiming the domination of wives over their husbands; she had denounced clerks generally for their railing at women, and in particular had told how she gained the mastery over "a clerk of Oxenford" (her fifth husband), and made hlm burn his "cursed book of stories against her sex . . . As soon as her tale is done, the Friar breaks in with his story of a surnner [summoner] whom the Devil carried off for his sins; and the Surnner replies in kmd. Perhaps lunch at Sittingbourne broke off the quarrel; but when they took the road again, the Host, who was a good master of ceremonies, must have felt that tempers were rising, and that the stories of the morning had not been very edifying. So, to redress the balance, he calls on the modest Clerk. (Sisarn, Clerkes Tale xix-xx)

Even earlier in the century Robert Kilburn Root took pleasure in a s d a r l Y novel-lke approach to the times and places along the pilgrimage, elaborating upon and criticizing Furnivall. His influential 1906 book, The Poety of Chaucer, did much to impress upon later readers this scheme of several days, and his dramatized retelling vividly incorporates Chaucer's references to the time of day on the journey (Root 155-58). This is how quickly Furnivall's idea became dogma, though elaborating it was a group effort among Chaucer scholars. Above all he gave us the legacy of the "roadside drama," whch stole the show for decades and is now frequently derided. Most of those who have commented upon the four-day scheme seem to h& of the trip as one-way only, despite Harry Badly's personal plan for each pilgrim to tell four stories (two going and two on the way back), and his promise of a "soper" when the pilgrims return to h s inn. Although the fiction of a return journey was first attempted, so far as there is record, in the prologue of the near-contemporary Tale of Beyn (summarized by Cooper, Guide 415-17), the only full and serious argument for Chaucer having designed the entire two-way journey is by Charles A. Owen, Jr., in Pilgrimage and Storytelling ( 1 ~ 7 ~Owen ). argues that Chaucer f k t thought of the journey as a one-way pilgrimage, then later conceived of Harry's plan for four stories per person (Owen's idea is echoed by Pearsall, L923). T h s new plan, Owen says, would result in a two-way journey of five days, including three days to travel to Canterbury and two days to return to Southwark. Owen schematizes the journey in a way that in fact does make sense of the two most problem-

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atic references to the hour in the text, the "prime" of The Squire? Tale (SqT73) and the apparent "morning" of The Manc.~tnriple?Prologue (MancProl16). Kolve considers it more likely, however, that Chaucer moved fiom overarnbition (four tales for each pilgrim, 120 tales in all) to somedung nearer possibhty (one tale for each); that he conceived the work, horn the beginning, as a ddectical interplay between the pleasures of the narrative contest and the religious imperatives of human life, i.e., between the pastimes that "shorten" the pilgrims' way and the majesty of the shme they seek; and that the most irnportant change in h s program for the poem was ...the decision to end with the pilgrims just outside the walls of Canterbury, contemplating by means of The Parson? Prolop and Tale the way of penance and the allegoricalpilgrimage of the soul.

As has been seen, Professor Brewer is of the same opinion (New Introduction 274-75). Donald R. Howard adds to the discussion the point that a pilgrimage was traditionally "conceived as a one-way journey and so described (Writers and Pilgrims 97). The way the tradrtional three- or four-day scheme has influenced even Kolve, however, is suggested by the sentence following the passage quoted above, where he speaks of the first of the several days of the pilgrimage to Canterbury: "I t h d that the design of the first day, in its movement to The Man of h? Tale, expresses that progress in small and bears a modular relation to the whole" (Imagey 43-74), Later, Kolve states that he does not "see any need for assuming that the poem is going to divide the journey into drstinct days" (4.74). The problem lingers. Recently the scheme of several days has led J. D. North astray in h s dating enterprise: "The Manciple began his tale in the morning, but now it is four in the afternoon. If,furthermore, there is a consistent ordering of the tales into days of the month of April, and if the usual reasoning is to be accepted, then the tales [of the final manuscript fragments] belong to 20 April." But "the astronomical evidence . .. is flatly inconsistent with this date" (Universe 125). North demonstrates this inconsistency by arguing that since "the shadow [he means the Sun] was 'nat . . . Degrees nyne and twenty as in highte,' we may perhaps rule out . . . dates including and after 18 April" (125). (For a different interpretation of these

22 8

IMPLICATIONS

lines see Chapter 3.) A few pages later the date scheme is s t d worrying him "Problems only arise when one tries ... to combine a precise date [in Be Prol o p e to the Parson? Tab] with that of 18 April in The Prologue to the Man of Lw'r Tale, this being usually taken to belong to the second day. As soon as we see that &S date cannot be made compatible with that of the final sermon, then all dating is suspect. How are we to escape from this ddernma?"(132). North finally argues that Chaucer either gave up on the Pilgrimage date when faced "with some more compelling need," or that he "lost track of some of the detail, such as the date of 18 April" (1~2-33). North has the pilgrims arrive in Canterbury on "Good Friday, 16 April 1389, or just possibly 17 April q9q" (536), chiefly because he is not thmking of the journey in terms of a single day. When an astronomer of that repute comes to such a conclusion, in outright defiance of the one date Chaucer gives-pril 18-it is no surprise that people are inched to disparage, as Charles Muscantine does, "the hopeless old game of constructing a calendar for the pilgrimageH(review of Kolve's Imagey 676). Fortunately there is another way out of the dating dilemma that does not ascribe indrfference or amnesia to Chaucer, though it does require us to r e h quish the fantasy of a real journey, with nighttime stopovers and meals taken along the way that Chaucer supposedly forgot to mention. Readmg the text in a more symbolic manner than the earlier scholars have done, Howard proposes that Chaucer "may have meant to employ, as he did in the fioilusJ a dual time-scheme--one reckoning of time realistic and factual, another artistic and symbolical. In the fioilus the artistic time-scheme is the passage of a year, a revolution of the seasons; in Be Canterbuy Tabs it is the passage of an 'artificial day,' measured in twelve hours from sunrise to sunset" (Idea 166). This statement inadvertently echoes Arthur l? Stanley's of over a century earlier. The twelve daylight hours to which Howard refers are the n o w - f d iar unequal hours, equal in length to the night hours only at the equinoxes, longer in summer and shorter in winter. Even more recently, in 1983 Derek Traversi has said, betraying hunself s t d encumbered by Furnivall's notion of the several days: -

-

I t is noteworthy that the Parson's sermon has been delivered at a time when the first shadows of evening begin to f d across the assembled company [see Parson1 Pro1

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1-51; not so much, it may be, with a sense of menace as one of fdfillment, of the gathering of the day's activities into the time of rest, of natural, appropriate release. There is between the early setting out of the pilgrims in the General Prologue and t h s h a 1 reference to evening the sense of a day's complete passage whch imposes a second time-scheme, based on the passage of the sun during a single day, upon that of the various "days," themselves imprecisely defined, into whch the pilgrim journey is dwided. (Canterbury Tah 16-I~)

The phrase "imprecisely defined" is inappropriate, because the journey is not dwided into days at all. Sigrnund Eisner may be the only modern scholar who, at the time of this writing, has determinedly set aside the several-day scheme of the tales and argued definitively for a single "Canterbury Day" (1992). This act requires giving up two separate dogmas, that of the "several days" and with it the more recent idea, originally put forward by North ("Kalenderes" 422-26) and endorsed by Eisner himself ("Chaucer's Use" 21, and Kalendarium jj), of Chaucer's "mistake" in makmg the date in The Parson's Prologw earlier than the previously stated April 18.Both ideas have been as gripping upon our imaginations as the emperor's new clothing. The remainder of this chapter will review the symbolic time scheme of a single day for what realistically would have been a longer journey, and the Dantean timekeeping that provides a model for Chaucer's technique. Derek Traversi suggests in the passage quoted just above that Chaucer's time scheme is vague, that he offers us merely "the sense of a day's complete passage9'(emphasis added). Chaucer's design is more structured than that. Both Howard and Traversi, bound by the idea of the three-to-four-day schedule, feel the need for a double time scheme. This is not necessary. Although inconsistencies remain in the time structure, just as inconsistencies of a cLfferent lund remain concerning who tells which tale, the day's passage itself is defined by remarks about the hour and the progress of the journey that offer dear and explicit readmgs on a dawn-to-dusk scheme. Alfred David remarks that by the time we come to The Parson's Prolope, "We do not know how many days the pilgrims have been travelling or whether they are still on their way to Canterbury or on the way home, and we do not need to know. Placing the two passages [IntrMLT and ParsProl]

side by side, we get the feeling of having lived through a long and satisfying day" (131). Howard, observing that earlier critics "thought that the pilgrimage took place, as it seems to, on one day," says: The company leaves Southwark in the morning, passes certain towns during the daytime, and arrives in sight of Canterbury as the sun is setting. Apparently it was felt to be a symbolic day representing human life, as when the Scriptures tell us "In the morning man s h d grow up like grass . . . in the evening he shall fall, grow dry, and wither" (Psalm 896). Nothing is said about stops for meals or overnight; the journey seems to pass in a spectral way fiom morning to evening . . .Much is made of the sun's position, the length of the shadows, the turning of the clodc. (Chaucer: H is L$405-406) The single day of the one-way journey is never openly defined in the frame tale; as a scenario it remains, to use Howard's word, "spectral." Howard, Eisner, and now some others see time on the pilgrimage as analogous to a day, one that begins at the Inn with a secular group that sets out in a secular dawn. Even though the pilgrims' goal is the shrine of St. Thomas, this dawn is almost as devoid i f soplsticated metaphysical intimations as childhood; it has "game" as the order of the day, and all the pilgrims have agreed to play the game. But the late afiernoon approach to the "earnest" goal of the daylong, lifelong journey puts the precedmg tale-tehg pilgrimage into a new light. The frame tale is retrospectively reconstituted in the double vision of imposed degory.?The "spectral" and finally inconclusive quaky of the journey, with the pilgrims only approadung their goal, emphasizes its spiritual quality and &gns it with St. Augustine's description of our journey of mortal Me: "Thence we go, s t d as pilgrims, not yet at rest; s t d on the way, not yet at our homeland; still aiming at it, not yet enjoying it" (Sermo 103). As in Augustine's sermon, those on pilgrimage in t h s life cannot "arrive."Yet in a sense the frame tale itself does arrive, leaving b e h d the pilgrims and the fiction of time itself with The Parson? Prolop. Both the pilgrims and the time of day are extinguished as the voice of the work moves on, through the Parson's medrtation to Chaucer's Retraction and a concern about Doomsday at the end of The Parson?Tab (1o9z).The journey to the "thropes ende" (ParsProl~z),that point of separation from the Human Comedy, has been carefuly marked.

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The allegory announced by the Parson as "thdse parfit glorious pilgrymage" (ParsProl5o) is not intrusive on the pilgrimage itself. Perhaps Chaucer has been careful not to turn the pilgrimage into a travelogue, however, because he wishes to implement a further perspective. He could easily have mentioned such tourist attractions as existed along the route to Canterbury, sights that real pilgrims would certainly have stopped to behold, l k e sanctified shrines and the rich, new West Gate of the city.4 In fact, his reticence about mentioning that gate, thought by some to be the finest city gate in England, is remarkable. Apparently designed by the king's chief mason, Henry Yevele (the architect responsible for the new nave of Canterbury Cathedral and other important works), it had been completed in 1380. As Clerk of the King's Works Chaucer would have known and probably worked with Yevele (Pearsall, L$ m ) , and he surely would have been professionally aware of the quality of the great gate. Yet not only does he not mention such sights as this, except once or twice perhaps by implication, he actually includes considerably less pictorial detail and topography in the pilgrimage frame tale than in his dream vision poems or even within some of the tales themselves. One thinks, for example, of the bridge and mill in Trumpington in The Reeve? Tale (see Bennett 111-12). The poet who elaborated Theseus's amphitheater and described the paintings in its oratories could certainly have described the Wheel of Fortune painted on the wall in Rochester Cathedral, for example (see fig. +9). But Chaucer is silent about these things, sights that most pilgrims would be making the trip partly to see. What sparse detail he does choose to include almost always contributes directly to locating the pilgrims along their route in terms either of a time or a place.These times and places bracket the main body of tales between a mainly secular beginning (with a spiritual goal) and a more meaningfd, serious end. Chaucer recapitulates in this movement the long opening sentence of the General Prologue. Previous details important at the beginning, such as Harry's game of two tales each way and even his controlling function as Host, gradually fall away as the day draws to a close. To dismiss as irrelevant Chaucer's own carefully introduced coordtnates on the pilgrims' journey undercuts the spiritual dnnension of h s frame tale, a dnnension for which the reader was prepared by the "vertical" metaphysical apparatus of his first two tales. -

-

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Devoid though it is of details, Chaucer's pilgrimage route along the ancient Watling Street is nevertheless one that ordmary living people could (and can) traverse, takmg readings of the sky, if so inclined, to see how well they were coming along, much as we might glance at a watch. Taking such readings to evaluate progress is specifically a habit of the pilgrim Dante and his guideVirgil in their visionary ascent up Mt. Purgatorio in the Commedia. Following a day with the readmgs they take demonstrates the sort of model that Chaucer might have had in mind. The astrolabe is a great help in following Dante's references to the sky, though an ordmary planisphere can also be helpfLL (If T: S. Eliot had been readmg with such an aid, he might not have found the astronomy of the C d i a so obscure.) Although the sky above Mt. Purgatorio is often described in the ornate rhetoric dear to Chaucer's Squire and may appear ambiguous as a result, the principle shown in these descriptions is the sarne simple and dependable one that has been &splayed throughout this book: the apparent rotation of the heavens above provides a clock whereby actions below may be timed. Only a samphg of Dante's poem is needed to demonstrate his technique of &splaying time celestially.The fkst ten cantos of Purgaorio tell of the pilgrim and his guide beginning their ascent of the mountain on Easter Sunday, when they emerge fiom the Inferno, and then follow them through the beginning of Monday. In her Penguin translation, Dorothy Sayers usefully prefaces each canto with the time, as an aid to the reader, but of course she derives that time from Dante's own chronographae. (Sayers's translation is used here because she observes Dante's references to celestial time more closely than anyone writing in English since M ary Acworth Orr, whom Sayers recommends in her list of "Books to Read" [?88]; the account below also relies on Orr.) When using a me&eval astrolabe for reading the Purgatorio, one would insert the climate plate for Jerusalem (latitude 32 degrees north), since Virgil explains in almost astrolabic terms that the pilgrims are at the sarne &stance south of the equator as Jerusalem is north of it (Cantos 11and W ) ;a modern astrolabe set for San Francisco (latitude 35 degrees north) can also approximate the latitude of Mt. Purgatorio, not t a k q into account precession for Chaucer's day, and idealizing the degree of the Sun to the first point of Anes. (When he positions the Sun in Aries andVenus in Pisces, Dante may be imitating what the sky was thought to be Lke at the Creati0n.p

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Either a medieval or modern astrolabe w d be usefd only for taking zodiacal readmgs, because whde the Sun and the zocLacal constellations keep their relationshp regardless of whether you look at them fiom north or south, the stars lying off the zocLac will be the wrong place on an astrolabe designed for the northern hemisphere.The approximation is s d c i e n t for the purpose of demonstration, however, for even when using a more elaborate and correctly calibrated instrument Chaucer could o h y have achieved a rough approximation of Dante's sky. Dante's own practice makes it impossible to be entirely true to life. It should be noted that the pilgrim Dante experiences time only in the Purgaorio, both Heaven and Hell being eternal states (Sayers 140). In the account that follows, times are emphasized by using bold type, as shown in figure 9.1, in order that their sequence may be easily observed. Dante on Pilgrimage Emerging from Hell an hour before sunrise (Orr z ~ ~Dante ) , and Virgil standin the pre-dawn twilight of the southern hemisphere, at the foot of the mountain they must ascend to reach Paradise. The scene is attractive and

The lovely planet, love's own quickener, Now lit to laughter all the eastern sky, Veiling the Fishes that attended her. (Canto I, 19-21) T h s description is immediately in touch with natural phenomena in that it represents an actual sighting of Venus against the stars of the constellation Pisces ( d k e Chaucer's use of the astrolabe to cLscover inlrectly the positions of the signs in a daytime sky).6In viewing the sky Dante speaks consistently of visible constellations,not signs. Chaucer would have noticed h s and used h s astrolabe accordmgly, dependmg more than usual on the star-pointers on the rete. In these h e s aboutVenus v e h g the Fishes, Dante refers to the dun star group called Pisces that now lies mostly in the sign Aquarius. He is not referring to the sign Pisces in which, due to precession of the equinoxes, the constellation Aries now lies. So Dante andvirgil see aVenus so brihant that the stars of Pisces around her above the eastern horizon are barely discernible.

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Canto I1 opens in a puzzling manner with reference to the Sun sinking over Jerusalem and the scales dropping from Night's hand in her hour of victory. The reference is to the Sun in Libra at the autumnal equinox when the night grows longer (hence her victory); it does not refer to the present springtime scene. In stanza j present time and antipodal place are reconfirmed as dawn grows brighter. In stanza 19 the Sun rises, with his arrows (rays) making fly "the Goat from out midheaven."This detail marks the time as just before 6 A.M. on this idealized (because nearly equinoctial) Easter Sunday. The constellation of Capricorn the Goat, lying partially in the sign Sagittarius, at Sunrise is indeed passing from midheaven, marked by the south line on the astrolabe. One can imagine this sky by inverting the circle of the signs in figure 5.5 and placing Sagittarius just past the vertical meridian line that marks south. The Sun is rising with Aries in the east. At the beginning of Canto IV (stanzas 5-6) the conversation with Manfred has so engaged the pilgrim narrator that he has become oblivious of the time: "Lo! the sun had mounted up a whole/ Fifty degrees without my noticing" (lines 15-16). Fifiy degrees past 6 A.M. on an equinoctial day puts the rule of the astrolabe at precisely 9:ro A.M. Now the climbers stop to look back, "to measure/ Our climb from where it started a pleasure that any mountaineer w~llrecognize. Dante is amazed to see the midmorning Sun on his left as he faces east, because in the northern hemisphere when we face east in midmorning the Sun is necessarily always on our right:

The poet saw me gaping there, a s though Dumbfounded, at the chariot of the day Driving its course twixt us and Aquilo. (Canto n/: 58-60) The constellation Aquila (the Eagle) is mentioned here as if it could be seen by day. Normally lying south and near the path of the Sun for those of us who view it north of the equator, Aq& lies to the north for Dante's observers, the ecliptic path of the Sun coming between it and them. Virgil the "poet" (IV 58) now proceeds to give Dante, the astonished and "gaping pilgrim, a little lecture on celestial mechanics as observed from the southern hemi-

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sphere. In the Sayers translation he assumes the tone of an Oxford don or the astronomically sophsticated eagle of Chaucer's House of Fame: "Come, recollect yourself and work it out/. . .if thou/ Hast a clear brain thou wilt be satisfied" (IV 67, 72-73). For those refusing to be bullied byVirgil into doing the calculation without help, Sayers provides extensive notes and a diagram at this point in the translation (100-101). Canto V brings the pilgrims to rnidafiernoon with the Sun behind the mountain (V 54-55). They are climbing up the southern side, so that the bulk of Mt. Purgatorio, on their north, shadows them. (In the southern hemisphere the Sun swings north to reach noon, just as in the northern hemisphere it reaches its southernrnost point at noon.) They come out of the mountain's shadow into the late afiernoon sunlight in Canto VI. In Canto W night falls, and in Canto VIII the stars have become visible. Canto V111 concludes with Virgil referring to signs: to Aries, where the setting Sun is located, and to Libra, which now in the evening is rising. In order for the Moon to appear full,it must lie opposite the Sun on the ecliptic, so that when the Sun is in Aries, the Moon reaches full opposite from it in Libra. At this point in the poem, the Moon, whch reached M in Libra on Good Friday, is three days past full. Traveling at the rate of about thirteen degrees per day through Libra and then Scorpio (each sign having thirty degrees), the Moon must now be approaching the sign Sagittarius, that is, the constellation Scorpio. Indeed, Canto M opens with a lunar (not solar) dawn as the Moon is about to rise with the stars of Scorpio. It is useful to follow the discussion here with an astrolabe in hand-or even, since the reference is to constellations, a planisphere. (The Alpha star of Scorpio, Antares, may be labeled on an astrolabe cor or cor sc for Cor Scorpionis, "the heart of the Scorpion.")

Now, glimmering on her eastward balcony, Came the whte leman of Tithonus old Forth fiom her lover's arms reluctantly. Her brow was starred with jewels manifold, Set in the lkeness of the beast whose td Smites on the people, and whose blood is cold.

IMPLICATIONS

Already, on the stairs night has to scale, Two paces . . . (Canto M, 1-8)

Because of its significance for the imagined date of Dante's vision, this chronographia has inspired scrutiny and raised such controversy that Sayers provides a separate discussion of it in an appendix (342). Orr ignores it. Cornish slurts the issue of date and reads the passage, following an earlier Italian commentator, as a double time scheme referring to a solar dawn in Italy (70-7~). Chapter 10 w d indude further &cussion of Dante's day-after-Easter Moonrise among the stars of the constellationScorpio (but in the sign Sagittarius), of how this Moonrise is connected with the puzzle about Dante's year, and of how it seems to have been imitated by Chaucer. For now let us continue to observe the action in the Purgatorio. In stanza 3 night has proceeded "two paces," whch Sayers interprets in her notes as two hours and others have suggested to be two signs. Two signs would take approximately four hours to rise. Chaucer uses the same term "pace" in The Complaint of Mars (stanza 18) to signify degrees. If this is what Dante means here, with one degree rising in approximately four minutes, it is now only about eight rninutes past nightfall.T h s is the most Uely interpretation, since night brings imrnedate sleep in Purgatory, and Dante now f d s asleep ( h e s 10-12). In the hour before Sunrise, the hour of true dreams, Dante has the dream of the eagle that Chaucer adapts for Thr House of Fame. H e awakens with the Sun "two hours and more/ Risen" (M 44-45), which at this equinoctial season is shortly after 8 A.M. He finds that while he slept he really did travel through the air, St. Lucy having carried him up the mountainside. He and Virgil now pass through Peter's Gate and climb up through the cleft called the Needle's Eye, a labor that occupies them until the setting of the "bished moon" (X 14-15). Though such markers continue to appear, this reference to Dante's time is the last to be examined here.The Moon, dnnmshed because it is three-and-a-half days on the wane, is in the constellation Scorpio, that is, somewhere in the sign Sagittarius. At a latitude of 35 degrees north or south, if the Moon were in the middle of Sagittarius at 255 degrees of longitude (an arbitrarily chosen degree), it would set a little beyond that degree of the sign around 9:30 A.M., as indicated by laying the rule of the

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astrolabe over the first point of Aries, the approximate degree of the date.

A middle degree of Sagittarius will be on the western horizon line. Leaving Dante on Monday morning as he proceeds upward past the Needle's Eye with his guide, Virgil, we can now review Chaucer's references to time, less ficequent but s d a r in nature, in the frame tale of his own irnaginary pilgrimage.The purpose of this review is twofold: to examine the most important symbolism of these references and to see how they fit in with each other and with references to place. The first zodacal reference in Thp Canterbury Tales is to Anes (see Chapter j). Unlke Dante, when Chaucer names Aries, Taurus, and so forth, he is speakmg of the signs as engraved on the astrolabe. He describes the date in such a way that we understand the signTaurus actually to be rising-whch is to say, as Sigrnund Eisner points out in "The Ram Revisited,'' the constellation Aries is rising. In either case the symbolic use of Aries the Ram and the words "yonge sonne" supplement the imagery of springtime and the pilgrims' readmess for a journey. In She Nuni Priesti Tale Chaucer alludes to the tradtional idea that the Creation itself took place at the vernal equinox: Whan that the month in which the world bigan, That highte March, whan God first maked man, Was compleet . . .

( W T 378749) The equinoctial beginning of the year in Aries, when the Sun commences its course through the signs, is in spiritual terms a suitable time for a grimage to begin, and it echoes the Commedia in that regard. In order for other real-world and symbolic relationshps to fall appropriately into place, however, the rising sign must in fact be Taurus. Although Chaucer's next si&cant celestial allusion does not refer to the pilgrimage, he may have meant it to provide a model for orientation.This is the design of Theseus's arnphtheater in She KnighrS U.Chaucer bases that design on the ecltptic to reflect the htribution of the signs at dawn in early May again withTaurus rising, though rising at a later degree than during the pilgrimage itselt: (Although it has a horoscopic function, the circular arnphtheater should

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not be regarded as a horoscope design per se, because, as mentioned in Chapter 5, horoscopes were drawn square in Chaucer's day.) Outside the tale the function of the arnphitheater plan must be partly to alert the audience knowledgeable in such matters to an astronomical view of the pilgrimage, with the signs marlung the passing of the hours. Attention is drawn dfferently to the passing hours within The Knight? Talr, however, "superstitiously" and non-astronomically,by the descriptions of devotions to the pagan gods at their appropriate planetary hours. This "pagan" attention to the planetary hours is parodied in the subsequent MilM Tak In Thp Prologue of the Reeve? Tak the pilgrims pass the turningoff points to Deptford and Greenwich when it is "half-wey pryme" (lines j906-3907). O n a day beginning at Taurus b042' (Eisner Kakndarium 83) this hour is 6:35 A.M. according to Eisner's detailed discussion in "Canterbury Day"; the pilgrims have been up and moving since Sunrise, which occurred at 4:47 A.M. (Kakndarium 85). According to Ogilby's "Map of the Road" (published in Furnivall1868b and in Littlehales 1898), the pilgrims have traveled only five miles while telling the first two stories.There follows only one more tale and a fiagrnent, when suddenly it is 10 A.M. in The Introduction to the Man $Law? Tak In contrast to the lack of information given earlier, The Introduction to the Man of h? Tak specifies a great deal, giving for the first time the exact hour of ten o'clock, the precise date of April 18 (which, according to Nicholas of Lynn's Kakndarium, puts the dawn Sun at 6"42' Taurus), and the inscrutible . mformation that "the fourthe party of this day is gon" (IntrMIT I ~ )When t h h g of the route itself in "fourths," the unmentioned town of Dartford at mile 16 comes to mind, slightly more than a quarter of the way to Canterbury. Most significant for the present purpose, however, is Chaucer's introduction of the concept of "the ark of artificial day" (LntrkKT2). Proceedtng accordtng to the Bradshaw s h f i in order to follow the geography of the Canterbury road (see Chapter 4), the next placename, Rochester, comes in The Prologue to the Monk? Tdk at line 1926. Rochester marks the midpoint of the journey and corresponds nicely to noon as midpoint of the arc of day. The correspondence is confirmed symbolically by the topic the Monk chooses for his series of vignettes: the fall from the "meridian" point of the Wheel of Fortune, perhaps inspired by the medieval wallpainting of that subject in Rochester Cathedral (fig. 4.9).The association of the apex of

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Fortune's wheel with midday occurs elsewhere in Middle English narrative. In Be Alliterative Morte Artbun the fall from the apex of fortune is associated specifically with noon. In his dream Arthur has been entertained for an hour d levin, all by Lady Fortune in her delightfd aspect, when "at the middaye f hir mode chaungede,/ And mad miche manace with mervailous wordes" (lines 382-83). Similarly, in The Nun's Priest's Tale the fox lurks until noon, "Waitynge his tyme on Chauntecleer to falle" (APT 3222-23). Moreover, a glance at the astrolabe WLU ascertain that at noon on Chaucer's April 18 the sign Leo is rising.7 Although the lions mentioned elsewhere in the tales have nothing to do with the zodiac, the "wilde leoun" of line 1916 in the prologue of the tale, together with the two heroic lion-slayers that are among the Monk's first examples, may perhaps supplement the geographical and temporal bearings with an allusion to Leo. If so, the sky here should be imagined in nearly the same configuration as that reported at noon on Cambyuskan's birthday:

Phoebus hath laft the angle meridional, And yet ascendynge was the beest r o d , The gentil Leon . . .

At Rochester the turning wheel of the heavens reminds us, above all, that now a hay part of the pilgrimage day is gone (see fig. 4.8). The Contrast Group (B) concludes with the tale in which the rooster Chauntecleer, more dependable than a clock or an abbey horologe (NPT 2 8 ~ ~ 5 4declares ). the hours. Here the rising sign is Taurus, the same as on the pilgrimage day, but the Sun is later in that sign at "twenty degrees and oon [one], and somwhat moore" (NPT 3195). The Sun rises in Taurus 2x06' on May j according to the Kahndarium (Eisner 89). When the May 3 Sun has ascended to 41 degrees "and more ywis" above the horizon, Chauntedeer knows "by kynde [nature], and by noon oother loore/ That it was pryrne9'(NPT 3196-99). This specification identifies prime according to clock time (reckoned on the astrolabe) as 9 A.M., and the passage reads like a parody of the Host's reckoning of the time earlier. Once we are told that the latitude is already known (NPT2856), the passage contains all necessary

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astrolabic ingreclents: the Sun's zodiacal degree, the Sun's angle above the horizon, and the conclusion about the equal hour (identified as "pryme" in this tale). Furnivall places the Floating Fragment (Group C) next simply to be able to fill out his schedule, as he admits (EmporaryPrgace 42).This set of two tales could be placed almost anywhere, unless clues can be found in The Introduction to the Pardoner's Tale. At line 310 the Host swears by "Seint Ronyan," with whose name like much else in his speech he flounder^,^ and at line 321 the Pardoner insists on stopping at this (possibly specific) "alestake" or inn. If the Contrast Group (B') has gone before, the Gentilesse Group (D-EF) now follows. Four of the seven tales therein-The W$ of Bath's Prolope to her Tale-, The Merchant's Tdb) The Squire'sTale-) and The Franklin's Zle--are thick with allusions to the stars, mainly astrological allusions llke the Wife's at WBProl607-18. But there are also orienting allusions, both celestial and terrestrial. At the end of The W$ of Bath2 Prolope the Summoner has threatened to tell "tales two or three/ O f fieres, er I come to Sidyngbourne" (WBProl 846-47); Sittingbourne is at mde 40 of the route to Canterbury. The Friar and the Summoner tell their tales after the Wife tells hers, and the Surnmoner does contrive to include two insulting anecdotes about fiiars in one tale, so if he has concluded this "quiting" (requiting) of his rival around the t h e they reach Sittingbourne ("We been alrnoost at towne"; SumT 2zg4), the geographical reference works reasonably well with the temporal reference to Mercury's house interpreted as Virgo that comes three stories later (SqT 671-72). The Virgo interpretation of this passage leaves open a range of possibilities (see Chapter 4), asVirgo takes nearly three hours to rise. On my astrolabe, as Virgo 159 markmg the exaltation of Mercury, rises above the horizon, the Sun by now at Taurus 7" points at approximately 2:2o P.M. on the arc of day; and as Virgo zoo, marking the beginning of Mercury's face, crosses the horizon, it is about 2:45 P.M. In the three final tales Chaucer achteves closure by m h g both temporal and geographic references. He refers to Boughton by the Blean Forest at h e 556 of B e Canon'sEman2 Prolop; makes a punning reference to Harbledown ("Bobbe-up-and-down") and perhaps to nearby low-lying St. Dunstan's

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Church ("Dun is in the myre") at h e s 2 and 5, respectively, of The Mancipk? Prologw9 and refers to the "thropes ende," presumably the hamlet just outside Canterbury Westgate, at h e 12 of The Parson? Prologue (the last earthly location mentioned). Because the Parson here transforms the goal of the pilgrimage into that of the ultimate journey, this "thropes ende" is simply a vague little vdage. In any case, what pilgrim-tourist coming into Canterbury would recall the name of the "throp" just precedmg the landmark West Gate of that city? At this place the Parson promises "To knytte up a1 this feeste, and make an ende" (ParsProl47), and he prays for the intelligence "To shewe yow the wey, in this viage/ O f thilke parfit glorious pilgryrnage9' (ParsProl q g j o ) . This transformation of both game and pilgrimage begins at four o'clock, with the shadows lengthening in the proportion of eleven parts to six (as Nicholas of Lynn's Kakndarium confirms), while rising on the horizon is the sign Libra, "the moones exaltacioun" (ParsProl6-11). Discussion of this supposedly astrological and therefore faulty identification of Libra follows in the next chapter. Although the varying manuscript orderings of the tales, combined with the loose ends of both The Squiret Tak "prime" and The Mancipk's Prologue "monve," suggest that Chaucer may not have settled upon certain matters within the fragments, or perhaps that he was not concerned to or changed his mind about ordering the tales in this way, there is in the scheme proposed here a day that confirms the geographical order of the place-names and makes sense of most of the references to time. One may think of how the one-year seasonal framework of Troilus and Criyde bears a symbolic relationship to the fictional passing of many years in that story; no more should one understand the single day of The Canterbury Takr to represent realistic time in the frame story. Yet the symbolic day overlying The Canterbury Tales leads in its concluding hours to a horizon potent with meaning that transcends the simple game by which the pilgrims have in more than one sense "shortened the way" (GP 7 y ) on their viage, their sublunary journey. Some readers are bound to ask, Is there meant to be an arrangement here or not? Derek PearsaU's idea, mentioned in Chapter 3, of presenting the tales in folders according to their grouping would keep the reader's attention

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focused on the tales rather than allowing the "roadside drama" to overwhelm the rest. Chaucer's locally uncolored presentation of the journey suggests that such focus was his intention. On the other hand, Chaucer would know intuitively, as any great artist does, that the human mind is to some degree to find meaning and thus has a penchant for turning all that it perceives, however randomly, into a pattern. Chaucer's interest in reading the sky would have provided him with a perfect model for understandmg this natural dsposition to pattern-malung, as the night sky itself offers an example. O n an April evening Orion in the west pursues Taurus to the horizon. O n the opposite horizon Virgo is rising, marked by her brightest star Spica that rides the ecliptic. Corvus, down on the southern horizon, is the constellation that traditionally represents Apollo's tattletale crow of The Mancipki Gk, from Ovid. Chaucer, teaching little Lewis about the sky, would be well aware that what they actually saw up there was a random scattering of stars between those bright guides, Orion at one end of the sky and Virgo aglitter with Spica at the other. But then, with a minimum of further guidance, the eager eye sees other patterns emerge, the two bright stars marking the Gemini twins and, above all, the great shape of the Lion. While all those named here are navigators' constellations because of their proximity to the Sun's apparent path from east to west, Chaucer, as a reader of Ovid, was probably aware that these random points of light seen as meaningful patterns could also have narrative significance. Chaucer may have become aware of a s d a r emergence of navigational markers in his Game tale, a point of reference here and another point there. Choosing to suppress all but a very few markers so that the frame might not outweigh the stories (as it does in that later addtion to the pilgrimage, the anonymous Tab of Beyn), he nevertheless includes occasional place-names to keep h s audience on track, one elaborate time-&g by Harry Badly, and a few moresubdued references to the sky as registers of the time.TheVirgo-rising contrivance at the end of She Squire?Tak must have been an inspiration on a par with that of turning around the rete to design Theseus's arnphtheater; perhaps it even inspired Chaucer to break off She Squire?7bk at the point he did. But Chaucer does not make these points of reference obtrusive until the Final Tales (Groups G-H-I), whose position he confirm with several place-

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names or allusions to There he takes a r e a d q of the sky that also fixes the symbolic boundaries of the imaginary day. Having now passed along a route (not exactly a landscape) marked with real place-names, and having taken enough readmgs of the sky to find hours that give shape to a day for that journey, in Chapter 10we wdl examine some of the end-of-day imagery with whch Chaucer moves toward a spiritual goal beyond the astrolabic "horizon" of the pilgrimage.

CHAPTER 10

LIBRAANDTHE MOON Some Final Speculations

And swift, incomprehensibly swift, Above the earth whirls, changing, bright The paradd day, to drift Down to a deep and trembling night. Goethe, "Prologue in Heaven" (trans. by author)

Chaucer leads his readers and pilgrims from one realm into another,Traugott Lawler suggests, through the bridging imagery of She ParsonS Prolope. Lawler echoes here the insights of various scholars, mostly of a generation ago, who have given particular attention to the final sequence of tales. "Even the physical description of the time of day seems to stretch beyond the mundane and solid world, with its focus on the narrator's eleven-foot shadow and its talk of descent and ascent, of 'exaltation,' of endmg and fulhllment" (Lawler 162--63). By referring to the twenty-nine degrees of the Sun's height, the four o'clock ascent of Libra above the horizon, and, it would seem incorrectly, to the "exaltation" of the Moon in particular, Chaucer offers a range of literal and symbolic meanings that prepare for the penitential conclusion of She Canterbuy Tak In Chapter 3 it was argued that by reading the Sun's degree astrolabically, that is, down from the meridian rather than up from the horizon, Chaucerb phrase "nat . . Degrees nyne and twenty as in hghte" (ParsProl

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3-4) could be interpreted as "not down to" rather than "numerically less than" twenty-nine degrees, thus corresponding to the 4 P.M. figure of 29011' given by Nicholas of Lynn (Kakndarium 86). This readmg appears to supplement the earlier degree height of the Sun found by the Host at ro A.M., a degree recorded by Nicholas on the same line of the same chart for April 18 as the 4 P.M. figure.This chapter now argues that by readmg astrolabically the lines about Libra as the Moon's exaltation, lines that sound deceptively astrological, one finds not only that the supposed astrological mistake by Chaucer actually vanishes but that he is, perhaps inadvertently,providmg a d e d of the greatest interest to us, though perhaps incidental to h - t h e actual year date upon which he has based his "Canterbury Day." Discussion of these lines w d begin with attention to the symbolism of Libra: "Therwith the moones exaltacioun-/ I meene Libra-alway gan ascende" (ParsProl ~o-11). Libra is called to our attention first of all because, if the Sun rises with Taurus 6"42', Libra is actually there upon the horizon at 4 P.M.,as the astrolabe demonstrates. A modern astrolabe for latitude 51"301Nshows Libra 3" "and moore ywis" ascending at this hour on the day that the Sun rises in Taurus 6"42'. This is a physical reality which means that Chaucer is once more providmg bearings on an actual day. But of course this is not a sufficient reason to refer to Libra, because mere realism of t h s lund could have been attained by having the pilgrims arrive later in the day, with the Parson beginning his tale in the evening under Scorpio, a sign having spiritual connotations. So we may expect the reference to Libra, the equal or clock hour, and the Moon to be simultaneously a practical if elaborate method of telhg us the time-another complex chronographa-and a symbolic method of saying something further about the Several scholars have discussed this passage in detail in regard to the symbolic relationship of the sign Libra to Judgment. Chaucey Wood, apparently the first, tells the interesting story of how Libra was adopted late into the zodiac (County 28-81), then how that sign of the scales became associated with Christ's judgment of souls, and finally with Christ's passion (282-84), the scales sometimes being incorporated into pictures of Christ on the cross. T h s is the h e of association that North also follows, drawing in further authorities (Universe qo-p). Rodney Delasanta brings to our attention the irnage of an angel with the scales of justice as a traditional feature

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of the "Doomsday" tympanum found above church doors, and the figure of a judge representing Libra in the zodiac mozaic in Canterbury Cathedral itself ("Judgment" 298-37). C h a r l ~ t t e T h o m ~ s oadduces n some of the same Patristic sources for these images as Wood does. Among others she refers to Petrus Berchorius, "who interprets everything surrounding Libra in terms of Doomsday": Autumn signifies the Day of Judgment, and so does September, the month associated with Libra. September is the seventh month, he reasons, not in the civil calendar, but counting fiom the Creation in March; and it signifies the Day of Judgment because, from the creation of the world, there will be seven, as there were seven days, when the end of time will be completed. In the equinox Berchorius sees the distributions of merited rewards and also the Sol Iustitiae, Christ, in the scales of justice. And finally, turning to the constellation [she means "sign"], he interprets Sol entering Libra as the Christ Sun ascending the throne of judgment to separate the sinners fiom the godly as the equinox makes equal the days and the nights. (Thompson 80) Whether Chaucer knew the work of Petrus Berchorius is unimportant because, as Thompson points out, Petrus's interpretation adopting commonplace autumnal metaphors for the ending of life and of time itself is typical rather than unique. Chaucer is not, however, using Libra as a seasonal metaphor here. Rather, -

-

as in the reference to time at the end of The Squire2 Tale, he is wrenching the allusion to the sign out of its expected seasonal context. H e sets Libra, whldl traditionally signifies eschatological closure, into the context of his overarching day, closing that day itself. Moreover, the symbolism is more diverse than Thompson, with her concentration on Patristic sources, would allow. Although Chaucer is using the sign Libra to mark the Parson's hour and suggest the urgency of his message, he is not losing sight of the secular aspect o f his day. D. W. Robertson, Jr., points out the significance he finds, in the Augustinian terms for whch he is well known, of the day beginning with the Sun rising in Venus's domicile Taurus: "Love moved the pilgrim's feet and toward either one spiritual city determined the direction of his journey

.. .

LIBRA A N D THE M O O N : SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

10.1. Venus Accompanied by Symbols of Her Domiciles. Drawing by Steven Oerdtng based on a fifteenth-centurymanuscript of Sacrobosco's De Sphmra in the Bibliotheca Estense at the University of Modena, Italy.

or the other" (Robertson 373). Yet Chaucer's sky shows only one direction for this pilgrimage day: from Taurus to Libra. Although the Sun actually sets with Scorpio rising, Chaucer concludes the pilgrimage story with the rising of Venus's "sovereign mansion" Libra, so that Taurus and Libra flank Chaucer's arc of day much as they flank Venus in figure 10.1.

248

IMPLICATIONS

CharlotteThompson objects to Chaucer's lack of "efficiency" in the way he presents Aries and Libra "as celestial boundaries of the journey." "Aries is anachronistic," she says, "and Libra is marred by an astronomical error9' (78). But the "anachronism" of mentioning Aries when the day begins with the Sun actually in Taurus, just lke that of cutting it off with Libra rising even though the Sun actually sets with Scorpio as the ascendent, was caref d y contrived to reveal two sets of symbolism. The Taurus-to-Libra day offers the secular symbolism of Venus the love goddess, and the Aries-toLibra day offers the Christian symbolism of es~hatolo~ical time. These two celestial boundaries confirm the theme of the "two loves" introduced in the General Prologue (see Hoffman 1-12). Love has a dual or ambivalent nature in much of Chaucer's poetry, and &S day, beginning with such love-cult images of generation as the sprouting plants and the warbling birds (see Cunningham), ends in an entirely different mood that is appropriate to a thoughtful sublunary status as symbolized by numbers associated with the days of the Moon's phases and with Libra. When the Sun is at a Moon-numbered angle (29") and the sign Libra, ecclesiastically associated with the Moon, is rising, the Moon-numbered (29) pilgrims approach not a secular but a spriitual God of Love. Although it is true that "the pilgrimage, passing from its opening sign of Aries to its closing sign of Libra, moves between the termini of all historical time: Creation and Doomsday'' (Thompson 80), it is also true that Chaucer is describing a "lusty9'English springtime day at a specific latitude, a particular day of the natural world in which he has foregrounded certain aspects at beginning and end to make it bear at those two points symbolic affinities with mankind's pilgrimage from Eden to the Throne of Judgment. Chaucer's contrivance at the end does not appear at first so neat as that of the Sun in Aries (but really Taurus) at the beginning of the General Prologue. For more than a century scholars have been troubled about why Chaucer should refer incorrectly to the sign Libra as the Moon's "exaltacioun" when the Moon's astrological exaltation is, to be precise, Taurus 3". H e could easily have used some other term for this lunar presence or a f h ity. One might blame a lesser poet for needing a rhyme for "proporcioun" (ParsProl 9), but Chaucer revels in solving such difficulties. As Thompson suggests:

LIBRA A N D THE M O O N : SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

249

We might assume that he has sacrificed scientific accuracy for artistic purpose, and, ideally, an allegorical purpose. Such a purpose begins to emerge with the eschatological value of Libra. The end of the world can represent the moon's exaltation,provided that we understand one of the great comrnonplaces of Christian cosmic imagery. The moon syrnbolrzes the Church. (Thompson 80)

It will be seen below that Chaucer is sacrificing no accuracy. H e does not need to. After a brief examination of how the exaltation of the lunar Church at the great Judgment is incorporated into the imagery of the Paschal season, Thompson concludes: Libra as the moon's exaltation figures forth artistically, if not astronomically, the consummation of the age and the assumption of the Church into glory. Justly it heralds the guide who brings the means for spiritual cleansing in preparation for that glory, an arrival, not at Canterbury, but at the ultimate destination of the greater pilgrimage: the heavenly Jerusalem. (Thompson 81)

Thompson may be right about the Moon symbolizing the assumption of the Church, but this is not the sort of allegory with which Chaucer commonly engages: It is even more unlike Chaucer to make a mistake about the astrology of exaltations (which Thompson repeatedly calls astronomy), however much he might profit by it, or to include in the voice of his own persona a wholly unnecessary astrological detail, that is, one not used to further his astronomical reckonings. Moreover, he gives evidence elsewhere that he knows precisely what the astrological meaning of "exaltation" is, for example in line 704 of The W$ of Bath's Prologue, line 2224 of The Merchant's Tab, and line 49 of The Squire's Tab. Therefore scholars must have been reading the passage in the wrong way. This is J. D. North's conclusion also (Universe 126). North's elaborate arguments are offered to provide a context of theory for what follows. The reference to the "Moon's exaltation" in The Parson's Prologue comes at the end of Chaucer's fmal location of the pilgrims in time and also in space:

IMPLICATIONS

Thenvith the moones exaltacioungan ascende As we were entryng at a thropes ende.

I meene Libra-alwey

/was ascendmg /vtllage's

(ParsPr0110-12) Siegfiied Wenzel explains in his note on these lines in Thr Riverside Chaucer: "The eraltacioun of the moon (the zodacal sign in which a planet exerts its greatest influence; see Astr 2.4.47 n.) is Taurus rather than Libra, which is the exaltation of Saturn. The first of the three 'faces' of Libra (the first 10"; see Astr 2.4.60-69) was the 'face' of the moon, and Skeat suggests that Chaucer confused 'exaltation' with 'face"' (955). That Chaucer is simply wrong here has become such a truism that Nevd Coghd blandly substitutes Saturn for the Moon in his translation of these lines: The power of Saturn Began to rise with Libra just as we Approached a little thorpe. (Coghd 503; emphasis added) Coghill, too, speaks of the "mistake on the part of Chaucer or one of his scribes" (525), and Derek Brewer as recently as 1998 refers to "an oversight in the astrology" in this passage (New Introduction 392). As North points out, in unusual agreement with modern critical theory, rereading from a different perspective can alter our understanding of these lines. His solution is to try reading other manuscripts, pointing out that several of the manuscripts of The Canterbuy Tales (Harley 7334; Laud misc. 600; Royal 18.C.ii) show line 11 as having either "in mena'' or "in mene" instead of "I mene (Universe 126, n.71).'' North says: "Brea took as the best reading 'in mene Libra)' in place of 'I mene Libra,' and interpreted it as indicating that the Moon itself, and not its exaltation, was 'in the middle of Libra.' Brea was wrong in this last respect" (Universe 126-z7). To the question and extent of Brea's wrongness about this Moonrise we will return. North repunctuates the passage and states authoritatively, "This is how the lines should be read:

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

Thenvith, the Moones exaltacioun In mene, Libra alwey gan ascende, As we were entrying at a thropes ende."

( Universe 127) To this change one may compare Eade's repunctuation to make clearer sense of the "exaltation" passage in lines 48-51 of Be Squire'r Tab, putting the Sun "neigh his exaltacioun [Aries lgO]/ I n Martes face [Aries 1-10"], and in his mansioun/ In Aries, the colerds hoote signe" (see Chapter ?).As may be remembered, the Squire's story confirms these details by giving the date of "the laste Idus of March," when the Sun is at Aries j0 and therefore in Mars's face in the sign of Aries. North explains his own repunctuation of the Libran passage with reference to the astrolabe: The easiest way of appreciating these lines is to consider the configuration, shown very easily on an astrolabe, when the first point of Libra is the ascendent point. The ecliptic circle (the most conspicuous part of the rete of the astrolabe) is then symmetrical, with the first point of Aries setting on the western horizon, the first point of Cancer on the meridan, and the first point of Capricorn on the midnight line. This is not quite the configuration Chaucer had in mind . . .We must be prepared for an ascendent even beyond the first degree of Libra. (Universe 1 2 ~ )

He proceeds then to show how understandmg the passage to refer to a degree in Libra beyond the first degree can make better sense of it: The Moon's exaltation is usually taken to be the third degree of Taurus. I have seen manuscripts in which it is conhsed with the domicile of the Moon, namely Cancer, and it is conceivable that Chaucer made this mistake. When a planet or a certain degree of the ecliptic is culminating, it is said to be "in medio coeli," "in midheaven.'' . If the third degree of Libra is rising, it is more or less true to say that the third degree of Cancer is in mid-heaven ["in mene"]. (Universe 1 2 ~ )

..

2 52

IMPLICATIONS

One can see &S by simply loolung at Chaucer's "circle of the signs" (fig. 5.5): when Libra 3" is ascendmg on the horizon, Cancer 3" will obviously be at mid-heaven. But since this interpretation also depends (Lke the more usual one) upon Chaucer making a mistake in terminology, it does not satisfy North. He continues: "This is one readm. An alternative, requiring Chaucer to have made no mistake, is that the Sun (which is itself about half a degree in &meter) is adjacent to the true exaltation of the Moon, the third degree of Taurus, so that 'Therwith' refers back to 'The Some' in the second line [where we are told the Sun is descending]" (Universe 128). O n the basis of this very distant antecedent of the Sun in line 2 for "therwith" in line 10, North then proposes that Chaucer "was saying in effect that the exaltation of the Moon [Taurus jO]was in the middle of the Sun," that is, positioned where the Sun was actually located in the sky (Universe 12~). But placing the Sun at Taurus 3" creates an enormous problem concerning the date, a problem of the kind we have seen before. The Sun at Taurus 3" would indicate a date at the end of the journey that came before the date on which the Sun rises withTaurus 6"42' at the beginning of the journey, on April 18. As North says later (Universe qj), he thinks that Chaucer may have been conhsed about or indrfferent to the actual date, so he does not discuss further the problem of the multiple days of pilgrimage, merely saying of the day implied in The Parson's Prolop: For an exact fit, the date would have been 15 April, but accepting that the Sun and the exaltation were side by side, 16 April would have served. The most fitting Good Friday (no other Easter date w d do) was 16 April 1389. T h s readtng makes better sense of lines 10 and 11 in regard to the commencement of the rising of Libra and the total avoidance of error, and is otherwise only marginally less exact as regards the position of the Sun, and I am inched to accept it. Both readtngs require the text to read "In meene." ( Universe 1 2 ~ )

Accepting for the sake of argument North's overridmg here of the Host's earlier statement that the date was A p d 18 (with the dawn Sun at Taurus G042', accordmg to Nicholas of Lynn's Kahdarium), one can find the position of the Moon inTudcerman's tables, which conveniently offer all positions at 4 P.M.

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

253

Greenwich time (Tuckerman I). There one may discover that on North's "most fitting" date of Good Friday, 16 April 1389, the waning Moon was at 275O, or approximately Sagittarius 5", and therefore scheduled to rise well after dark. Hence the physical presence of the Moon is not relevant to the passage in this second of North's readings, the one that he prefers. This chapter proposes yet another solution to the ~roblemof the Moon's exaltation in Libra. First, the readmg of most manuscripts, "I mene," is likely to be correct, since h s is an expression that Chaucer uses countless times for emphasis or clarification. Just three examples from The Knight's Tak alone-all three passages intended to LLstinguish the named person from any otherI menevenus" should be sufficient to show his usage: "Citherea benipe-/ (KnT 2215-16), "This mene I now by myghty Thesus" (KnT 1673, cp. TC III 621), and "There saugh I Dane,yturned til a tree-/ I mene nat the goddes Dime,/ But Penneus doghter ..."(KnTzo62-64). Second, it is probable that Chaucer meant what he said about Apnl18 and LLd not lose track of it in the throes of later composition (North's suggestion; Universe 133), or "sacrifice scientific accuracy for artistic purpose" (Thompson So), or conhse h s terminology (Skeat lxiv). Since Chaucer is emphatic about Libra in The Parson's Prologue passage, let us consider the possibility that Libra was indeed his intended name and that "exaltacioun" here has a non-astrological meaning. This possibhty returns us to the idea Brea proposed so long ago, contemptuously dismissed by both Skeat and North, that Chaucer was referring not to the astrological exaltation of the Moon but to the Moon's actual rising, talung "exaltation" in its or&ary physical sense to mean "elevation." Chaucer does not use this particular term in its noun form in the physical, non-astrological sense elsewhere, but on the other hand he does llke to use borrowed words in their original senses, such as the Summoner's punning with "preambulacioun" and "amble" (WBProI 837-38) on the Friar's latinate word "preamble" (WBProl 831); the Latin eructavit "uttered f o r t h in the context of The Summoner's Tak (SumT 1~34)to refer humorously to the glutton's "buf" (burp);^ and the Latin ars (art) of "ars-metnke" at the end of the same scatological tale to refer simultaneously, in a dual-language pun, to "m"or "bottom," and "arithmetic," the metric art (SumT 2222). Chaucer b s e l f glosses the past participle of the verb "exalt" in its physical sense in Be W$ of Bath's Prolop "is exaltat/ is reysed" (704-~05).The physical sense

of the word is archaic today, but even its figurative usage retains the implication of its etymology, a physical "raising up,'' so that when the Wife contrasts the position of her own Venus with that of her clerk Jankin's Mercury, the dual force of the word may be retained even in a modern translation: So Mercury is desolate when halted In Pisces, just where Venus is exalted, And Venus falls where Mercury is raised. (Coghas translation of ~ P r o l 7 0 ~ - 7 0 5p., q 5 )

The Wife is of course speaking in specifically astrological terms here about the opposition on the zodiac circle of Pisces, where, according to Nicholas of L y ' s Kakndarium (Eisner 180), Venus has her exaltation at Pisces 27", and of Virgo, where Mercury has hls at Virgo 15". But at the same time as she is speaking astrologically, the Wife (or Chaucer) refers here to the physical reality that when one of these signs is high in the heavens, the other is beneath the horizon, each the nadrr of the other, reminding us that the word "exaltation" is not exclusively an astrological term. The O$ord English Dictionay gives for the non-astrological physical sense a passage from 1616 C.E. by Horneck (CrucqJesus xvi.40~):"Lift me up from the earth that I may relish the comfort of thy exaltation." Another O.E.D. example, even later (1794 c.E.), offers an astronomical context in which the physical sense is clearly intended: "When the sun is at its greatest exaltation in the summer." This is different from the astrological exaltation of the Sun, which occurs at 19" Aries in the springtime, as Chaucer reminds us in The Squire? Tak passage we have looked at (SqT 48-51). D. H. Lawrence provides another analogy for such a non-astrological usage in h s postumously published poem, "Middle of the World,'' composed at a time when he was writing poems that were both "Ptolemaic" (for example, concerning ascent through the spheres) and astronomical (about precession). Lawrence knows the terminology and can dstinguish astrological from astronomical meaning. In this poem, however, he uses the non-astrological meaning of "exaltation" to suggest a physical presence of the Moon, offering a picture of the sky that leaves no doubt at all of what is in his mind:

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

And now that the moon who gives men glistening bodes is m her exaltation, and can look down on the sun, I see descendmg fiom the shrps at dawn slim naked men fiom Cnossos . . . (Cornpkte Poems 2 688) Although the viewer in these lines sees the dawn sky with the Sun rising and the Moon in mid-heaven, Lawrence's description is symbolic as well as realistic, as Chaucer's is also. Unllke Lawrence, however, Chaucer is not ascribing the physical exaltation to the Moon itself but to the sign Libra. Libra is the Moon's "exalter" in the same sense that Jonathan Swift punningly denies the queen will be hts in this 1732 couplet cited by the Ogord English Dictionay (s.v. exalter): Her majesty never shall be my exalter, And yet she would raise me, I know, by a halter! Could Chaucer intend for Libra to be the Moon's exaltation in the sense that within this sign the Moon is elevated above the horizon? Although Dolores Warwick Frese's idea that Chaucer is here constructing a retrograde arc of day is surely a mistake, she is right about his tone in the phrase "the moones exaltacioun-I meene Libra": "Chaucer anticipates any reasonable reader's assumption that he (or his scribe) may have made an inadvertent error here, confusing 'Libra' as the 'moon's exaltation' rather than Saturn's. Having anticipated such a reader response, the poet then emphatically disallows the notion of unintentional confkion: 'I meene Libra' ([line] 11; emphasis added)" (Frese qo). Chaucer implies here that he does not refer toTaurus, which is setting, as the exaltation of the Moon, but rather to the sign now rising, Libra: "I mean Libra."This seems as clear an indication as can be that he is using the term "exaltation" to refer to a real planet at a real location, not a theoretical astrological one; just as the anonymous 1794 writer quoted above, when speaking of the Sun's "greatest exaltation in summer" means that the Sun has reached its highest point above the horizon in that season; or as Lawrence when speaking of the Moon's "exaltacion" means it is high in the heavens. Yet, even though Chaucer has tried

256

IMPLICATIONS

thus to direct our understanding to an unambiguous meaning, scholars for generations have accused him of a mistake. Instead of making a mistake, he is clearly using the word "exaltation" in an unusual though certainly not incomprehensible way. In order to ascertain whether Brea might be right and the Moon itself might be rising or about to rise in association with Libra on &S Chaucerian day (which would require a more or less full Moon opposite to the setting Sun's position in an early degree of Taurus) one need only consultTuckerman's tables. Since the sign Libra occupies degrees 180 to 210 on the ecliptic, it is easy to look through the Moon's positions on April 18, Julian calendar, for all the relevant years, y 87 to 1394,and discover that only in 1388,1391,and 1394 was it in or anywhere near Libra. According to rough calculations based on Tuckerman's tables, at 4 P.M. on Saturday, April 18, 1388, the newly risen Moon was approximately at Virgo 290,just ahead of Libra; at 4 P.M. on Tuesday, April 18,1391, the Moon was approximately at Libra 26"; and at 4 P.M. on Saturday, April 18, 1394, the Moon had already passed out of Libra, through Scorpio, and into Sagittarius.This latter position is s d a r to that of the Moon on Good Friday, 1389, the date that North prefers, which is, however, April 16.The table of the Moon's positions in Nicholas of Lynn's Kukndarium (Eisner 182-83) gives s d a r approximate positions (when revised from noon to 4 P.M.). Another set of his calculations, those for determining the dates of movable feasts (all being dates dependent on that of Easter), will help to isolate the correct date from these three possibilities (Eisner Kulmdarium 1~81~). First, however, the important role of the Moon in connection with the movable feasts of the Church must be explained. A Moon that is either full or just past the full has special meaning at the time of year of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrimage. Reference to such a Moon would alert a sophisticated medieval listener to the possibility of religious significance, for the full Moon was used in the computation of Easter. In 325 C.E. the Council of Nicaea decreed that the date for Easter, and with it the moveable feasts associated with Easter, was to be determined for all churches as the first Sunday after (not on) the fourteenth day of the Paschal Moon, "reckoned from the day of the new Moon inclusive" (North Universe 88). O n the fourteenth day of its cycle the Moon comes to perfect m e s s . North explains Lrther: "The Paschal Moon is the calendar Moon

LIBRA A N D THE MOON: SOME FINAL 5PECULATlONS

2 57

whose fourteenth day falls on, or is the next following, the vernal equinox, then taken as 21 March" (Universe 8890). For the purpose of calculating Easter, the Church reckoned the vernal equinox as March 21 even though the actual date of the equinox in Chaucer's t i e was March 12, as may be seen on a medieval astrolabe (see Torode). The sequence of events for calculating this important date, now as well as then, proceeds "new Moon, March 21, full Moon, Easter." Since the full Moon occurs after the equinox at different intervals from year to year, the date of Easter w d vary as much as from March 22 to April 25, variations that may be anticipated easily if not with absolute accuracy on the basis of the Metonic cycles of the Moon.3 It is because of these lunar associations, more than for any other reason, that Chaucer calls attention to the Moon about to rise across from, but later than, the setting Sun. N o other celestial sign or named date could announce so clearly to his audience that Easter is soon to follow. Moreover, according to the by then "natural order of things," that is, the long-accepted authoritative decision of the Council of Nicaea, the Paschal Moon will usually rise in Libra (associated with the Crucifixion) opposite to the Sun in Aries, with the Sun necessarily past the first point of that sign because the vernal equinox is past. Chaucer may well have first planned to use these Aries and Libra risings for his pilgrimage dating, much as he may have thought first of a simple astrolabic plan for the design of the amphitheater in Be Knight? Tak (a plan that corresponded to Boccaccio's description), for, as North accurately observes, Chaucer "clearly had an eye for a symmetrical situation" . in the very process of writing The Parson? Prolope he (Universe 1 2 ~ )Perhaps was struck by the fact that "turning" the sky ahead to Taurus and Scorpio, much as he turns the amphitheater around in The Knight? Tale, could evoke a particular date. But if is what he did do, in purely physical terms it seems that it does not work out so neatly as his reassignment of the two entrances to Theseus's amphitheater in The Knight? Tak, because the diminished Moon of April 18 is not in t h s afternoon sky. As explained above, Tuckerman's tables give three years when on April 18 the Moon was somewhere near the eastern horizon at 4 P.M.-1388, 1391,and 1394. According to Nicholas of Lynn's tables for determining the dates of movable feasts (Kakndarium 178-79), Easter fell on April 5 in 1388 and on March 26 in 1391.Both dates are too early for our purposes since they occur

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IMPLICATIONS

long before the April 18 date announced by Harry in The Introduction to the of Lnvi Tab. If Harry's eighteenth day of April precedes Easter, only 1394 works out as a possible "Chaucerian" year to associate with the pilgrimage. The Moon reaches full on Thursday, April 16 at 4:44 P.M., and Easter follows on Sunday, April 19.4 Sigmund Eisner argues, quite separately fiom considerations Use these of celestial locations, for the pilgrimage date of Saturday, April 18,1394, on the basis of "an amalgam of historical, allegorical, and astrological information, all of which was certady known to Chaucer" ("Fresh Aspect" 37). His paper buttresses the present argument. There remains the problem with &S 1394date that the Moon is not physically in Libra or even, as yet, in the sky (this is where Brea was wrong; he was not wrong about the non-astrological "real" Moon). O n April 18 the Moon rose well after dark, by 4 P.M. being already at Sagittarius 6" according to Eisner9scalculations ("Fresh Aspect" 41). For a solution to this problem one must disregard the actual rising and consider instead the lunation itself, the time fiom one new Moon to the next one. Even though the Moon reached its maximum fullness in the eighteenth degree of Scorpio in that d(in that sense, being "exalted) durApril of 1394,it was coming up to the f ing the days just previously spent in Libra.5 Regarding the situation in &S light generalizes the phenomenon, because the Paschal moon approaches the full in Libra every year. That sign may therefore be regarded, in liturgical rather than astrological terms, L "the ~ o o n ' exaltation." s If the Sun's angle combined with an April 18 Paschal Moon (as calculated fiom Nicholas's Kalendarium) implies a particular year (13~4))it is curious that Chaucer incorporates t h s date into his last astronomical allusion instead of into the first, which is the more usual procedure. In Le Dit du Lyon, with which Chaucer dearly was familiar because he drew on it for the Book of the Duchess, Guillaurne de Machaut early incorporates into the poem his signature allusion to a date and makes it very specific (see Chapter 5): "the second day of April, 1342" (Windeatt 65). Chaucer's audience might have expected such specificity horn has well, but in neither the fist nor the last chronographia in The Canterbuly Takr does he offer a straightforward date. Instead, at both points along the pilgrimage he universalizes time just as he now generahzes place (the "thropes ende"); at &S final point, by simultaneously offering and suppressing references to worldly time and place, he indi-

Man

.

.

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL IPECULATIONS

259

cates to his audience that he wishes them to substitute for a literal interpretation of the pilgrimage one that is more symbolic, even individual. Rodney Delasanta, arguing for the ecclesiastical iconography of Aries and Libra, expresses much the same opinion in an elegant and visually appropriate metaphor: "What we find at the ' h o p e s ende' is Chaucer gathering his pilgrims under the tympanum of his own art" ("Theme of Judgment" 304). The tympanum is that space included between the lintel of a door, such as a church door, and the arch above it, often decorated with carved figures U e the Libran angel pointed out by Delasanta At t h s point in the fiction, the celestial design of The Canterbu~files does indeed mark the curve of a tympanum, finally marktng an entrance to the spiritual world But only at the conclusion of the pilgrimage is the tympanum of the Church a suitable metaphor. The symbolism of Libra and the Moon, lke the ensuing &scourse on penitence, is thoroughly appropriate to the hour, on this day before Easter? As the sign of the Scales rises and the cathedral (never mentioned by Chaucer) looms in the distance, the Parson reminds his sometimes excessively worldly listeners of "thdke glorious pilgryrnage/ That highte Jerusalem celestial" (ParsProl p-51)) and he instructs them about the "slker wey" (surer way; ParsT 94) to get there, along with references later on to a greater judge than Harry Badly (for example, PariT16~)and another banquet (ParsT 1 0 ~ ~Thus ) . he raises the "game" proposed in the General Prologue to a more serious level.7 At the end of this clscourse, following naturally as the result of penitence and with no apparent change of voice, comes the Retration in whch Chaucer renounces those tales of Canterbury "that sownen into synne9'(pertain to sin). The reason that he gives for his penitential retraction is expressed in terms suitable for this late afternoon hour under the sign of Judgment: "So that I may been oon of hem at the day of doome that shulle be saved.'' -

-

Tlus book concludes with a final suggestion concerning Dante and the troublesome Moon, again assuming that Chauceis Moon will "really" rise above the eastern horizon as Libra mounts hgher overhead With his evident interest in time as a structuring device and image, Chaucer would have been intrigued by the way Dante structures his own pilgrimage to Paradise on the model of a week. As an observational astronomer armed with an astrolabe, Chaucer

would have been pleased by Dante's constant and accurate references to the constellations and h s references to time as determined by the angle of the Sun and the inequal hours. He would have admired Dante's precision and no doubt compared it to the imprecision of most poets using the chronographa figure and astronomical imagery. He would have been pleased, for example, by the way Dante has Adam explain how long he remained in Eden: Upon that mount the hghest fi-om the sea I dwelt, in innocence and in dsgrace, From first to seventh of the sun's hours, when he Into another quadrant changes place., (Paradise 26.139-42, Sayers-Reynolds trans1ation)s

That is, Adam remained in Eden for as long as it took the Sun to move go degrees of the 360-degree twenty-four-hour echptic circle, fiom dawn to noon at t h s equinoctial season. The length of time is not arbitrary. The hour of Adam's expulsion coincides with that of Christ's death accordmg to Luke zj:44: "And it was almost the sixth hour; and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour" (Douay).9 It may be remembered from Chapter 4 that inTractate W z j of Dante's Convivio,following a passage much concerned with the arc of day as the symbol of a human life, Dante explains that Christ LLed at dus hour, "the hghest point of the day," analogous to "the &ty-fifth year of h s life" (reckoning t h s as the midpoint of the conventional seventyyear span of life), "because it was not fitting that His &vine nature should 4 ) . is the hour that begin to d e h e " (W W Jackson translation, ~ ~ ~ - 7 Noon marks the beginning of the Sun's downward course to darkness, symbolically appropriate both to the movement toward death and the Fall of Man. Chaucer did not undertake a poem so structurally complex as the Cornmedia, nor was he attracted to such abstract philosophical schemes; his more practical and arithmetical muse kept hun down to earth. But it may have been the example of Dante using for his journey the "Ptolemaic week," a week based on a theoretical relationship of the planetary spheres, that led Chaucer to conceive of the visibly measurable artificial day as a model on whch to build his more realistic earthly pilgrimage. (Chaucer does, however, incorporate the "Ptolemaic day" or planetary hours into h s first two stories, the first one

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

261

pagan, the second one secular but in a Christian world.) Although both Chaucer's and Dante's fictions begin at the tradtional time of year for pilgrimages, the fact that in both there is an association of setting out with specific Christian seasonal symbolism is suggestive) and perhaps belies Howard Schless's assertion that "there is no use of Dante in the General Prolpt" (1~0). Far more suggestive is the fact that Dante envisions his sky at the time of grimage as describing the same symbolic arc from Aries to Libra that Chaucer sees in his work as a whole. This arc is anticipated by the warning of Dante's fiiend Conrad in PurgatorioVIII: [Said] he: "Go to, or ere the seventh tide Bring back the sun to rest in that bright bed The Ram's four feet arch over and bestride, Events shall hammer home into thy head That courteous judgement with much stouter nails Than this and that that other men have said,

If nothing stay the hand that bears the Scales (Purgatoy 8:1jj-jg, Sayers translation)

Dante's later vision in Paradise embraces these two opposing constellations, the Ram and the Scales, in a single illuminating instant when Beatrice is in silence. For this important stanza the original It&an is given with s&g a new translation that strives to be exact: Quando arnbedue li figli & Latona, coperti del Montone e de la Libra, fanno de l'orizzonte insieme zona, quant' 6 dal punto che 'l cenit &bra in& che l'uno e l'altro da quel cinto, cambiando l'emisperio, si dthbra . .

.

[When the two chddren of Latona, surmounted by the Ram and by Libra,

IMPLICATIONS

make of the horizon a single zone, fiom the point where the zenith balances them until the one planet and the other fiom that belt, trading hemispheres, unbalance themselves . . .] (Paradiso q1-6)

Dante's "two children of Latona" are the Sun and the Moon. The Sun in the Ram sets at the instant of the Moon's rising opposite in Libra, so that together they make a single "zone" (belt) of the horizon, the zenith holdmg them balanced, hke a scale (z9:4). Attempting to visuahze this passage could have suggested to Chaucer the features of Sun in Anes (actuallyTaurus) and Moon in conLibra ( a d y Scorpio), or else his observation or discoverythat a S& figuration in reahty occurred on a particular April 18 could have reminded hun of Dante's more purely symbolic passage. Dante h e l f , however, despite the evocative interest in the celestial arc that he &splays in ConvivioW.23, does not use the arc in the way Chaucer does to help structure h s story. He has structured the plot of Paradiso as a spiritual ascent through the planetary spheres to the Empyrean, whereas Chaucer notes &urnal zodiacal risings (as in Puqatorio), whde Gaming h s pilgrimage with specific references to Aries and Libra that correspond to Dante's Montone, "Ram," and Libra, "Scales". By this Gaming device Chaucer suggests the eschatological pilgrimage of living souls fiom the beginning to the end of created time, time that begins with the created world in Anes (as Dante mentions in Inferno 1:38-40 and Chaucer in NPT 3187-88) and concludes with the Last Judgment, symboked by the Scales, Libra But once more, as in h s borrowings Gom Arabian legend in Be Squire5 Zii and Gom Boccaccio in Be Knight$ Chaucer makes hts own the idea borrowed from Dante of the enormous scheme of the balanced signs (see fig. 10.2) by visuahzing it in terms of the astrolabe.10 Chiucer the asaolabist would take pleasure in findmg a real day rich in latent implications to make into the day of h s imaginary pilgrimage. Moreover, if he was as concerned about realism, about experience as opposed to the ideas of "auctoritate," as his writing sometimes suggests, it would have pleased lum to &scover that there existed an authentic day that he could read on his astrolabe and confirm in the calendar of his fiiend and authority Nicholas of Lynn, a day that would make a better h& to that Great Day

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

ZENITH

MOON HORIZON 10.2. Dante's Sun and Moon "in Balance" horn the Zenith (Paradso 2q1-3). Diagram by the author based on Barbara Reynold's diagram in the translation of Dante's

The Divine Cornea) 3: Paradise by Dorothy Sayers and Barbara Reynolds. mentioned in his Retrartion than any he had merely invented. North s d a r l y observes that "Chaucer, by introducing these additional modes of significance, was malung his poetry tmer than it would otherwise have been" (Universe 500; his emphasis). Its testable authenticicy in Nicholas of LFYs Kakndarium would have given Chaucer's pilgrimage day the authority of a metaphor that God, rather than he, had invented. After Sunset on that April 18, and after Chaucer's fiction has ended, when at last the real Moon climbs the wheeling arc of the heavens it w d represent the most non-astrolabic element of Chauceri m a d y secular day. Planets, because they "wander," are not represented on the astrolabe, though one can of course use that instrument to calculate their visible angle from the horizon and from significant stars. With reference to the Moon, however, not yet in measurable sight, Chaucer leaves the astrolabe behmd.The Moon is the only planet on the frame-tale journey that is mentioned directly, and

the one tradtionally associated with the human condition. But whereas the waxing and waning of the Moon ordinarily reminds one of change and "sublunary" human affairsAlgates he that hath with love to done Hath ofier WO then changed ys the mone.

/always /more often, than (Cmphint of Mars 234-35)

-the heavily computational context in which the Moon appears in The Prolop to the Parson? Tab evokes an opposite meaning. In his book on Dante? Christian Astrology Richard Kay cites evidence for such meaning: "According to Albumasar, the Moon gives one 'the intention to contemplate high things,' and . . . a substantial body of astrological opinion understood the contemplative life fostered by the Moon to be that of religion. Alcabitius, in the most popular medieval handbook on astrology, flatly stated that "in matters of faith, the Moon signifies religion'" (Kay 21; Latin texts on z90). The particular Moon that announces Easter points beyond the human condition of pilgrimage, for Easter marks the sacrificial and redemptive conclusion of secular striving. With his interest in the computational arts, Chaucer would be highly conscious that the calculation of Easter based on the Moon was the single most important celestial computation in the Christian world, and he would have seen Dante previously using a waning Paschal Moon of just the same age as his own three-days-diminished Moon of 1394, the Moon that has been exalted in Libra and now wanes before Easter.ll At the beginning of this book the suggestion was made that the emphasis of Chaucer's interest in the sky was primarily on timekeeping rather than astrology, as h s "arithmetical mentalrty" (Brewer, Acker, and Shppey) might lead us to expect Chaucer was readmg the sky as a clock and calendar and invites us to do Irkewise, not to read ourselves in the sky as astrologers do. But when he draws attention to the sky in &S final chronographia, he subverts that principle entirely, just as he often changes the game on us in other respects.12The conclusion of the journey raises one's vision to look beyond the scientific astrolabe and to move with the pilgrims under the Parson's drection fiom secular into liturgical time. As in other elements of Chaucer's

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

265

final scenes of pilgrimage, he prepared for this move. The astrolabically related hours of prayer of f i e Knight2 Tak, the Reeve's life-metaphor of the tun (RvT ?889-95), and Harry Badly's wish to hurry up the pilgrims in The Introduction to the Man of h 2 Tak, all are reminders that time is not merely a device to structure the day; it can recall us to our purpose, and it can run out. The association of the Moon's "exaltation" with Libra and the dating of Easter, that most important item of Christian tirnekeeping, recalls to mind not only the penitential journey but that "sighte above" and "the Firste Movere of the cause above" of The Knight2 Tak (KnT 1672,2987, respectively), that is, both the stars we see above us and the Divine Regardfrom above. Significant beyond all other attempts to read the sky, readings that the pilgrims have in the main forgotten or taken for granted on their journey, is the sky readmg us. That Divine Regard is not, however, "in" the story or even in the work, but marked and implied by the fmal words of Chaucer's Retraction. The argument presented in dus book demonstrates how fixed ideas in scholarship can come to represent natural signs to the point that they inhibit awareness of the obvious. In this case canonized ideas about The Canterbury Tabs have Inhibited awareness of several related phenomena: an actual sky that may be observed with the help of an instrument; the use of one symbolic day instead of three or four realistic ones, specific indications of a date that are not in c o d c t with Harry Bdy's reference to A p d 18; f d a r placenames in their geographical order (dismissal of this ordering itself being "canonized" only recently); and a real Moon just a few days past the tLU that has previously come to the full,significantly,in Libra, its liturgical rather than astrological exaltation.13 N o t only does taking Chaucer's allusions to the sky as physical descriptions solve a number of problems, it may also belie the authoritative and often-echoed pessimism of Samuel French about the ordering of Chaucer's tales: "No amount of jugglmg the fragments of his unfinished work wdl ever bring them into a completed pattern" (195). Chaucer might not have determined once and for all the exact ordering in which particular tales or groups of tales should stand (received opinion seems correct about this), and though he gives us the option of choosing our own ordering (MiiProl 3~77),it now seems that at one time he &d have, after all, a pedecdy dear

266

IMPLICATIONS

concept of "a completed pattern."Ths pattern, more graphlc in nature than French could have imagined, is defined by celestial coordmates taken in relation to geographcal place-names on the road to Canterbury and is supplemented by further astronomical features of an "artificial" Sunrise-to-Sunset day. The pilgrimage day, beginning when the pilgrims leave the Southwark inn "whan that day bigan to sprynge" (GP 822) and concluding perhaps with an expectation of an actual Moonrise after dark (which, though real, one probably should thmk of symbolically),was obscured in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by scholars insisting on a realism postulating several days for the journey. Later it was obscured by an equally ringing insistence on allegory of a kind that rejects precise time and place as being irrelevant. Most recently it was further obscured by the postmodern delight in aporia (Greek "doubt"), sites where meanings have free play. These latter views were supported by the decision of North and Eisner, the latter now rejecting it, that the chronographia of I h e Parson's Prologue must refer to April 17 or earlier, a claim this book refutes. Nonscientific Chaucer critics have necessarily placed great reliance upon this "irrefutable" astronomical reading-though Derek Brewer, one of the more alert of these critics, returns to an earlier view that the date is April 20, and adds that there is "an oversight in the astrology" (New Introduction 392). Reassessing these readmgs therefore opens up again the question of how serious Chaucer is about his references to time and place. H e is serious, but in unexpected ways. The b g of geographcal and astronomical points of reference on the road to Canterbury reveals the mode of Chaucer's realism: he obtains it m a d y from books and charts, thus it has no more to do with his actually being in the pilgrimage landscape than the projected southern-hemisphere astronomy above Mt. Purgatorio gives evidence of Dante's presence in a physical place. Chaucer uses references to time and place to support a higher significance at the end of the pilgrimage in a way that reveals his own symbolic intent. In this as in other respects Chaucer does not seem to wish h s audience to take the pilgrimage day as a merely literal or mimetic one. Instead, both the geographical scheme of the journey from the inn to the cathedral and the astronomical scheme moving from Aries-Taurus to Libra work on two levels at once: redstic and symbolic, or even, in the end, allegorical.

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

2 67

Perhaps the single idea that has most k b i t e d the dtscovery of Chaucer's day, one that curiously contradicts the realism that insists on a four-day journey, is dosest to the subject of this book in that at least it takes the sky into account. This is the notion that Chaucer's references to the sky tend to be astrological, hence to be understood symbolically rather than as realistic lncLcators of the time. As has been shown, however, at this stage in his career, Chaucer tends to refer belief in the human ability to read destiny accurately in the stars to his limited heathen or very worldly protagonists. In his own persona he makes use of astrological symbolism in ways that are consonant with established Christian tradition, much as Dante does (see Kay). In his frame tale Chaucer seems specifically to avoid trivial astrological games, an amusement to which the fortunes of composition must sometimes have in order to reserve the zodtac as a marker of time.The evidence tempted h, of the final zodiacal references suggests that Chaucer, the master of game, is in earnest about these uses of the sky, extraordmady so. H e uses astrology per se for the specific artistic purpose of establishing character or period (and entrapment, according to Patterson 219); he uses the zodtacal divisions of the sky to indicate the time; and in connection with this he uses symbolism traLLtionally associated with the signs to give the pilgrimage an eschatological turn of meaning at the very end.'+ Chaucer's charming and jesting style, which has led critics of the past to a c m e him of a lack of high seriousness (Matthew Arnold) or of having a mind unequipped for complicated speculation (H. S. Bennett 95). demonstrates instead a considered and complex strategy. Believing in and respecting "Goddes pryvetee" as it is displayed in the cryptic message of the world and the sky, Chaucer entices his audience again and again toward the jumping-off point of either faith or reason, then leaves them there on the brink to leap ahead or fall back. "I ne kan nat bulte it to the bren," his spokesman announces in The Nun3 Pried Tale (44?0), and in any case "oure flessh ne hath no myght/ To understonde hyt aryght" (Howe of h,49-50). Chaucer suggests repeatedly that God's purpose is too obscure to be fathomed by our h t e d mortal intelligence, and in his one dearly allegorical story of the Tak-Thr Man of h 3 TaC'which may once have been designed to begin the Tales" (Cooper, Gide j92), he shows a representative woman so adrift on her unelected voyage that she can only pray for God's unseen pidance,

268

IMPLICATIONS

having nothing else to help her navigate. Only at the end of the tales does Chaucer even hint at the way to set a final course, as he also does at the end of both Troilus and 71K Hows of fime-and only at the end of each story. What makes the thesis of this book different from the exegetical interpretations of the 1950s and 1960s is that the end of The Canterbuy Takr is not taken to reflect Chaucer's purpose throughout, or even primarily.The arc of day so carefully built into the frame tale may be seen in the end as analogous to the arc of a person's life, but along the way attention is given to plenty of other matters, both serious and just good fun. Chaucer emphasizes variety. Early on the pilgrimage day he joins with Harry Badly in enticing his audience to turn their serious journey into a springtime storytelling adventure under the Aries-Taurus Sun. When the journey is seen in retrospect, that is, under the Parson's influence but only at the end of the day, within that transcending view it comes to reflect the greater one-way journey of life.15 Chaucer provides in the frame tale of The Canterbuy Tales the most vivid exarnple in all his works of his own gentle strategy of "techyng discreet and benygne" (GP 518). Mapping the trip by that life-symbol the Sun, whose arc he traces with arithmetical care by means of the astrolabe (and with considerable help from h s friend's Kalendarium), Chaucer follows his pilgrimsand all of us-almost to the gates of the City.Then, with a treatise on penitence and his own exemplary Retraction, he leaves his readers there to do as they think best under the si& of the Scales that announces the soon to be rising Moon, a Moon that is a little more than opposite the setting postequinoctial Sun and thus bears the greatest significance for Christian pilgrims of any sign the celestial sphere has to offer: "Parfourned hath the some his ark diurne." T h s scheme of a single "Canterbury Day" is both practical and magnificently conceived, but a final question remains to be addressed, one that so far has been shrted: How well do the elements that implement the day actually succeed as narrative?Five significant markers or possible markers define Chaucer's April 18, and three other passages demand that we regard this day "astrolabicallyYff T h g all eight in order, they are: the position of the Sun in General Prologue h e s 7-8; the description of the amphtheater in Part j of The Knight's Tale;

LIBRA AND THE MOON: SOME FINAL SPECULATIONS

the schedule of the lovers' night in The Miller2 Tale; the position of the Sun at 10 A.M. on April 18 in The Introduction to the Man of

Law2 Tale; allusions to Leo and the Sun beginning its descent in The Monk? Tale; the steed of brass; the ambiguous annual-&urnal chronographia at the end of and the position of the Sun at 4 P.M. in The Parson? Prologue.

The Squire? %L;

Among these, the astrolabic "planetary hour" allusions in Be Miller? Tale depend on those in The Knight? Tale and are otherwise invisible; the allusions to Leo and the Sun in The Monk? Tale have never been noticed (if they exist at all); and the steed in The Squire? Tale is clearly "astrolabic" only for those who see it so.These three items may please those who perceive them, but they have no significant effect, detrimental or otherwise, on the narrative context. This is not true of the remaining items, more obtrusively intended to affect our reading of The Canterhy Tales; all five might justly be regarded as being more problematic, in whole or in part, than they are effective.The reference to the Sun's half-course in Aries in the General Prologue is confusing; Part 3 of The Knight? Tale significantly slows down the narrative (readers consider it one of the most tedious parts of Thp CanterburyTales);the "fourth part" of the day in The Introduction to the Man of h? Tale has never been understood; the tone of the interrupted conclusion of Thr Squire? Tale is puzzling; and two terms in The Parson? Prologue, "nat . . . degrees nyne and twenty7'(lines 3-4) and "exaltacioun" (line IO), are ambiguous to the point of causing all commentators to mistake their meaning. It must be admitted that these markers, though creating an interesting puzzle and the delight that a solution brings, are not successful elements of Chaucer's narrative. They impede it, even stopping it cold in the case of ThP Knight'i Tale, and merely perplex the majority of readers. This detrimental effect is partly due to the fact that Chaucer based his time scheme on an instrument that, though exciting to a few in his own day, is virtually unknown in ours. The astronomy that gives shape to the "Canterbury Day" and structure to the sequence of tales is simply too elitist for popular narrative, appealmg to knowledge that is too specialized. R e h a t i o n

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IMPLICATIONS

of this fact may have given Chaucer second thoughts about the structuring of h s work. In any case, whether it was his own idea or that of the unknown editor of the Ellesmere Chaucer, the non-geographic ordering of tales in that manuscript, while maktng the pilgrimage frame tale less redstic, nevertheless improves it thematically as it places the exquisite and thematically encompassing Nun's Priesti. Tak near the end of the journey. The shuffled "incomplete" order in which Chaucer apparently left his tales may reflect his realization of this. It may reflect his quandary, matchmg our own, about how to achieve the best order of tales for his great work. The problem of the "best order'' is the primary reason that, from the outset, this book has refused to claim a definitive status for the "Canterbury Day" order of the tales, even though that day supplements and confirms the tales' geographcal ordering. Instead, the thesis is that this was an ordering toward which Chaucer was working at one time. One can imagine him, an artist, balancing the narrative benefit of improved thematic order against the carefully wrought scheme of time and place, finding overwhelming the thought of revision to bring them both into harmony, and putting the problem aside to dunk about later-thereby leaving it for his heirs, and us, to worry about. We wLU no doubt continue to worry about it. Even though all of Chaucer's careful astronomy cannot make definitive the ordering of his tales, it is worthwhde to be clearer concerning what the nature of our interest in that order should be, and to be reassured that Chaucer cLd not cLsturbingly and uncharacteristically ignore time and place along the well-traveled route from London to Canterbury. - .

APPENDIX A Practice Astrolabe

All three appendix figures are based on diagrams taken from Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe. Appendm figure I is to be photocopied onto dear plastic, and Appendu figure 2 and Appendix figure 3 are to be photocopied onto opaque paper. Then they should all be cut out (for the two circular parts cut out only the circle) and fashioned into a practice astrolabe llke that shown in figure 3.6. This simple construction will make an adequate practice astrolabe. For a slightly better model, all figures should be photocopied onto stiff paper or light cardboard and the rete of the diagram in Appendu figure I cut out entirely.The center may be fastened loosely with a straight pin or tack.

Appendu I: Rete, to be photocopied on clear plastic. Diagram duplicating figure 1.1.

Appendtx 2: Mother plate with inset c h a t e plate, to be photocopied on opaque paper. Based on the hagram by W. W Skeat (hsfig. I) in his ehtion of Chaucer's Treatise.

Appendix j: Label, to be photocopied on opaque paper. Diagram by W W Skeat (his fig. 6) in h s edtion of Chaucer's Treatise.

GLOSSARY OF BASIC ASTRONOMICAL AN D NAVIGATIONAL TERMS (based on Huie.)

Altitude: The angular &stance measured in degrees of an arc (fiom oOto go0) above the horizon. The horizon is calculated as o degrees and the observer's zenith as go degrees. Celestial Sphere: An imaginary sphere upon whch the stars are fixed, with earth at its center. From the observer's point of view on earth, this sphere appears to revolve overhead once every twenty-four hours. Celestial Equator: An imaginary great circle on the celestial sphere, projected on the same plane as the earth's equator. Celestial Po1es:The two opposite points at go0fiom the celestial equator; the intersections of the axis of the earth extended to meet the celestial sphere. Dec1ination:The angle (used as a coordmate in modern astronomy) between the celestial equator and a celestial body such as a star, measured plus when north of the celestial equator and minus when south of the celestial equator. D e b a t i o n is analogous to latitude on earth. Ecliptic: The apparent daily and annual path of the Sun across the sky. (See zoclac.) Equinmres:The two points where the celestial equator and the ecltptic intersect. Accordmg to our modern calendar, the Sun arrives at thevernal Equinox on March 21 and at the Autumnal Equinox on September 21.

GLOSSARY

When the Sun is at either point, the night is equal in length to day, hence the term equi (equal) and nox (night). The First Point of Aries: The point, at the beginning of the sign Aries, where the apparent path of the sun (the ecliptic)crosses the celestial equator in the springtime.T h s is the "first point" along these two circles in all celestial measurements both medieval and modern. This point of crossing is also called "the vernal equinox" (see equinox). Great Circle: A circle drawn on a sphere that divides the sphere into equal parts, its center congruent with the center of the sphere. Meridian: A great circle that passes through the observer's zenith and the celestial pole. The Sun is on the celestial meridian at local noon. The Prime Meridan is the meridian that passes through Greenwich, England, and marks noon at that location. Nadir:The point on the celestial sphere directly below the observer. Observer's Horizon: A great circle halfway between the zenith and the nadr, always in relation to the observer. Precession:The rotation of the earth's polar axis around the pole of the ecliptic, a f'ull rotation taking approximately 26,000 years. This rotation causes the equinoxes to move westward at the rate of approximately one degree every 75 years. This movement is the reason that the "signs" of the zodiac no longer contain the constellations after which they were named. Right Ascension: The angle (used as a coordmate in modern astronomy) measured eastward from the vernal equinox (the first point of Aries) along the celestial equator, that is, to the right when facing north The measurement is made in hours, minutes, and seconds. Solstices: The two points on the celestial sphere equidistant from the equinoxes.The two days of the year when the Sun is farthest fiom the celestial equator; in our calendar this occurs on June 21 and December 21. In the northern hemisphere the summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and the winter solstice the shortest. The word solstice means "sun at a standstill," when the sun seems to stand s t d before turning. (The element -stice derives from the same root as station). Zenith: The point on the celestial sphere directly overhead fiom the position of the observer.

GLOSSARY

rn

Zodiac: A band extending 8 degrees to either side of the ecliptic, containing the zodiacal constellations and the signs of the zodiac. Because the zodiac was established a little before the beginning of our era, the signs and their constellations are no longer congruent (see precession). Zodiacal Sign: Any one of twelve 30-degree sections of the zodiac, measured along the ecliptic from the first point of Aries. Whereas today a "sign" is an astrological item, in medieval times the zodiacal sign h c tioned also, possibly primarily, as a measurement of the sky, a coordinate both for calculating the time and for locating celestial objects. (Note that it is difficult for some moderns to accept the fact that the signs were formerly used in this pragmatic, nonastrological way.)

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NOTES

Introduction I.

Because of Chaucer's farmliarity with the Commedia, Dante w d often be mentioned

in the discussions that follow. For Jeffers's use of the night sky as timekeeper, see the long poem "Tamar" in his Selected Poetry (3-64). 2.

Lewis puts us fkrther on our guard when he observes that "no story can be devised

by the wit of man whch cannot be interpreted allegorically by the wit of some other man" ( O n Stories 140). Chaucer does translate and write allegory, as in, respectively, The Roman de /a Rose and the part subtitled "the story" in The Complaint 4 Mars; but one does not think of him

as a great allego& like Dante, Langland, or Spenser. Chapter I I.

For a bibliography on Dante's astronomy see Kay 9-10 and notes on 288; he cites five

book-length surveys of whch only Orr's is in English. To this may be added Alison Cornish's Reading Dante's Stars, though her aim is quite ddferent fiom Orr's, concerned more with philosophicalmatters than practical astronomy. In an essay on Dante written some years after The Sacred Wood, Eliot amends the specific remark quoted here to a more general comment

about first enjoying Dante despite a wide discrepancybetween that enjoyment and an understandmg of h s work. While still maintaining his earlier thesis that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood, he now admits that "the enjoyment of the Divine Come4 is a continuous process" (Dante 16).The same is even more true of the enjoyment of The Canterbury Taks, which on a first reading may well appear, as Matthew Arnold said of Chaucer

280

NOTES TO PAGES 11-13

generally, to lack "the high and excellent seriousness which Aristotle assigns as one of the grand virtues of poetry" (Arnold 675). Astronomical and related perspectives are, however, among the elements that confer a greater seriousness upon the Taks than Arnold and others have perceived-while

not forfeiting the lightness of tone, the "chaff;" that makes

the fiuit so pleasurable (cp. NPT 3443; Grudin observes that the advice here, to "[take] the

). fruyt, and lat the chaf be stde," is "belied by the experience of that tale" [ I I ~ ~ ]Chapter 7 will demonstrate the existence of this "higher" perspective even in The Milbr's Tab, show-

ing that tale to be especially receptive to Eliot's "continuous process" of enjoyment made greater by understanding. 2.

For a much more sophisticatedand theoretical analysis of fourteenth-century astron-

omy, see J. D. North's explications in Part I of Chaucer's Universe.The present discussion is minimal and intended only to serve the needs of persons reading Chaucer's Canterhry Tab or those interested in the "astrolabic" aspects of this work. 3. Robert A. Pratt, for example, does not distinguish between astrology and astronomy as he discusses the two together in the introduction to his edition of the Tab (xviii-xix). He

concludes that Chaucer "cornrnended" judicial astrology in The Man of LawS Tak (xix), a conclusion that is questioned in Chapter 8 below. W A. Davenport refers to an entirely computational passage, 1ntroMLT1-14,as "one of Chaucer's most extraordinarilylong-winded pieces of astrological time-telling" (18).

4. Astronomy and astrology both study the movements of the heavenly bodies; the branch of astrology called horary astrology stules planetary influence and calculates things like the best time for a particular person having a particular birth horoscope to travel, to purchase property, to marry, and so forth. This branch is discussed in Chapter 8. 5. The classic text for the early history of astronomy is A Short History

of Astronomy by

Arthur Berry. Franz Cumont's Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans approaches the subject fiom a point of view perhaps more interesting to scholars of the humanities. Patrick Moore's Watchersof the Stars is more modern, very readable, and lavishly illustrated. 6. For the centuries of human history preceding the invention of docks, time was measured mainly by the apparent motion of the Sun and stars. Thus it is interesting that, although earthbound atomic clocks are now considered the most convenient means of measuring precise time, the most precise timing of all is astronomical, because certain pulsars provide the most stable time references known. Yet even now the prime meridian, above which the sky apparently turns, continues to be the reference point for measuring civil time on earth (rather than a duration system independent of terrestrial location); thus, Britain still colonizes socalled universal time, marked by the English sky above Greenwich. David S. Landes provides

281

NOTES TO PAGES 13-16

an informed and readable history of the development of clocks and the sigmficance thereof in his Revolution in Time. 7. The date of 1391is given by John Reidy in his introductory note to the Treatise (RiverThe most complete modern edition of the treatise is that by Sigmund Eisside Chaucer 10~2). ner in the Variorum Edtion of The Works of GeoJrey Chaucer. Also available are editions by F. N. Robinson in Works (544-63)) by John Reidy in The Riverside Chaucer,ed. Larry D, Benson (662-85); and, as a separate text, edited by W W Skeat for the Chaucer Society, with summarizing glosses at the bottom of the page and admirable drawings. Skeat bases some of his commentary on A. E. Brea's earlier edition, A Treatise on the Astrolabe of GeoJrq Chaucex 8. J. D. North offers a useM modern discussion of the astrolabe in the Scient9c American issue of January, 1974 (+106),

and in Chapter z of Chaucer's Universe. Sigrnund Eisner

gives instructions for "Building Chaucer's Astrolabe" in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association. In Chapter 6 of Chaucer's Universe,J. D. North offers new evidence leading to his

"moral certainty" that Chaucer was the author of The Equatorie of the Planetis. Pamela Robinson adds firther evidence in "Geoffiey Chaucer and the Equatorie of the Planetis:The State of the Problem" (refked by some reviewers); John H. Fisher also argues in "A Chaucer Holograph" that Chaucer was the author of the Equatorie and suggests some bibliographcal implications that follow if the Peterhouse manuscript that contains the text is in Chaucer's own hand. Kari Anne Rand Schm~dtassesses the evidence in great detail in the most recent treatment of the subject and concludes that "so far the case for Chaucer's authorship of the Equatorie of the Planetis rests on insufficient evidence. Unless new and decisive proof comes to light,

the verdtct must remain one of 'not proven'" (99). 9. In his New History of Pmtugal, H. V Livermore proposed the attractive idea, with no documentation, that Philippa of Lancaster, sister of the later Henry IV and niece of Chaucer's wife, Phrlippa, "may have studied the astrolabe with Chaucer" (106). Though "her personal qualities were of the lughest order" and two of her sons were famous explorers and navigators who certainly used the instrument (including "Henry the Navigator"), the fact that Philippa left England in 1386 to marry the new king of Portugal makes her studmg the astrolabe with Chaucer highly unlikely. Tim Joyner, however, citing Livermore as h s authority, presents that scholar's fanciful supposition as fact in his book Mugellan: " T h s emphasis on nautical stules had its origin with Philippa of Lancaster, the English princess who became queen of Portugal in 1387. Extraordinarily well-educated for her time, she had been tutored by Geoffiey Chaucer, who is said to have taught her the use of the astrolabe" (34; emphasis added). See Eisner, "Chaucer as aTeacherI7'for a d e d e d analysis of the instructional virtues of the Treatise on the Astrolabe. The fifth-century mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria offers

2 82

NOTES TO PAGES 16-24

another impressive early example of an effective teacher, as her student Synesias writes to a &end that he is sendmg hrm an instrument of silver (apparently some kmd of astrolabe) to which his teacher Hypatia contributed in the design. The possibility that she actually made such a contribution is improved by the fact that her father, Theon, was the author of a treatise on the astrolabe. Otto Neugebauer translates the relevant part of Synesias's letter in his artide "The Early History of the Astrolabe" (248) without comment on the possible contribution of this remarkable woman. 10.

In "The Early History of the Astrolabe," Neugebauer offers evidence that "the

astrolabe as an instrument [not merely a concept] was known to Ptolemy" (240; see 242). 11.

This description of Chauntecleer's timekeeping is based on the idea of a clock-

work device similar to but antedating the magnificent renaissance clock Isplayed on the cover of the Smithsonian vol. 11:9 (December 1~80).Deriving fiom the rooster-shaped weathervane, the cock as "a moveable figure . . . was part of the repertoire of automata of the monumental clocks in later times. For example, a mechanical figure of a cock is all that remains of the first astronomical clock in the Minster of Strasbourg ( D o h - v a n Rossum 56-57). Some of these rooster-clocks are known to have crowed, like Chauntecleer, on the hour. The most extraordinary automata came fiom the Islamic sphere, one of the earliest as a gift from Sultan Harun-al-Rashid to Charlemagne in the year 807, reported by Charlemagne's biographer Einhard in his Frankish Annals; others, as D o h - v a n Rossum says, "were known only by hearsayH(7?). For example, as he reports, on the ?57th night of the Arabian Nights Scheherazade tells a story "of a peacock that flapped its wings and cried out

each hour" (7?). 12.

Gingerich offers a photograph of the tablet and explains that h e 5 gives positions

corresponding to April 419 ~.c.Thisline reads: "Jupiter andVenus at the beginning of Gemini, Mars in Leo, Saturn in Pisces. z9th day: Mercury's evening setting in Taurus." H e confirms &S date as he points out that "the earliest cuneiform text using the standard twelve

signs [i.e., divided equally] dates only to around 400 B.c." ("Scrapbook" 29). The Russian astronomer Alex A. Gurshtein offers an innovative interpretation of the more distant origins of the zodiac in "On the Origins of the Zodiacal Constellations." I?.

Since melody and simplicity offer remarkable memory aids, the following mnemonic

may be sung to the appropriate tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" (also the tune of the "Alphabet Song). It is usefd for remembering the sequence of either the constellations or their corresponding signs: "Aries, Taurus, and the Twain,/ Cancer, Leo, Girl with Grain,/ Scales and Scorpion, Archer, Goat,/ Aquarius with Fish afloat,/ Now I know my zodiac,/ You can pat me on the back!"

14. Gleadow continues, "Only later did [the zodiac] come to be used for divination, and later still for the analysis of character" (206). 15. The equinox appears to have been first observed historically within the constellation Taurus. Concerning this drifting point Richard Hinckley M e n says, writing in 1899, that "Modern scholars think that [the circle of the signs] was known to the Akkadians as . . . the Furrow of Heaven, ploughed by the heavenly Directing Bull, ourTaurus, which fiom about 3880 to about 1730 B.C. was first of the twelve" (I). He suggests evidence exists that for a time the signs became for the Jews "objects of idolatrous worship," with the implication that Baal, the golden calf, is associated withTaurus, the bull of the zoclac.The evidence, Allen says, lies in the OldTestament (I). 4 Kings q:5 (Douay) tells us that Josiah "destroyed the soothsayers, whom the kings of Juda had appointed to sacrifice in the h g h places in the cities of Juda, and round about Jerusalem: them also that burnt incense to Baal, and to the sun, and to the moon, and to the twelve signs, and to all the host of heaven," that is, the stars. 16. The Alnath that Chaucer names here is actually the first mansion of the Moon, "in whtch [the star Alnath] was situated and with whtch it shared its name" (North, Universe 4-22), but thts does not make any difference to the dxussion at hand. 17. The old division into twelve signs of jo degrees each would undoubtedly be as curn-

bersome and archaic for modern technology as the duodecimal monetary system of Britain proved to be. It is easier mathematically to calculate the arcs and angles of a circle using the component of 360 degrees, just as it is quicker to make change using the decimal system to value coinage. Yet we still use the ancient d u o d e c d system for clock time. 18. Astronomy measures movements and intervals, seelung an accurate model to reflect the cosmos as it really is. Astrology finds within that model a reflection of our collective and individual lives, and seeks to analyze these s~darities.Astronomy is abstract, aloof;. astrology is personal. Most scientists today would adjudge modern astronomy as "correct" about the sky (so far as we know), medieval astronomy as "mistaken" about it in many particulars, and astrology as "superstitious" about its effects. Thus the biggest distinction among these disciplines lies between astronomy (of whatever period), which tries for objective descriptions, and astrology, which adds to that description a subjective interpretation. Scholars tend to assume that since Chaucer was watching h s stars in a medieval sky, his interest in them must have been astrological.When a modern astronomer discovers that the astrolabe has upon its face an ecliptic circle marked off with the zoclacal signs, he may s d a r l y assume that the instrument was intended for astrology and has nothing to do with the actual sky. O n both occasions the person making the assumption has been misled by false associations. The astronomer's mistake in particular is based on the misunderstandmg that medieval astronomy

284

NOTES TO PAGES 30-31

was identical with astrology, and that the concept of the zodiac lrkewise was only usefkl in astrology. (For example, among its other purposes the astrolabe was used until recently for determining the Muslim hours of prayer.) These distinctions must be dear for the subject of this book to be understood. 19. This treatise was long thought to be written by Messahalla, a Jewish astrologer who lived ca. 730-815

C.E.

and who helped to lay out the city of Baghdad in 762-63. In 1981,how-

ever, Paul Kunitzsch argued that the treatise was written by Ibn al-Saffar (d. 1034) a disciple of the eleventh-century Arab astrologer from Spain named Maslama al-Majriti (Kunitzsch). While praising Kunitzsch's work, J. D. North was more cautious in accepting his conclusions in Chaucer's Universe (42-43".

6). More recently North says simply that al-

Saffar's work was a source for the later "Messahalla" treatise "by a writer whose real identity is unknown" (Fontana History 21~). 20.

The pervasiveness of the influence of Boethius on Chaucer's work is mentioned by

all commentators. For an especially good brief analysis of how Chaucer adapts Boethius in one particular passage (Theseus's speech near the end of The Knight's Tab) see Kean 41-48. In a discussion of the influence upon Chaucer of the two authors of Le Roman de fa Rose, Larry

D. Benson concludes: "Jean's work was as influential as Guillaurne's and Chaucer drew on it throughout hts career, fiom the account of the game of chess in The Book of the Lhchess to the characterization of the Wife of Bath, which owes a good deal to Jean's La VieilIe. Perhaps even Chaucer's characteristic style, with its humor and realism, owes something to Jean's example" (Riverside Chaucer 686). For a basic study of the ways in which Chaucer's familiarity with the French poets influenced his style and meaning see Charles Muscantine's Chaucer and the French Tradition; for surveys of Chaucer's French, Italian, and Classical influences see Chapters 6,7, 8 in Beryl Rowland's Companion to Chaucer Studies. Other more recent studies (such as that by Boitiani) analyze these influences in greater depth. It is intriguing that the sequence of translations spans different cultures: Classical, French, Italian, and Spanish-Arabic. 21.

Both Smyser (?66) and North (Universe 513-14) observe that Chaucer moved fiom the

merely rhetorical to more scientific ways of referring to the sky. Smyser would like to attribute

this move to the influence of Boethius, whose Consolation of Phibsupb Chaucer was translating in the late 1370s or early 1380s (Riverside Chawer 1003): "It is tempting to think," says Smyser, "that Boethius had the crucial influence in turning Chaucer's attention to the physical cosmos. As Thorndike says of the Consolation, 'The heavenly bodies are apparently ever present in Boethms's thought"' (366).Two excellent examples of the baroque and popular mode of allusion that influenced Chaucer earlier may be seen in the passages by Boccaccio quoted at the end of Chapter 5 in this work. Piero Boitiani &scusses these and other astronomical passages

185

NOTES TO PACES 31-35

from Boccaccio's Teseida in his Chaucer and Boccaccio, remarking that astronomy in the Teseida, as in BoccaccioJsAlocoto, "remains an external 'vernissageJdue more to BoccaccioJspassion for culture than to the internal needs of the work" (26). 22.

Even in medteval times there were some who fiowned upon this thoroughly scien-

tific instrument because of its foreign ("pagan") appearance and the uses to whch it could be put. "Theologians could not ignore its proximity to astrology; they considered it a tool of the devil and frequently also evidence of unseemly theoretical curiosity" (Dohrn-van Rossum 79). Edward Peters refers to an incident when a deric used the astrolabe magically, "not with the intention of calling up the devil" but to "find goods of the Church that had been stolen. Zeal and simplicity had b v e n him to do &S,'' so he was ordered to do penance for the "most grievous sin" (59). A personal note is in order here concerning modern unexarnined prejudice, not about the astrolabe but about the zodiac itselE When the author consulted a certain European astronomer for help in understandmg celestial mechanics as represented by Chaucer, in particular when trying to sort out the various terminologies for describing celestial location, this astronomer was wholly unable to imagine the use of the signs to mark time. He stated adamantly that reference to the zodiac always indicated belief in astrology and was used solely in connection with superstitious fortune-telling.This educated man's positivist bias was a wake-up call about the necessity of making absolutely dear the difference between the use of the ediptic signs for astrology versus timekeeping. Although never encountering another astronomer so oblivious to the history of his own discipline, the author has observed a smilar alarmed bias in scholars in the humanities. For example, Maureen Halsall, in her fine edition of The Old English Rune Poem, rejects the argument that the stanza for the runeTir describes Mars, despite all the evidence pointing to h s identification, because she finds it unlikely that the Christian poet "would compose a paean in praise of a heathen god" (137). In theTir stanza the Old English poet seems actually to be depriving the pagan god of divine status by relegating him to secular planethood. One purpose of &S current book is to reexarnine (but not necessarily contradtct) a number of similarly fixed ideas about Chaucer's plan for h s Canterbury pilgrimage, ideas that have become so "natural" that we no longer thmk to look at them closely. Murray Krieger discusses this phenomenon use-

Myin "The Semiotic Desire for the Natural Sign." Chapter 2 I.

J. D. North analyzes the astronomical allusions in The Squire'sTab in Part 2 of "Kalen-

deres" (257-62), and more recently in his Universe (263-88). H e observes that Carnbyuskan's wife is named after the star Elpheta (in modern terms, Alpha Coronae Borealis), noting

NOTE5 TO PAGES 35-36

286

incidentally that this is one of the major star names engraved (with various spellings) on the astrolabe. In figure 1.1 it may be seen on the arm of the rete between Scorpio and Sagttarius. Using that observation North then proceeds to put forward the interesting but debatable idea that other members of Cambpskan's family also bear star names, some to be found on astrolabes, and that the lung himself "is to be equated in an allegorical sense with the planet Mars" (Universe 258); Vincent J. DiMarco summarizes these associations in his note on lines 29-33 of The Squire'sTale (Riverside Chaucer 891). North condudes his argument with the observation that "Chaucer the astronomer and astrolabist can be seen at work more dearly in The Squire'sTale than anywhere outside the htrolabe itself" (Universe 262) an assessment with whch this author agrees. In his otherwise fine variorum eltion, especially rich in its usefd survey of critical assessments and commentary, Donald C. Baker scants this astronomical aspect of The Squire'sTale. 2.

The text (with

U'S

and v's standardized to modern English), printed in 14-81,is

Caxton's translation from the Dutch Reynaerts Historie, Gerard Leeu's prose version of the epic of Reynard the Fox composed, or one might say compiled from earlier materials, around the year 1375 and printed in 1479. See N. F. Blake's account in his edition of The History of Reynard the Fox. Mainly for the convenience of the reader, Caxton's translation is used here as representing a version of English only a century away from Chaucer's own language. The original passage from Jan Goossens's edition of Rynaerts Historie (394) follows. Nothing comparable to this digression appears in the Reynke de Kx version, which Goossens prints on the page facing Rynaerts Historie. Although here a comb is provided instead of a sword, the episode offers a close analogue to Chaucer's four magical gifts: Daer wilen l e coninc crompaert Of had gemaect dat houten paert O m lieften des maradigas Dochter che so schoon was O p dat hise waende wynnen Dat peert was so gemaect van bynnen So wie dair op sat ende hijs begeerde Hy voer henen sijnre veerde Hondert mylen bynnen eenre vren (Lines 5592-99)

......................................... Crompaert dreide om enen weruel saen Die in des peerts borst te voren stont

NOTES TO PAGE5 36-37 Doe hief peert op wt vryen gront Ende voir ter veynster wt vander zael Eer men een pater noster sounde lesen wael Hy sach hi was tien mylen ver. (Lines 5609-14) Thomas W. Best suggests that Chaucer could have encountered this Dutch text through his wife Plulippa, who was the daughter of a knight fiom Henegouwen. In lines 4054-55 of The Reeve's Tale, Chaucer seems to allude to the moral of a fable that also appears in this work, as

a digression in the trial of the fox (Goosens, Reynaerts Historie, lines 4103-104; Best 114). Although again the correspondencesare not exact, they are suggestively dose. In the note on &S

line in the Riverside Chaucer, reference is made to the "later" version of the fable by Cax-

ton (851) but Caxton is actually translating fiom h s Dutch version based on materials contemporary with Chaucer. Best's work on this source appeared too late for Baker to include it

in I s discussion of the sources for the knight's gifts (Baker, Squire's Tale 9-15). 3. Froissart mentions the story in a poem that Chaucer probably knew, L'espinette amoureuse.

As H. S. V Jones says in his lscussion of The Squire's Tale in Bryan and Dempster, Sources and Analogues of Chauceri Canterbuy Tales (366 n. 3): "At 11.700 ff: the lady of the poem reads to her

knight a portion of the romance." The romance that Jones refers to here is the French Ckomadis, in whch the tale of Crompart's steed of ebony is related, and the necromancerVirgil's

metal (but nonflying) horse is referred to in a digression (lines 1677-81) along with his magical far-seeing mirror (lines 16p-170~). Froissart does not give any details, only alluding to the story with the confidence that it is farmliar to the audience. Jones summarizes it in Sources and Analogws (?66-74), and the most relevant part of the poem is quoted by Baker in Squire? Tale 10-11).

4. See Dohrn-van Rossurn, especially Chapter 4 where he recalls, for example, Harunal-Rashid's gifi to Charlemagne in 807 of "a brass dock, a marvellous mechanical contraption" (72) and reports how "in 1232, Sultan al-Ashraf of Damascus presented to Emperor Frederick Ti an extraordinarily precious 'artificial sky' on which the course of the stars and the hours of the day and night could be read" (73). "Most of these clock automata, costly and ddficult to maintain, were toys used for entertainment at the courts and in wealthy homes and to amaze visitors" (74). Joyce Tally Lionarons describes even more elaborate dockwork devices in medieval travelers' tales of the Byzantine and Mongol courts (378). Indeed, one passage of The Travels of Marco Pob, interpreted lfferently by various translators, may refer to some sort of astronomical device at the court of the "Great Khan"; the 1958 translation (translator not named) says in Chapter 25: "There are in the city of Kanbalu . . . about five

288

NOTES TO PAGES 37-40

thousand astrologers. . . .They have their astrolabes, upon which are described the planetary signs" (16~).If "planetary signs" means the signs ruled by the planets, that is, the zodac, the instrument referred to could indeed be an astrolabe; otherwise Marco Polo is more likely referring to an almanac, as other translators have decided. In any case, all that is significant here is how Chaucer might have understood it. The Khan's court is in the city Khan-balik, given as Kanbalu above and elsewhere as Kambalu, from whch place-name Chaucer evidently takes the name of Cambyuscan's son Cambalo (SqT 31) or Cambalus (SqT 656). Perhaps he gets the idea of the Khan's birthday party fiom an earlier chapter (Chapter 11 in the translation cited), with the ornate and lavish gifts coming from Chapter 12. For h t h e r discussion of the possible influence on The Squire's Tale of both Marco Polo's and Mandeville's eastern Travek, see Baker (Squire's Tale 4-7) Metlitzki, and Schddgen (44-45).

5. In addition to D o h - v a n Rossurn, see Donald R. Hill, who traces the influence of Arabic "fine technology" on European clockwork and other devices. Visual evidence of the continuing association of clockwork automata with the Arabic world is provided by Otto Mayr's article in the Srnithsonian 11.9 (1980), well illustrated with photographs by Erich Lessing, about a Smithsonian Institute exhibit of "exotic" European-made clockwork instruments of the Renaissance. 6. The modern sextant has been described as a "folded" astrolabe. 7. Although in "Kalenderes" J. D. North offers the astronomically calculated date of 1390 for Be Squire+Tale (257-62) redating it to 1383 in Chaucer+ Universe (282), Baker concludes his discussion of the date of the tale by saying that there is no general consensus (Squire's Tale 25). He does not venture so much as a guess, but the "astrolabic" content of the story appears to associate it, or at least Chaucer's tinkering with it, with the early 1390s. For criticism of "the assumption . . . that Chaucer often wrote astrological-astronomical allegory," and in particular of North's method of deriving dates of composition from Chaucer's apparent allegorical design, see Smyser (364-66). Eisner in Studies in the Age of Chawer 12 (1990)

317-19, reviews North's revised argument in Chaucer? Universe far more favorably.

8. Gunther observes that this treatise is "the oldest work written in English upon an elaborate scientific instrument" (v). In his notes on the treatise in the Riverside Chawer John Reidy writes, "Earlier doubts that Chaucer had a son named Lewis have been dispelled by a document (West Wales Hist. Rec. 4,1914'4-8) showing two Chaucers,Thomas and Lewis, both of whom could be the poet's sons" (Riverside Chaucer 1092). Certainly John Lydgate thought that Chaucer's "tretis, f;L1 noble and off gret pris, upon th'astlabre" was made "to h s sone, that callid was Lowis" (Prologue to The fill the 1957 edition of The Works of GeoJry Chaucq 867).

af Princes, quoted by F. N. Robinson in

NOTES TO PACE S 42-54

289

9. The phrasing is Sigrnund Eisner's. In a personal letter commenting on the author's

identification of the steed of brass as the astrolabe, Professor Eisner points out that vocab-

ulary used to describe the ring and the sword that the knight carries also may have "astrolabic" associations. He associates the ring the knight wears on his thumb ( h e 8?) with the "ring to putten on the thombe of

tht right hond" of the astrolabe (Treatise 1.1; cp. KZ),and

the word "platte" (flat side) describing the sword at line 164 possibly with the word "plate" used in various ways for flat objects of metal (e.g., Treatise 1.3 and 1.13).The remaining gift, the magical mirror in which one may see afar "naturally, by composiciouns/ Of anglis and of slye reflexiouns" (SqTzzg-30; sounding like the anticipation of a telescope), is also useW for foreseeing personal and national adversity (SqT 1j4-~5). The astrolabe, especially in its Oriental context, was commonly associated, as it no doubt is today, with the magical h c tions of astrological fortune-telling as well as with the more o r h a r y work of calculating the time by angles of the Sun and stars. 10.

The latitude of Pegasus farther north than the Sun, with Alpharez as its eastern-

most star, places the constellation already well overhead as the Sun rises. For more on this interesting anomaly-when

an object that has the same longitude as another can rise much

earlier or later than the other-see 11.

Chaucer's Treatise 11.1~.

In Oppositionsin Chaucer Peter Elbow discusses several examples of a logical device that

Chaucer enjoys using, "asserting that all possibilities can be gathered into an either/or set, and then showing that the same conclusion follows fiom both" (62). Paul Strohm says that "the Squire, knowing the tradition within whch such marvels occur (romance, rather than 'gestes' or old science), knows how they are to be taken. The seeming diversity of the views he describes is thus undermined by the single rnindedness with which he dismisses them as objects of interest" (Social Chaucer 170). Strohrn does not point out that it is this very singlemindedness that is being mocked throughout the tale. The height of this mockery is that, unknown to the Squire, the scientific astrolabe has been inserted into his romance. 12.

The words worthy, rekene, and quqnte provide good examples of

&S

technique. These

three words are emphasized, respectively, in the description of the four times "worthy" Knight in the General Prologue (4?-78), the description of A l p s the "noble contour" surrounded by references to his "reckoning" (Book

of the &chess

434-42; discussed by T. A. Shippey in

"Chaucer's Arithmetical Mentality"), and Emelye's "queynte" imaginings in Diana's temple as she prays to remain a virgin (KnTzjjj-37; discussed by Timothy D. O'Brien in "Fire and Blood"). 13. Dolores Warwick Frese observes t l s association in An Ars Legendifor Chauceri Canterbuy Tales (1~0--71)a book that addresses some of the same questions as here (though in very

290

NOTES TO PAG ES 54-64

different form) and comes to Uferent conclusions about the order of the tales. Focusing on the involucrum or hdden figure (5-6 and passim), Frese cites in connection with the hors my previous essay, "The Squire's 'Steed of Brass' as Astrolabe" (30c-?o~). Chapter 3 I.

Various translations of Chaucer's Treatise exist, such as that by Gunther. The most

recent (through the third operation of Treatise Part I1 only, how to find the time) is Osborn 2002, accompanied by an essay by Sigrnund Eisner. 2.

Eisner explains this in much more d e d , concluding that on this "Good Friday, 17

April 1394 . . . the Sun at noon was at Taurus 5O44', or 35.7333O [celestial longitude]. The star closest to the h a h a y point of [the constellation]Aries, h Arietis, stood at j5.69j50.Thus on that date when Chaucer said he lay at theTabard Inn, the Sun's lonptude was halfway through the constellation of Aries" ("Ram" 340). Eisner's perception is true, but the astrolabic reading concerning the zodacal sign, whtch places the pilgrimage in an early degree of Taurus when the young Sun has run its half-course in the Ram in April (i.e., its second half-course, not necessarily completed immediately previous), is also true. One can have it both ways in this case: as Eisner himself says, "Chaucer works very well with either hand, and we should never doubt his ambidexterity" ("Ram" 341). Nevertheless, the graphic image of the signs splitting the months would have been ready avadable in the minds of those members of his audience to whom Chaucer seems to have been directing his chronographtae. 3. See C. David Benson, History 99-100. Mariel Morison brought this passage by Lydgate

to my attention. 4. This standard symbolism follows naturally from the fact that "the entry of the Sun into Aries begins the natural year" (North 506); the sign is "es~entiall~'~ (i.e., intrinsically; see North Universe U++-5) appropriate for other beginnings as well. 5. It has been argued that there was in fact less interest in astrology in Chaucer's time

than in ours; for a discussion see Chapter 8 and J. D. North ed. Horoscopes and Histoly, where he argues that astrology was a learned rather than a popular art. Quite apart fiom astrology, however, Chaucer's contemporaries would undoubtedly have been far more aware of the actual stars in the night sky than we are, or than we can be, living as we do among clocks and electric lights. Many of Chaucer's fourteenth-century contemporaries would probably be accustomed to looking to the sky both night and day to get an approximation of the time. 6. Our modern calendar is named the Gregorian calendar after Pope Gregory XIII, who was responsible for revising it. Because of the increasing obsolescence of the Julian calendar, duefly in respect to the date of the equinox, in March of 1582 Pope Gregory XIII issued a

2 91

NOTES TO PAC E S 64-78

brief to abolish its use and to substitute the calendar used today throughout the Christian West and territories influenced by that culture. At that time, restoring the equinox fiom March 11 to March 21 meant dropping ten days fiom the current year. They were dropped from the month of October 1582.This lfference between the modern and meleval dates of the equinox is made visible by the discrepancy in the relationship between the z o l a c and the date circles on astrolabes made before and afier the establishment of the Gregorian calendar. The latter calendar was not accepted everywhere at the same time, however, so one cannot date astrolabes absolutely on this basis. For a

account of the reformed dating, see

Coyne, H o s h , and Pedersen, Gegorian Reform of the Cakndar. 7. See Barney, "Chaucer's Lists." DiMarco observes that Chaucer's description of the

date at lines 48-51 of The Squire'sTale is "an especially elaborate chronographia . . . so elaborate that Wood (Chawer and the County of the Stars 9 b 9 ) holds it is a parody" (Riverside Chaucer 8 9 ) . This view is emphatically endorsed by M. C. Seymour. In "Some Satiric Pointers in The

Squirei Tale" (jr~-~4),Seymour details as foremost among the satiric markers "the Squire's rhetorical advances and collapses, his total inability to hold a narrative line, his empty fluency of comment and detail which explode, exactly in the middle of the tale, in that galpyng mouth of the norice of diptioun the sleepe [lines 350 and 3471 which divides an incredible night fiom an absurd morning. All that follows thatgalpg mouth and the delightfd foolish advice of the

person&ed Sleep, the sudden fiiendship of Canacee and the falcon, the latter's extravagant complatnt, and the final daunting recital of hture adventures, has often been savoured" (311-12). In his brief analysis of "the last Idus of March" and "Aries the colerik hoote signe," Seyrnour sees only that Chaucer offers parody, with no k t h e r intent (31~). Although Chaucer may be parodying the astronomical elaboration of a date, as The fianklin's Tale demonstrates he enjoys doing (a fiequent interpretation of the tone of that tale's lines IOI~-I~), he is simultaneously talung his typically mischievous pleasure in providmg an unexpected literal meaning. 8. As Skeat says, "The word his in 'his mansioun' refers of course, as TYrWhitt says, to Mars, not to Phebus, for Aries was the mansion of Mars" ( A Treatise on the Astrolabe lvi). This chapter is indebted thoughout to Skeat's dear explanations and arguments. g. Dolores Warwick Frese has also interpreted Harry's turning of his "horse" as a punning reference to the astrolabe, but she sees Harry hunself, astride that horse, as the central pin, not only its operator.Whether or not one accepts this allegorical interpretation, Frese's insight is worth quoting: "Buried in the Host's movement is Chaucer's stunning astrolabic inwlutmrm, deeply set within this self-reversing line: h d sodeynly he plighte his hors aboute' (IntrMLT 15). Accordmg to Chaucer's own scientific prose, the instrument designed for such celestial calculus features 'a litel wegge, which that is clepid the hors, that streynith all these

2 92

NOTES TO PAGES 78-89

parties to-hepel (1.14.5-6). T h s 'keeping of the parts together' is precisely what Harry Bailly is attempting to do at the moment that he 'turns h s horse' and tries to regather the various pilgrim 'parties,' restoring them to their properly ordained and 're-streyned' h c t i o n in the pilgrimage poem" (Frese 152-5?). 10.

Although many manuscripts give the Roman numeral ten here, "four" is clearly correct

for late afternoon. Sigrnund Eisner (Kahdariurn ?2-33) explains how the two numbers became confixed. As may be seen in dustrations of the astrolabe in Chaucer's TrPatke such as that in figure 6.8, in the fourteenth century the recently adopted Arabic number four was written as an X looped over at the top. Scribes unfamiliar with the "new" numbering system that was being used for mathematical and calendric purposes could easily have confused this figure with the Roman numeral X for ten. 11.

Jarnes Dean's (neglected) PMLA article offers an excellent brief treatment of this "&S-

m a n b g l ' The word is his. Chapter 4 I.

This tension is the main subject of Christian K. Zacher's chapter on Chaucer in h s

book Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Dkcavey in Fourteenth-Centuy England. In an effort to combat the sort of allegorical interpretation invited by a plot (such as those by scholars such as Baldwin and Robertson), Zacher recalls "Theodore Silverstein's reminder that the pilgrimage of The Canterbuy Tales is a device, not a plot or an argument"

and he refers to various

scholars who talk of the "great middle" that "Baldwin perforce leapt over" (89).Yet even Zacher finds a plot, or a theme so encompassing it can serve as one, in the contest established by the Host The c l a s h g spirit of this game, so contrary to the pilgrimage ideal, is countered by the Knight, who shows how sa-ife can be resolved with order.The tale-tellers who appear immediately after the Knight defy order, then comes the "great middle" with its variety of themes of harmony and discord-which

Zacher, like so many others, tries to arrange thematically-and

finally all &sorderly voices are silenced Zacher's is a good brief analysis based on what is actually in the text and, except for some of the attempts to rearrange the ordering of the tales, hard to contest What Zacher seems to imply as part of his "curiosity and pilgrimage" theme, but does not say outright, is that there is actually a double ''plot" to The Canterbuy Tales, Chaucer's essentially earnest pilgrimage to a spiritual goal and Harry Bailly's frivolous roundtrip contest Harry promptly loses control of the contest as the h4dler intrudes after the Knight, whereas Chaucer, as prime storyteller, wins by virtue of the end that he creates. But the space between these two impulses "defies wholesale allegorical interpretations" (89) and delights us with the very fact that it contains so many apparently irreconcilablemoods and subjects.

NOTES TO PACES 92-96 2.

293

Classical writers describe the months as either "hollow" or "fidl" according to whether

they contain twenty-nine or thirty days. See Bernard R. Goldstein's "Note on the Metonic Cycle," 115-16. The addition of the Host, who is both "of" and "not of" the pilgrimage, allows for the extra nonlunar day that gives us the &ty-one days of some months. 3. In "The Theme of Protagonist's Intention versus Actual Outcome in The Canterbury

Tales," Lois Roney argues that "throughout The CanterburyTales, the idea of a discrepancy between characters' intentions as opposed to their actual outcomes in this world is raised to the level of explicit theme"

(lgj).

4. John M. Manly and Edith Rickert analyze the forty-seven major manuscripts in The

Tat of the Canterbury Tales. In "Some Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, Daniel S. Silvia summarizes the evidence and finds that "there are suty to sixty-three M S now extant that are either complete or survivors of once complete fifteenth-century texts of the Tales" (161). Other manuscripts and partial manuscripts date from the sixteenth century or later.

5. Much work has been done in the past few decades on the validity and extent of "the marriage group." See, for example, Donald R. Howard's article, "The Conclusion of the Marriage Group: Chaucer and the Human Condition" (summarized in Lka 288--5~2).Condren, in the most recent discussion, finds in the II-TV-V

sequence the focusing topic "of

whether language and meaning agree or disagree" (75)), but this is dearly a major theme also in The Pardoner'sTale, whch has no concern with "gentilessel' 6. The "best text" of the Tales is identified by some scholars as the earliest extant man-

uscript, the Hengwrt in the National Library of Wales, but its contents are jumbled and incomplete. "It was probably the same scribe who not long afterwards wrote the most beautifd of the extant manuscripts, the Ellesmere" (Cooper, The Canterbury Tales 7). 7. As before, the positions of the opening and concludmg groups of tales (A-B' and GH-I) are fixed. The alphabetical order was established by Furnivall in his introduction to the Chaucer society eltion in 1868 and followed by Skeat in his edition of 1873-1899 (though Skeat included a statement that he thought C was misplaced). In Chauceri Major Poetry ( 1 ~ 6 ~ ) Albert Baugh follows this same ordering, but with Group C following Group F (that is, with the Pardoner coming later than the Wife of Bath). This is a change that most Chaucerims, and perhaps Chaucer hunself, would agree to, but one wonders whether it anticipates an idea Chaucer had not yet had. In his f;ll lscussion of the problem in 1981, Larry D. Benson asserts, "The manuscripts show that there were at most two orders as the text came to the earliest scribes; all the other orders in the manuscripts are scribal rearrangements or distortions of these two orders''

294

NOTES TO PACE5 96-99

("Order"). The order Benson prefers is that of the Ellesmere manuscript, represented thus by the Chaucer Society letters: A B' D E F C B2 G H I. The other order approved by Benson differs only in the position of Group G containing the Second Nun's and Canon's Yeoman's tales: A B' D E F G C B2 H I ("Order" 79). After a long and complex argument, in which he suggests that an early version and a later version of The Canterbuy Tales survived, Benson concludes, "What Chaucer actually did was to leave us the. . .Ellesmere order, imperfect and blemished though it be" ("Order" 117). 8. Norman F. Blake's expensive 1980 edition of the tales based on the earliest surviving manuscript, CeoJrgr Chawer:The Canterbu? Tales, Editedfrom the Hengwrt Manuscript, does not seem to have had much impact on the discussion of order. See also his volume The Textual Tradition

of The Canterbuy Tales (985)

and Paul G. Ruggiers' 1979 edition, The Canterbuy Tales:A Fasim-

ile and Transcrzjtion of the Hengwrt Manuscrip4 with Kzriantsfrom the Manuscript.

The Hengwrt ordering is as follows: A, D, B', Squire3 Tale, Merchant's Tale, Franklin's Tale, Second Nun's Tale, Clerk's Tale, C, B2, H , I (with spurious links connecting The Squire's Tale to The Merchant's Tale and The Merchant3 Tale to The Franklid Tale), and The Canon's Yeoman's Tale missing.

Perhaps this ordering represents, as Benson suggests, an earlier ordering, available while Chaucer was still alive and still revising. In his short poem to Bukton (Riverside Chawer 65y56), Chaucer advises his friend to read, apparently, The W$

of Bath's Tale ("The Wyf of Bathe I

pray yow that ye rede"; line z9), whch suggests that at least some of the tales were already in circulation before 1396.The Hengwrt manuscript represents the fiction of the pilgrimage as a frame for the tales that is far more casually ordered than the frame tale found in other

manuscripts; in this manuscript the b

e serves as a device to hold the tales together, but it

does not include d e t d s and precision to engage our belief The Ellesmere order, when modi-

fied

the Bradshaw sh$, makes much better sense of the journey, as though the fiaming fiction,

with its place-names and its janghg and conciliatory pilgrims, had come to attain increased importance for Chaucer. A movement from a lesser to a greater concern with some lund of externally imposed order for a group of tales seems a natural progression for anyone compiling an anthology of tales, some of whch had previously been conceived as separate items and perhaps delivered to an audence as such. 9. George R. Keiser puts forward one of the more comprehensible arguments about

ordering in h s article "In Defense of the Bradshaw ShfL" For a recent reassessment in favor of the Ellesmere ordering, see Helen Cooper's chapter "The Ordering of The Canterbuy Tales" in The Strtlcture of the Canterbuy Tales. She remarks that "Chaucer dearly had in mind a principle of ordering that went beyond merely following one tale with another" (62), and she discusses some of the evidence for Chaucer's moving certain tales around within the frame tale.

NOTES TO PAGES 99-103

295

See Dolores Warwick Frese's An Ars Legendifor Chaucer? Canterbury Tales for an entirely different argument in favor of the Ellesmere ordering. 10.

Helen Cooper is among the many who disagree with this assessment: "There is how-

ever no logical reason why the Summoner's remark indicatingthat Sittingbourne is still a considerable distance ahead (III[D] 847) needs to follow the mention of Rochester O/111926/B2 3116); and there is negligible evidence that Chaucer was so interested in the geographcal d e d of the journey, or had revised the work sufficiently,to make such references a reliable indication of tale order" ( G i h 277; see also North, Universe 503). Chaucer's interest or lack of it in "geographical detail" is a little beside the point It would be peculiar if he got the geographical order of the towns wrong in the few apparent marker-place-names

only-that

he him-

self inserted along the way (&S on a route that must have been f d a r to him, and to many of his listeners as well). Rochester and Sittingbourne were the only two significant towns on the route between London and Canterbury and their suburbs. 11.

This is, however, what Stanley Greenfield argues, offering as h s main evidence the fact

that "towne" as a rhyme word has less authority than it might otherwise have. But by making "towne" the final word of the tale and the last word spoken by the Summoner (SumT 2z94), Chaucer emphasizes its semantic importance. 12.

Derek Pearsall offers the following reading of the conclusion of The Squire? Tale:

Returning to the story he had left unfinished, Chaucer adapted it to The Canterbury Tales by adding an impossible scenario for its continuation and then having it "dramatically" interrupted.

. . .The Franklin now emerges in a new and rather engaging light Having listened

with something approaching lsmay to the Squire's sketch of his threatened epic, he decides to rescue himself, the rest of the company, and the Squire by pretending that he thinks the story is over. . . .As Coghill says, "The Squire, gathering himself for a n almost endless recital, is choked by the praises of the Franklin" (Pearsall Canterbury Tales 143). While not a universally accepted view (see, in particular, David Lawton's argument against it in Chauter?Namators 106-z9), the interruption theory has, as Pearsall remarks, "been fi-equently elaborated" (Canterbury Tales 336; where he offers references). As Cooper points out in her Cuide, however, "The key question raised by the Franklin's words is whether they constitute an interruption, or were meant to follow a complete tale that Chaucer in fact never hished (230; where she lscusses the question firther). 13. "Chaucer l d not complete the tale and there was no I&g

passage with any other

tale. The h& found in [Hengwrt] at this point is spurious" (Blake, Chauter 309). Some would

296

NOTE5 TO

PAGES 103-106

argue with this adamant statement. Nevertheless, as Manly and Rickert amusingly exclaim, "[Line] 672 is certainly an astonishing place to end, unless the author had a stroke of apoplexy" (quoted by Baker, Squire'sTale 76). Baker reports that Hadow in 1914 was the first to suggest an intentional interruption (Squire's Tale 32). In the author's view and that of some others, the Fr&

cuts short the Squire's tale because it has goaen out of hand. The tale

of Canacee and the lovelorn falcon is quite sufficient as the Squire's contribution to the storytelling. The complicated interlace romance (of the h d that is familiar in Arthurian story) with which he intends to follow the falcon story threatens to continue all the way to Canterbury and back again (see Heffernan for a fine discussion of this interlace). In contrast, The Franklin'sTale (which follows) seems llke a masterpiece of condensation and focus, even though, in terms of lines, his tale is longer than the interrupted Squire'sTale. The form the Franklin announces for his story, a Breton lay, is in itself almost a rebuke to the Squire, as stories of this kind were typically short and to the point. 14. Condren has a less positive view of this story and sees no irony either in the way the Franklin cuts off the Squire or in his use of a chronographia at FrankT 1016-18 (Condren 152-63). 15. When he makes this statement, North has previously argued that Chaucer's year of composition of this tale is astronomically revealed to be 1383 (Universe ~ ~ 4The ) . date in the tale is now 13 May, when the Sun reaches Gemini. O n that date Saturn andVenus were in "almost precise conjunction . . . and this in the presence of the Sun" (283). O n the basis of astrological associations of these planets and the Sun with marriages of kin, North proposes that the Franklin, apparently aware of the conjunction in Chaucer's sky, has interrupted because he could see that "the young man's story was not going to be fit material for pilgrims" (284). Whether one agrees with his reasoning or not, North's reading does not conflict with my own, which depends on Chaucer's intention, not the Franklin's. 16. The best and most thorough discussion of The Complaint of Mars, one that combines carefd astronomy and astrology with imaginative reading, is by J. D. North in Universe (304-25). Following Manly's reasoning, North argues that the most appropriate conjunction is in 1385. H e elaborates upon the implications of this finding by stating, "When we examine the situation in 1385 more closely, we find that Chaucer managed to work the astronomical events of that year into his poem in an astonishingly precise way" (31~). 17. "Longitude" in astronomy is not measured along the celestial equator the way that terrestrial longitude is measured along the earth's equator. Instead it is measured from the first point of the vernal equinox (First Point of Aries) along the ecliptic in the direction of the

NOTE5 TO PACES 106-19

2 97

Sun's apparent motion, fiom oOto j60°.Therefore the longitude of an object not directly on the line of the ecliptic is calculated as an angle. This is not a measurement a modern astronomer would use. For a brief but expanded discussion of the two main meleval and modern methods for calculating a celestial location see note 22 of this chapter. 18. J. C. Eade discusses the more accurately astronomical use of these initial allusions in Sky 145-84. It will be observed in Eade's format, beginning as he does with Chaucer (Sky log-+),

that Chaucer himself introduced this Ovidian-Dantean technique into English

literature. John Lydgate follows Chaucer in using chronographiae, but without Chaucer's astronomical skill. (See Johnstone Parr's discussion in "Astronomical Dating for Some of Lydgate's Poems.") A long-standing debate exists about how to interpret the crucial date that Dante implies through this type of allusion in his Commedia. Richard Kay argues (in appendix

2

of his Dante's Christian Astrology) for 14 April 1300 "as the date when the Pil-

grim was in Paradise" (28j), as opposed to rjor ( y March), which "is far less significant astrologically speaking" (285). 19. There is another textual problem in this passage also. SiegfriedWenzeI points out the doubt raised in the manuscripts about the word "Manciple" in line I of the Parson's prologue: "In the early Hengwrt M S the word Maunciple is written over an erasure and some later manuscripts here give the names of other Pilgrims" (Riverside Chaucer 954-55). Nevertheless, recent critics accept the reading and link the Manciple's and the Parson's tales.This manuscript uncertainty is probably the trace of Chaucer reassigning the story from a previous teller to the Manciple. 20.

Chaucer's major loose ends concern either gender or time, and appear to be the result

of moving tales around to h d their best location or most suitable teller. 21.

Charles A. Owen, Jr., comes to the following dismaying conclusion at the end of his

1991study, The Manuscripts $The Canterbury T a b "It is time we gave up the impression of completeness or near-completeness editors like the Hengwrt-Ellesmere supervisor tried to give The Canterbury Tales. It is time we went back to the text Chaucer wrote and let it speak to us. There we will find if we look carefUy three ddferent beginnings of the storytelling and two projected endings. There we will h d the evidence for the lfferent plans on whch Chaucer at different times worked" (125). Whether or not we agree with Owen that the evidence of these manuscripts should be disregarded to the extent he proposes, the astronomy Chaucer has worked into the fiame tale and several of the individual tales as well indicates a projected plan for the whole that Chaucer held at one time. 22.

Medieval astronomers and those who preceded them used the ecliptic as one of their

two main coordinates for locating celestial objects because it was the path along which the

298

NOTES TO PACE 119

Sun, Moon, and planets moved, and these were the objects they primarily wished to locate. The obliquity of the ecliptic, however, renders t h ~ system s mathematically cumbersome-and, in any case, modern astronomers wish to locate many objects other than those w i b our solar system. To do so they use the more rational squared-off grid created by projecting the terrestrial lines of latitude and longitude onto the imaginary sphere of the sky. Because the hdamental plane of this grid is the celestial equator, the system is called the equatorial system of coordmates. The two terms then used to define the location of a celestial object are declination and right ascension. Declination is calculated in degrees plus north and minus south of the

celestial equator; right ascension (abbreviated R.A.) is calculated along the celestial equator to the right from the first point of Aries, the point of the vernal equinox. R.A. is not described in the degrees of a circle but rather in terms of hours, minutes, and seconds, the twenty-four hours being marked off along the celestial equator. Navigators do, however, use the degrees of the circle of the celestial equator, proceeding around that circle in the opposite direction fiom astronomers and calling their coordinate the sidereal hour angle (SHA). Both give declination (abbreviated as Dec) north and south of the celestial equator, using the same terms. Thus for the modern astronomer, the star Alpheraz (Alpha Andromedae, epoch 2000) is located at R.A. oh o8m 23s Dec +29 05 26, and Altair (Alpha Aquilae, epoch 2000) is located at R.A.

19h 5om 47s Dec +08 52 06. For the modern navigator, who requires

less precision in both coordinates than an astronomer, Alpheraz is at SHA 358 Dec +29, and Altair is at SHA 62 Dec +g. (These figures come from the French astronomical site

http://visier.u-strasbg.fi/cgi-bin/Dic/Sbad

and the Nautical Almanac for 1997.) Clearly

these differences are merely terminological. The big difference comes when one calculates along the ecliptic instead of the celestial equator: "For in the ecliptic is the longitude of a celestid body rekned [reckoned]," says Chaucer (Treatise 2.17). With the help of figure 4.11 below, taken with permission fiom his book A Short Histoy $Astronomy, Arthur Berry explains the difference between the two coordinate systems as follows: "If through a star S we draw on the sphere a portion of a great circle SN, cutting the ecliptic y N at right angles in N, and another great circle (a declination circle) cutting the equator at M, and if y be the first point of Aries, where the ecliptic crosses the equator, then the position of the star is completely defined either by the lengths of the arcs yN, NS, which are called the celestial longitude and latitude respectively, or by the arcs yM, MS, called respectively the right ascension and declination" (j7). Only

at the points of equinox where the circles cross and at 6 hours R.A. (90 degrees) and 18 hours R.A. (270 degrees) does a star have the same E-W position in both systems. For those who wish to pursue the differences Lrther, the formulae by which one can move between

NOTE5 TO PAGES 119-25

4.11. Measuring Latitude by the Celestial Equator and by the Ecliptic. Diagram by Arthur Berry from A Short Histoty of Rttronmy. Used

with permission from Dover

Books.

the two systems is given by Kenneth Lang in Astrophysical firmuhe, 504. I am gratefd to the astronomers Tony Misch and Remington Stone for assisting me with the information in this note. Chapter 5 I.

In his Teseida Boccaccio imitates such epic features as overall structure (apparently not

only dividing the poem into twelve books like the Aeneid, but also writing the same number of lines, discounting the introductory sonnets), the accounts of battles, and adornments &e the catalogue of heroes in Book n!In Book XII (Havely g4) Boccaccio claims that his is the first poem ever to have celebrated martial feats in the vernacular. For a

discussion see

N. R. Havely, Chawer's Boccaccio. Chaucer chooses for The Knighti Tale the four-book form of the "shorter epic." For a f;ll discussion of ways in which he follows the epic tradition, see Chapter 4 of David Anderson's Before the Knight's Tak For a more general discussion of Chaucer's debt to Boccaccio, see DavidWallace, Chawer and the Early Writings 4 Boccarrio, though Wallace merely touches on The Knight's Tale. Robinson provides a usefd analysis of l r e c t derivations in his second edition of The Works 4 Geo~r9Chaurer (670). 2.

For a variety of reasons The Man

of Law's Tale, about far-wandering Custance, would

have been an appropriate tale for the far-ranging knight to tell, had Chaucer not wished to

NOTES TO PACES 125-28

300

begin by portraying a more secular human world. Moreover, to explain the Man of Law's statement that he intends to "speke in prose" (IntrMLT96), which he does not then do, critics have suggested that Chaucer may have originally intended this Pilgrim to tell The Tale of Melibee later assigned to Chaucer humelf (Benson, Riverside Chaucer 854).

tions-and

AU

these specula-

they are no more than that--emphasize the fluidity of the work as Chaucer was

arranging and rearranging the tales to llnk each with its most appropriate teller and to find the ordering that worked best to carry out his purpose. This purpose itself was probably changing as the work progressed and Chaucer's personal interests turned toward the sky. Barbara Nolan's final chapter in Chaucer and the Tradition of the Roman Antique is a stimulating discussion of the "roman antique" context of The Knight's Tak, concludmg in terms congruent with Chaucer's astronomical perspective in this tale: "Its Stoic study of aventure and noble virtue provides the necessary ground, in Chaucer's argument, for all accounts of the human, mortal condition, whether classical or Christian. At the same time, Theseus' concluding glance at a providential order in the universe and everlasting bliss does hint, however wistfully and briefly, at the possibhty of perfection beyond the horizon of the mortal world and beyond the limits of pagan art and its medieval translations" (281). 3. Chaucer's use in Troilus and Crisyde (I, 106549) of the building metaphor fiom Geof-

fiey of Vinsauf's introduction to the Poetria Nova (Kopp) suggests that he was aware of the synecdoduc possibilities lnherent in ardutectural description. A common function of ekphrasis-the

description in literature of manufactured objects (usually art objects or buildmgs>--

is to offer early in the text a model important to the work as a whole. It was AndrC Gide who provided the heraldic term for this feature, mise en abime ("placement in the depths"; see Ddlenbach 7-10, who calls it "the mirror in the text"). 4. Nolan, in Roman Antiqw; observes two more general changes that Chaucer makes to his

original, both relevant to the world view enhanced by the changes to the amphitheater: Whereas Boccaccio demythoIogized his poem by adding a Christian marginal gloss, Chaucer "reworked the Teseida to exclude any hint of Christian spiritual transcendence" ( ~ ~ 8he) ;"systematically reworked the character of Boccaccio'sTeseo, deliberately replacing his Aristotelian virtues with the moral virtues outlined in Stoic and pseudo-Stoic treatises and with a generally Stoic view of the mortal world as the domain of Fortune, time, passionate desire, pain, and aventure" (251). Unlike his sources, Chaucer "typically insists on the lack of causal motivation in The Knight's Tale" (252); "for the most part

. . . Fortune or chance enables and gov-

erns the story's events" (253). 5. See Crow and Olson, Chaucer L$-Records 32-40. There is no actual evidence that Chaucer ever got to Rome, though it would be unlikely that he would miss the opportunity

NOTES TO PAGES 128-39

301

if offered. There are other ruins fiom Roman civilization s~mrlarto the Colosseum that he might have seen in his travels, perhaps as side trips fiom h s journeys to Genoa and Florence in 1373 and to Milan in 1378 (see Pearsall, L$ 102-log). Chaucer was familiar with the stone building of the lists at Cheapside, and as Clerk of the Works was hunself in charge of building the wooden scaffolds at Smithfield for the jousts in May and October 1390 (Howard, His

L$ 455). Had he been rewriting The Knight's Tak around that time, the Colosseum or similar grand edifices where games traditionally took place must have been much on his mind, and he might even have been farmliar with the structural interest in the Colosseum expressed by Petrarch's fiiend Giovanni Don& in h s Iter Rornanum of 1375 (Di Macco 41-42). This is the same Dondi whose description, with a sketch, of a planetary clock or "astrarium," completed in 1365, is noted in every book dealing with the hstory of clocks because of his detail of an escapement. (See, for example, Usher's brief dtscussion of Don& in A History

of Mechanical

Lnvmtions 198-99, with Dondi's sketch reproduced on 199). Finally, had Chaucer never seen the Colosseum for himself, he might well have extrapolated an image of the buillng from Boccaccio's description of the amphitheater, quoted above. 6. The alignment of early churches on the horizon point of the vernal equinox takes its inspiration fiom classical practice. In the quotation that follows fiom Star Names, Richard Hinddey Allen is speaking of orientation upon the star Hamel (the medieval name was Alnath) in the constellation Anes, whch corresponded to the sign Aries at the time these particular Greek temples were built: "Of the Grecian temples at least eight, at various places and of dates ranging fiom 1580to 360 B.c.E., were oriented to &us star; those of Zeus and his daughter Athene being especially thus favored, as Aries was this god's symbol in the sky" (81). In the context of current interest in such stellar-oriented archaeology,whch fosters journals and conferences dedicated to archaeoastronomy, it should be observed that-with sible exception of buillngs in religious texts whch are another matter-Theseus's

the posamphithe-

ater appears to be the first spec&cally fictive archaeoastronomicalbuilding in the history of literature (see Osborn, "AstrolabicBuillngs"). 7. In "The Meaning of Chaucer's Knight's Tale," Douglas Brooks and Alastair Fowler draw attention to the fact that the "compass = year's circle" and that "mansioun" in the description of Mars' temple ( h e 1 ~ 7 4and ) "opposite" (line 1894) are technical astronomical terms (143n.16). 8. North, "Kalenderes" 154. In "Fate and Freedom in the Knight's Tale," Edward C. Schweitzer quibbles about dawn versus prime at this juncture of North's argument, pointing out that North is describing the sky at dawn whereas the combatants enter the amphitheater at high prime, "unequivocally 900" (17). (The battle begins at the h r d hour of the day in

302

NOTES TO PAGES 139-50

the Teseida, Book X.)But Chaucer says that it was not yet f;llyprime (KnTz576), and in any case it is the important events of the day as a whole, including Arcite's fall, that are reflected in the dawn sky described by North. Both writers are concerned with astrology here, in particular with horary astrology, and though their arguments are interesting, one could argue that &S was not Chaucer's concern. Schweitzer suggests firther that the actual positions of the planets themselves on this day, not just the signs that are their domiciles, predct the outcome of the tournament (18-9). Although Schweitzer remarks that Brooks and Fowler came to their conclusions about the zodiacally arranged amphitheater independently fiom North (Schweitzer 16) in their respective articles the Brooks and Fowler team and North each thank the other for the benefit of usefd discussions. 9. A good time for this observation, according to the planisphere for latitude 42 degrees north, would be about 4:jo A.M. in mid-June or 630 P.M. in mid-November. At these times the head of the constellationTaurus, marked by the red star Aldebaran, will appear low in the east; Scorpio, marked by red Antares, will be high in the west. (It is easy to confke either red star with the planet Mars, which may also be present.) 10.

De Spectacules 9, quoted and discussed by Lyle (45); she also cites other classical authors

who refer to the colors worn by the charioteers in the Roman circus to defhe allegiance, much as in our modern team sports. 11.

Robert Blanch and J d a n Wasserman discuss the colors associated with the principal

characters and the sigmficance of their separation and mingling throughout the story ( " m t e and Red" 1 ~ 5 - ~ though ~ ) ; they do not recognize the classical backgrounds of this tolor cod-

ing. They conclude that this device is "an important part of the poet's means of buttressing the Boethian vision of a unified and harmonious universe in the tale" (90). 12.

The touret Chaucer describes that connects the suspending ring to the mother plate

on the instrument is slightly different fiom the device described by Messahalla, the main source of Chaucer's translation. (Chaucer used the OperatioAstrolabii formerly ascribed to Messahalla, now pseudo-Masha'allah, and translated into Latin fiom the Arabic. A manuscript of this text is reproduced in fascimile and translated by R. T. Gunther, along with Chaucer's Treatise, in Ear5 Science in Ogwd, vol. 5.) Messahalla's Arabic astrolabe has only a suspending chain and a ring or "dog" (ahabor) that goes through the handle extended fiom or riveted onto the mother plate. The modest astrolabe described in the appendix is similar. Chaucer's better instrument has an additional swivel or eye-bolt that allows for more play, as shown in Skeat's drawing (figure m). This part is what Chaucer is c a h g the turet in his Treatise, corresponding to Diana's touret or tower in The Knight'sTale. Perhaps touret was his own or an Oxfor&an term for the swivel that typically appears on Western astrolabes of the period. See John

303

NOTES TO PAGE5 150-54

Reidy's note in The Riverside Chaucer 1095-96. In Western Astrolabes the Websters call this part a "shackle" (34) or "bait"

(40

and on). It is affixed to the mother plate by means of a pin

allowing it some play. In Middle English the word tour (tower) can also refer to a zodacal sign, as inTrinity College Cambridge MS 0.5.26, as noted by J. D. North in "Kalenderes" 139. North observes that this manuscript is probably a translation from Messahalla. Chauncey Wood offers a medieval dustration of a zodacal sign as a "tour" in plate 21 of Chaucer and the Country of the Stars.

13. F. N. Robinson notes that "the indications of date here given are entirely independ-

ent of Boccaccio, and it is not clear how Chaucer came to insert them" (6?3; second edition, note to lines 1462 and following). See Vincent J. D ~ a r c o ' ssummary of the commentary since then in The Riverside Chaucer (Benson, e d 832). The adoption of Taurus as Venus's dornicile in the amphitheater explains Chaucer's independence from Boccaccio at this point. Additionally Chaucer does not have Theseus decree the return of the cousins "one whole year" later, as Boccaccio does (un anno intero; TeseidaV98, quoted DiMarco), but rather "this day fifty wykes, fer ne ner" (KnT 1850); DiMarco suggests that "a full year is probably intended" ("Notes to Knight's Tale," Benson 834, note to KnT 1850). 14. Mars's "sovereyn mansioun" was "in thilke colde, frosty regioun" (KnT 1~73)of Thrace, which suggests cold Scorpio, not hot Aries. Chapter 6 I.

Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda is available in a selected translation by Jean I. Young

and in a more recent fdl translation by Anthony Faulkes. The tradition of euhemerism such as Snorri's is found throughout medieval literature, permitting references to the gods without imputing pagan beliefs to the writer. Snorri may obtain his "certain wise men" from a tradition like that of Nimrod the astronomer, a "believingJ' pagan without benefit of revelation. Nimrod instructs his disciple, "Do not marvel at the firmament's turning, but marvel at the great wonders that stem from the power of the creator" (see Dronke's Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions 144). Dronke points out that the Latin text of the Liber Nemroth dates to the tenth century or earlier (117). For more on the man Euhemerus and the "historical" tradition he began, which imagined that the pagans' gods were once men, see Seznec 11-36. 2.

The separation of the pagan world from the enlightened Christian cosmos is related

to the euhemerism mentioned above. In "The Great Feud: Scriptural History and Strife in BeowJ" (Osborn), the argument is made that the Beowypoet carefLlly maintains such a separation (a theme that Fred C. Robinson elaborates in his Beowuy and the Appositive Style).

NOTES TO PAGES 154-58

304

A. J. Minnis makes the same claim for Chaucer in Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity. Both Osborn's and Minnis's discussions take inspiration from ~ a m o n n0Carragiin's work on Beowu4 3. Accordmg to the medteval Church, the displacement of the earth fiom the center of

the universe to the periphery was more than merely humbling. It had the serious theological consequence of displacing fiom the center the Fall and Redemption of manlund, for whlch purpose the universe was thought to have been created. 4. An account of this transmission through the Muslim world wdl appear in any discussion of the history of astronomy. See, for example, J. D. North's Astronomy and Cosmology, Chapter g, or Henri Hugonnard-Roche's "The Influence of Arabic Astronomy in the Medieval West1' 5. In his account of the myth of Er, Plato (428/7-348/7

B.c.E.)

speaks of the eight

spheres of the visible cosmos as "fitting into one another llke a nest of bowls" (Republic X.615). F. M. Cornford observes that this metaphor presents the universe "as if the upper halves of the eight concentric spheres had been cut away so that the internal 'works' might be seen" (50). Although Plato's spheres are in an ordering different ficom that of our Ptolemaic model, this does not affect the u s e f i e s s of his metaphor. If Chaucer had had access to this domestic metaphor, he might have imagined those bowls in different colors (as Plato does), beginning with the "spangled" largest, which represents the celestial sphere of the starry heavens, and the others in the colors of the metals associated with each planet. Chaucer lists these

metals in both House of Fame (142~-512)and The Canon'sYeoman's

Tale (826-2g), and makes occasional references to them elsewhere. O f the Platonic set of

bowls nesting within the spangled bowl of the heavens (placing them in the Ptolemaic order), Saturn's is the color of lead, Jupiter's tin, Mars's iron, the Sun's gold,Venus's copper, Mercury's quicksilver, the Moon's silver, and the small blue ball of Earth floats in the center. (See Chapter 8 for a dtscussion of these "planetary metals" and horary astrology as it pertains to medical practice.) 6. A standard variant order of the spheres, nonastronomical in comparison to Ptolemy's

order in figure 6.2, was probably derived via Philolaus and Pythagoras from the Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus; hence it is called the "Egyptian order." The Egyptian order of the spheres, shown ficom outer edge in, is as follows: I fixed stars, 2 Saturn, j Jupiter, 4 Mars, 5 Venus, 6 Mercury, 7 Sun, 8 Moon, and Earth, the smallest, at the center. Macrobius follows a version of the Egyptian order in his commentary on Cicero's Dream

of Sc@io,a book the

narrator of Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls is reading before he goes to sleep; Chaucer refers to this order in The Complaint of Mars. Ptolemy's system is based more exactly on the actual observation of the increasing lengths of apparent revolution of these bodies around the earth:

NOTES TO PAGES 158-59

305

29 days for the Moon, 339 days for Mercury, 348 days forvenus, 365 days for the Sun, 2 years for Mars,

12 years

for Jupiter, and 30 years for Saturn (all times approximate). Chaucer is

inconsistent in the way he orders the spheres, and his variation seems to reflect the authorities he is consulting at the time of writing rather than his progress in medieval astronomy. For example, in The Cmplaint of Mars ( h e

25~)he

refers to the sphere of Mars as the third

sphere, counting inward toward the earth as Macrobius does (following Cicero and behind him Plato); and in Troilus and Crisyde (1112) he refers to the sphere of Venus as the third sphere, counting outward from the earth as Ptolemy does. Yet in his apparently later poem "Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan," Venus's sphere is the Egyptian fifth (line

implying once

again that the sphere of Mars is third. 7. The name of this "law" is misleading. Bode neither made the &scovery (first published by Titius of Wittenberg in 1766) nor is it a law. It is a curious fact, however, that when to each item in the sequence of numbers o, 3, 6,12,24,48,92, you add 4 and divide by 10, the result is very dose to the figures given for the planetary &stances moving outward fiom the Sun. The system extends to Uranus but breaks down with the two outer planets, Neptune (which is closer in than it should be) and Pluto (with its eccentric orbit). Modern astronomers have their doubts about these "planets," in any case. For M e r detads see Pasachoff, Contemporary Astronmy (282-84). Pasachoff reports that Bode's Law "has never been theoretically understood (282) and that "many astronomers now think that Bode's law is merely a numerical coincidence, devoid of deeper meaning (284). 8. The same inconsistency previously observed in note 6 obtains in Chaucer's numbering of the two outermost spheres, that of the visible heavens and that of the invisible First Mover beyond it, which after the spheres of the seven planets should logically be numbered eight and nine. In his Treatise (1.1~) Chaucer quotes Sacrobosco, who also refers to "the belt of the fist moving," but there Chaucer numbers the sphere eight and seems to associate it with the fixed stars, whereas in The Franklin'sTak (line 1283) he numbers the same sphere nine, corresponding to Sacrobosco's numbering, and imagines it separate from the stars. Reidy in his note on Chaucer's Treatise I : I ~(Riverside Chaucer 1096), suggests a manuscript error here. A s i d a r conhsion arises when the author of the Ex.frmon, probably Richard of Wallingford (ca. 125~2-1336), speaks of the "many wondns in the [ninth] spere, in the whch the zodiac is sett1'-meaning

the signs, not the constellations.MS.D there gives "eighth," whereas M S . 1

gives "ninth." J. D. North suggests that the error in Chaucer's Treatise could be one he inherited (Richard of Wallingford 1:205). 9. F. C. Robinson 725, note to line 1285. In h s Sky, J. C. Eade argues that the precession

of the equinoxes is irrelevant here because it is only the Moon's first mansion that the clerk

306

NOTES T O PAGES 1.59-63

is calculating ( I I ~ - I ~ ) .Nevertheless, the example of the visible star Alnath and the invisible szgns behind the stars is a useful way of explaining Chaucer's reference to the eighth and ninth spheres. (What the clerk is doing as he "conjures" a floodtide wdl be examined briefly in Chapter 8.) 10.

In Astronomical Lore in Chawer Florence M. Grimm offers the following &&er infor-

mation that the reader may h d useful for establishing a picture of the Ptolemaic cosmos: According to the Ptolemaic system the earth is a motionless sphere fixed at the center of the universe. It can have no motion, for there must be some fixed point in the universe to whch all the motions of the heavenly bodies may be referred; if the earth had motion, it was argued, this would be proportional to the great mass of the earth and would cause objects and animals to fly off into the air and be left behmd. Ptolemy believed this reason sufficient to make untenable the idea of a rotary motion of the earth, although he was Myaware that to suppose such a motion for the earth would simplify exceedingly the representations of the celestial movements.

. . .The irregular motions of the planets were accounted for by supposing

them to move on circles of small spheres called "epicycles," the centers of which moved around the "deferents," or circles of large spheres which carried the planets in courses concentric to the star sphere (5). 11.

Joseph Ashbrook ascribes &S woodcut to the nineteenth-century "famous French

popularizer of astronomy, Carnille Flamrnarion," in the h a l essay in his posthumously published work, AstronomicalScrapbook, (444-49). The essay, "An Enigmatic AstronomicalWoodcut," originally appeared in Sky and &cope (j56). 12.

For discussion of manuscript references to the seventh sphere, and for F. C. Robin-

son's certainly mistaken view that the sphere to which Arcite is raised is the eighth sphere numbered from the largest sphere inward, that is, the sphere of the Moon, see the note on Troilw and CrisydeV 1809 in his second edition.

13. Scipio's distant view of earth in his dream recounted at the end of Cicero's Republic (an astronomical myth answering to the myth of Er at the end of Plato's Republic) becomes traditional. It is "constantly in the minds of succeeding writers [and is] . . .used to mortify human ambition" (C. S. Lewis, Discarded Image 26). Lewis quotes later fiom Boethius's Consoall of whom ?ation of Philosophy I1 Prosa vii (8j) and fiom Mairnonides and Roger Bacon (~p), use the image of the "little spot" of earth. When Geffiey sees the earth from the height to which the eagle has taken him in The Howe of Fame, it "No more semed than a prikke" (that is, a dot; line 907).

NOTES TO PACE5 163-67

307

14. R. W. Syrnonds tells us in English Clocks (9-~o) that the change fiom the common use of the inequal hours to that of the equal hours occurred mainly in the fourteenth century when mechanical docks were becoming familiar to the public. This was during Chaucer's lifetime (ca. 1340-1400). See also Chapter 4 of David S. Landes's Revolution in Time.

15. Nevertheless, there was flexibility in this usage; see especially D o h - v a n Rossum 3-39.

Even the rigorous Benedict allowed his monks to sleep "slightly longer than half the

night" during the longer hours of darkness in winter. 16. The planetary or unequal hours were reckoned in the same way as the canonical hours of the Church (matins, nones, vespers, and so forth), and also as the hours of Muslim prayer, in that they were calculated in relation to the rising and setting Sun. King offers explanations, dagrams, and h t h e r references in "Astronomy and Islamic Society" (170-84). Even today the astrolabe,by which the hours of prayer may be determined locally, is seen as rather a holy instrument in M u s h countries.The authors of Time and Spare observe that "the instrument was an essential part of the ritual trappings of the mosque; it was a sacred object kept apart fiom the gaze of the impious. It is therefore sometimes difficult to acquire one of these astrolabes if its owner happens to be a practicing Moslem" (Guye and Michelzz4). 17. Most of the educated world is now accustomed to using the planetary names for the weekdays, without giving a thought to the pagan superstitions they enshrine. The Church once reacted to this implicit paganism by designating the weekdays by number, beginning with "the Lord's Day" or evenjkia prima as first (see Semec 43); our Sunday is still called doming0 in Spanish and dimanche in French, from dominica dies. In Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, Franz Cumont has observed, concerning the names of the planets, that

those we employ today "are an English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of a Babylonian nomenclature" (27). With our English names for the days of the week we have taken this series one step farther, substituting for four of the god names the names of those Anglo-Saxon gods thought equivalent at the time of the change:Tiw for Mars gives us Tuesday for Martis dies, Woden for Mercury gives Wednesday for Mercurii dies, Thor for Jove givesThursday for jovis dies, and Freya forVenus gives Friday for Vmeris dies.These Latin names are s t d preserved in the Romance languages. Ironically, the four days most obviously named after the gods in English are called in Icelandic, the language of the country in which the Norse gods are best remembered, %thudagur, Midvikudagtrr, Fimmtudapr, and Fostudagur: Third Day, Midweek's Day, F i f i Day, and Fasting Day. 18. The history of the week is &cussed in a fascinating little book by F. H. Colson, The Week. Another way in which this seven-into-twenty-four scheme works is the relation of the

sequence of musical notes in the octave to the sequence of the keys. If one substitutes the

308

NOTE5 TO

PACE5 167-79

letter designations for the notes (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) for the names in the sequence of seven planets in figure 6.7, the acrostic line across the top of the figure will reveal the order of the keys: A, D, G, C, F, B, E. One can achieve a slmilar graphic display of t h s relationship, and a useful mnemonic, by means of a heptagram, the seven-pointed equivalent of a pentagram. Thus music, planetary theory, and mathematics were closely related. The most recent and scholarly book devoted to the music of the spheres is Hans Schaevernock's Die Harmonie der Spharen.The concept comes mainly fiom Pythagoras, by way of Plato, and later was developed

into a complex mathematical theory. John MacQueen summarizes this material in a chapter titled "The Harmonic Soul of the Universe" in his useful and concise study, Numerology Theoy and Outline Histoy

4 a Literay Mode.

19. The phrase is the title of Chapter 4 in David Wallace's Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio. 20.

Wallace's term "shadowy perfection" is from John of Wales by way of A. J. Minnis,

Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (31). 21.

Strohm gives Bakhtin as his source for the concepts, useful for thrnking about this

astronomical situation when reading The Knight%Tale, of the temporal axis as horizontal and the extratemporal axis as vertical (Social Chaucer 219). 22.

Brown and Butcher state, "At line 2438 . . .Saturn is revealed as the controlling force

behind many of the events of the story on the human plane, as well as being the powerbroker among the gods" (212). They discuss rhe influence of Saturn in detail (212-zj), naming other scholars who have considered this god's role in The Knight's Tale. Ann Astell adds her own views (98-105). 23. The Anchor Bible comments that "the power of the universe" in Isaias 40:22 ("Sec-

ond Isaiah) "is the common cosmological picture of the ancient Near East, and found also in Gen. 1.The sky is a dome whch overarches the &sk of the earth, and above this domeyahweh sits enthroned" (McKenzie 24). This image appears in medieval art and later is adopted as a representation of sovereignty, as when Queen Elizabeth or Britannia is depicted enthroned on the Earth. 24. Gide's term; see Chapter 5 note 3. Chapter 7 I.

Paul A. Olson gives a lengther account of these parallels (7680).

2.

"Of course The Mihri Tale is now the Chauceriantext," says Farrell. "Virtually all students

studying English literature in college read it, and advanced American high school students are familiar with it in all but a few shocked school districts" (789). Although his emphasis (like

NOTE5 TO PAGES 179-84

309

Chauncey Wood's) is on justice in the tale, and his conclusions differ fiom those proposed here, Farrell's exhaustive article has been more stimulating and usefd to the purpose of this cLscussion than any other single article addressing the tale and accordingly has been drawn upon extensively. See also, importantly, Beidler, 3. See Kolve Imagery 44311.87 in particular, and pages 199-214 generally.

4. For this "Doomsday" modtfication of the biblical promise, see Kolve, Imagery 160,206. 5. Robert K. Root and Henry N. Russell's isolation of "A Planetary Date for Chaucer's Troilus" was made famous to scholars outside the field by Richard D. Altick's romanticization of their discovery in The Scholar Adventurers (1~6-81).Root and Russell found that "the longsought date of Tmilus and Crisyde . ..could not be earlier than the middle of May, 1385" (Altick 180; they propose 13 May). In "Kalenderes," J. D. North reviews the scholarship and reinterprets the evidence leading to a date in the Troilw passage (142-49). J. C. Eade also reviews the evidence and concludes that it "points rather distinctly to a precise d a t e a l l the more distinctly when we r e c o p e that it had been more than 600 years since the last conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Cancer" (Sky 108-109). H e h d s that June 1385 is the date indicated; North narrows it down to "either 8 or 9 June 1~85,"and in Universe he specifies 9 June (369-78). Alternatively, Donald W. Olson and Edgar S. Laird in their "Note on Planetary Tables" (rg90) argue that &e

the modern calculations that North and others use as evidence, the Alphon-

sineTables f d a r to Chaucer bring the Moon into Cancer with Saturn andVenus on 12 May 1385, dose to the original date calculated by Root and Russell. 6. Dohrn-van Rossurn is arguing against the assertions of earlier scholars such as Max Weber, Lewis Mumford, and Eviatar Zerubavel that the monasteries created a rigid temporal order for their monks, which then became the basis for the scheduling of secular labor in the Midde Ages, and thence for modern industry. Whde it may not be accurate to follow Mumford in declaring that the Benedictines were the founders of modern capitahsm (Dohrnvan Rossurn takes issue with this assertion; 34), The Histoy of the Huur almost certainly goes too far in arguing against monastic influence on scheduling the secular day. Following Psalm 118:164(Douay), "Seven times a day I have given praise to thee," the early Church Fathers scheduled seven "canonical" prayers: matins, lauds, prime, tierce, sext, none, and vespers. Benedict added an eighth, compline (as cornpktorium), apparently to bring the schedule into some correspondence with Roman "watches." In his discussion of the timing of lauds in connection with MilT 3655, Ross mentions the times proposed by previous scholars, ranging fiom "half-past two" to "about four-thirty in the morning (MilkrS Tak 215). 7. Skeat gives this understanding of cockcrow in his ecLtion of Compkte Works (5:ro9); his view is most recently accepted by Ross (Milkr's Tak 218).

31 0

NOTES TO PAGES 185-86 8. Knowing "mooning" only as an American expression, the author was pleased to be

informed by colleague Michael Steffes that the same association of lunar and sublunar images is used in a French expression meaning "to submit to sodomy": Sefaire taper duns la lune (Htrail and Lovatt, s.v. "lune"). Although this is a modern expression in French-that of it is modern-the

is, the record

currency of the same image in slang expressions in both languages con-

firms the likelihood that the sirmlarity of the pale round buttocks to the pale round moon might have been observed in earlier times as well. Further research offered French "lune, n. f. *I. Posterior, behind" (Kaster and Marks 23). Kaster and Marks explain: "We have ventured to draw a distinction between the words and expressions characteristic of f a d i a r speech which form the bulk of the present Glossary, and those (marked with an asterisk) which are confined in the main to the working classes, and may be described as popular" (vi). Jonathan Green gives "moon n.1 (mid-I~C+)the buttocks, the anus, the rectum; thusf.11 moon, the bared buttocks."The act itself of mooning as an insult in a political context is recorded much earlier than Green's earliest examples. For just one example (in addition to the gesture by Alla's subjects mentioned later in &S chapter), in early Spanish accounts of the New World I d e s rebels performed a series of "showings" of the buttocks to display their &sgust with current policy. (Thanks to Samuel G. Armistead for directing my attention to Francisco Lopez de Gomara's account of such display in Enrique de Veda's Historiadores Primitivos de Indias 220). 9. The note on ParsT4zq. in the Riverside Chaucer (q,g-bo) explains that the reference to apes and the moon comes fiom medieval encyclopedias. Kolve adduces examples specifically from De Propietatibus rerum by Bartolomaeus Anglicus, "the most influential of them all" (Imagey 177; see also 436n.41). 10.

The display was not always treated so lightly, especially when accompanied by air.

The laws of the Fueros of Alcaraz and Alarcon in Spain name hefty fines for specific varieties of the act. Samuel G. Armistead drew my attention to the descriptions of these laws in R O U ~ 11.

In "A Red-Hot Irony," Gary Konas shows how the timing of Chaucer's tale would

work in performance when read aloud (gj). Referring to the standard distinction betweeen comedy (verbal) and farce (physical and visual), he argues that today we would associate certain features of 12.

The Milb's Tale with the latter genre (50-55).

Chauncey Wood gives a good account of the way that Chaucer "metes out poetic

justice to each [male] character according to his crime. The need for water is great; in its absence Absalon is forced to scrub his mouth with 'sond, with straw, with clooth, with chippes' (line j748). Nicholas screams for water as a local anesthetic,and, for want of it, John the carpenter breaks his arm in the f d from the roof. From Nicholas' first invocation of the

NOTES T O PAGES 186-89

311

deluge as a means of salvation for John, we move to the position in which the lack of water is a punishment') (Wood 170). Thus he sees this "disaster" as a sort of anti-Baptism: "The absence of water can punish as effectively as the presence of it" ("presence" referring to Noah's flood). W M e Wood interprets the scene entirely in sacramental terms, which surely apply, the irony is most amusing in view of Nicholas's self-advertized ability to perform weather astrology, thereby supposedly foreseeing both flood and drought. 13. The possible wordplay in "Goddes herte" (3815), not intended by Nicholas but

answering to his invasion of "Goddes pryvetee" (cp. 3164), is similar to the third level of meaning, "hurt," proposed by Sandra Pierson Prior for the phrase "hert-huntyng" in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess (Riverside Chawer 329-346). In "Chaucer's Arithmetical Mentality,"

T. A. Shippey supports t h s tentative readmg by rernindmg us of the h e "and many oon with hire lok she herte" (Book

of the Duchess 883) and offering philological comment on the

etymology of the word "hurtl' He proposes that Chaucer may adopt Kentish dialect to facilitate the wordplay. Shppey begins his article by saying, with his own literary wordplay, "It is now widely known if not universally accepted that the Book

of the Duchess is in large part

structured on a pun, that of the 'h(e)art-hunting"' (184). Likewise Nicholas's call for water is a sort of pun, as Nicholas means it in one way (as an anodyne to relieve pain) and John hears it in another (as a flood). There is no doubt whatsoever that Nicholas's delighted cry

"A berd! A berd!" (MilTj74z; meaning joke or trick) is overheard quite otherwise by Absolon (MilT 3744). who has just realized that "a womman hath no berd" (MilT j737). This context of wordplay, supported by The Book

of the Duchess (line 883) improves the possibility that

Nicholas is callmg, quite unawares, for water to soothe "Goddes hurt," the hurt the god has inflicted. 14. The parallel sequencing in The Knight's Tale and The Miller%Tale of the hours of Venus, of the Moon, and of Mars offers added evidence that the Moon's hour is a planned element in The Miller's Tale. Farrell adds (note 40) that, though his analysis of pyvetee in The Miller's Tale is indebted to a discussion by Howard Block, "my point is perhaps less determinedly deconstruaionist than h s in assuming a certain Chaucerian awareness of the process" (794). In the operation of the planetary hours in the tale, we see Chaucer's awareness graphically displayed, confkming Farrell's intuition. 15. In Imagery Kolve (440". 64) cites Gerhard Joseph (8j5~6).When drawing attention to a n apparent numerical pattern in The Book

of the khess, T. A. Shippey also asks why Chaucer

would impose such a pattern, "a pattern which he seems to signal in lines 434-42

. . . but

which . . . no one could ever be expected to pick up aurally or even with any ease fiom an unnumbered medieval manuscript" (98). The pattern Shippey refers to contains an allusion

312

NOTES T O PAGES 189-91

to "Algus" ("Argus" in the manuscripts), "the noble countour," whom Shippey identifies as "the great Arab mathematician At-Khwarizmi," whose work was "at the root of the popularization of 'algorism"' (188), the mathematics that Nicholas was apparently practicing with his augym stones (MilT 3210). This hidden patterning is of much the same kind that occurs when Chaucer is making use of that other non-Western mathematical science, astrolabiccalculation. Shppey's answer (like mine) to why Chaucer is imposing such patterns supposes a combination of delight in the game of skill itself and a Christian level of meaning; in the Book

of the Duchess &S

constitutes "a delicate compliment to Blanche, the assuredly saved"

(198). Such patterning might also have been for the pleasure of a coterie, including persons of some wealth, dedicated to the still relatively exotic knowledge coming from the Muslim world through Spain. Few Oxford scholars, and certainly no "poor" ones (MilT y90), had augrym stones or astrolabes, not to mention books and psaltries (MilT 3z08-~3).

16. See also the figure accompanying Chaucer's discussion of the planetary hours in his Treatise II.12, where the first three planetary hours of Saturday morning have been written in. It is reproduced as figure 7.1. 17. Despite the attempts of some recent scholars to find sodomy (including an anachronistic sodomizing of God) in this tale, the text says clearly that Absalon merely "smites" with the coulter, presumably across the bottom as in a spanking (cp. MilT 3769). Although a rough (and hot) punishment, &S is far fiom being that most hideous of medieval torture and murder practices, the actual insertion of a hot poker in the anus that occurs in some of the analogues of the tale. Ross has a dfferent view. In addtion to summarizing some analogues of the coulter scene where the implement is inserted, he argues, on the basis of his preferred unmetrical reading "in" for "amid (in line 3810 in most manuscripts: "And Nicholas in the ers he smoot"), that "a penetrating wound, not merely a superficial charring is meant (MilT 241). Ensuing events suggest othenvise.The fact that after being burnt Nicholas quickly recovers his wits (3831-32) suggests that Chaucer is not imagining the punishment to be especially d r e a m , and the end of the story casually refers to Nicholas's burn as merely a scalding (3853), presumably no more significant than John's broken leg. Peter G. Beidler argues persuasivelythat s

d Absalon is, however, inviting God's final wrathfd judgment, and that the

"thonder-dent" of the fart has the serious purpose of foreshadowing &S fate. He points out details that show Absalon performing acts directly in contrast to those religious rituals a "parish clerk" should be performing (Beidler 93-~oo). 18. Some questions remain: is it merely a coincidence that "Monday quarter night" is Saturn's hour, or is Nicholas consciously using these hours that he has apparently been studying? Does he realize that it is Saturn's hour? In other words, does his evocation of that hour

313

NOTES TO PACES 191-96

dtsplay culpable ignorance (culpable considering that "al h s fantasye" was fixed on horological astrology), or is it simply an example of the same unthinlung arrogance that he displays elsewhere? Chapter 8 I.

Both JimTester and Chauncey Wood address the problem of astrology meaning dif-

ferent things to dtfferent people. Tester distinguishes between "hard" and "soft)' astrology, the first accepting a firm determinism (that is, believing in the possibility of foreknowledge of the inevitable), and the second allowing "for the moral fieedom of man . . . its attitude is summed up in the maxim, 'the stars i n h e , they do not compel.'" Since Christian salvation depends on a combination of God's grace and human fiee wdl, the distinction between these two forms of astrology is "of some historical importance, especially in later, Chstian centuries" (Histoy

2).

Wood, in his chapter titled, more inclusively than the present one,

"Chaucer's Attitude toward Astrology" (County 3-50), usefdly brings together the views on the subject most importantly expressed in Chaucer's day, and also the discussions of those who have previously explored Chaucer's attitude in modern times. The attitudes of the later scholars themselves, both toward the subject of astrology (which makes them nervous) and toward those medteval hnkers who lscussed it, is especially revealing, as is what they would include under the term astrology.Thorndike, for example, regards the joy that Boethius takes in the beauty of the heavens as a religion of astrology second only to divine worshtp (Wood, County 34),even though Boethius makes it clear that, as the heavens reveal God's work, his joy is in God as expressed in the heavens. A modern European astronomer of the author's acquaintance attributes astrologrcal belief even more broadly, asserting that any reference to the word zodiuc, even in medieval times, is conclusive evidence of belief in astrology; he apparently does not reahze that the zodiac was used then to measure degrees of celestial longitude as well as for more allegorical purposes. For that matter, as Wood superbly demonstrates,

astrology was itself frequently used as literary imagery in ways that no more required an acceptance of the belief system b e h d it than allusions to the Classical gods meant acceptance of them on a religious level. The distinction between usage and belief is difficult for some to make. 2.

Tester points out that the medieval theory of astrology was not confined to influence.

Indeed, whether the stars themselves actually influenced human behavior was a matter of debate, as was the mode and degree of that influence. Tester quotes Calcidius (Chapter 125 of his commentary on Plato's Timaeus), following Plotinus: "The stars do not cause what happens, they merely foretell hture events" (Histoy 115).The theme recurs throughout Tester's

314

NOTES TO PACE5 196-204

book, often with its associated anxiety about determinism. Wood makes the point: "There is all the difference in the world between causing and signdying events," and he repeats the idea for emphasis, saying that belief that the stars signify is "of a very different order fiom the belief in the deterministic power of the stars" (Countv

The question of whether

the stars influence or merely signify was of course crucial to the Christian debate about astrology and free will. j. Both Pandarus and Criseyde seem aware of the approach of the storm (TC III 551, 562), which is later explained by the ominous conjunction @I624-28). Although the "0 fortune, exeatrice of wyrdes" passage (III 617-zj) suggests that the rain takes everyone by surprise, in particular preventing Criseyde fiom leaving when she wishes to, Pandarus's scheme depends on his foreknowledge that the "smoky r e p " w d keep her fiom going home. As Criseyde explains to Troilus later, she would not be in bed with him had she not already decided to "yield" (III I Z O ~ I I ) . She, too, may be putting weather astrology to practical use.

4. See Olson and Jasinski for discussion of Chaucer's similar use of tables in connection with the Moon mentioned in The Merrhant's Tale 1885-87. Its movement fiom Taurus 2" into Cancer represents "unusually speedy travel," which "may refer to the Moon's actual motion fiom April 25 to 29,138~"(j77). 5. In his eltion of Chaucer's Treatise Skeat quotes this text fiomTract C, p. 12, of MS R.lg.18 in the library of Trinity College Cambridge, the collection also containing the manuscript of Chaucer's Treatise that Skeat designates "G" (79). 6. Ficino gives some interesting examples of medical images in his De vita coelitus cmparanda, published in 1489.Wayne Shumaker summarizes his instructions for two of them: "[For attracting solar influence] a solar stone can be hung about the neck with gold bound to it by saffron-colored threads of silk while the sun is ascending under Aries or L e o two solar signs--or is in the middle of the sky and in aspect with the moon. For attracting lunar influence the best stone is selenite. . . . If you fmd this, suspend it, surrounded with silver, fiom your neck by means of a silver thread when the moon is entering Cancer or Taurus or is at suitable angles with them. Warmed by your body, it w d introduce its virtue continuously into

(Shumaker 128). Although most commentators speak of the

superiority of medicines, talismanic images like these and others are considered effective also, and they are mentioned from the time of Ptolemy (appearing in his Centiloquium) onward. 7. The historian of science 0.Neugebauer offers caution against lsmissing as superstition beneath contempt medieval melothesia, the association of parts of the body with the zodiacal signs: "To us the melothesia miniature [the zodiac man] at the end of the calendar

315

NOTES TO PACES 204-10

in the 52s Riches Hmres seems purest astrological doctrine.To the Middle Ages these relations between parts of the body and solar or planetary positions were probably not much more than to us considerations of 'environment' in the widest sense on human nature and health" (Neugebauer, Astronomy 518). 8. For a better understandmg of Boethius's complicated view, the reader will profit fiom

Jill M m ' s article on "Chance and Destiny," mentioned above, in which she makes accessible the Boethian argument that God's foresight does not hinder our human choices. We can indeed select our destiny, chiefly, Boethius shows, by selecting our attitude toward it. For a good discussion of Bishop Bradwardine's argument for the sovereigntyof God over the stars and his "confident assertion of the fieedom of the will from astral determinism" (Minnis 46), the reader is referred to A. J. Minnis's Chawer and Pagan Antiquity, Chapter 2, Part 2. 9. J. D. North comments brusquely but accurately: "Probably more nonsense has been written in the name of astrology in connection with two short passages in this tale (MLT 295-308, ?09-15) than in the rest of Chaucer criticism combined ("Kalenderes" 426). North is not referring obliquely to Smyser's article here, however, because the article in which he makes this statement appeared at about the same time as Smyser's. A third scholar who addressed the question of Chaucer's personal belief in the influence of the stars upon human life was Chauncey Wood, in Chaucer and the Count9

of the Stars. Wood's

d e d e d and sensible

exposition has been quoted extensively in this discussion, and the author's debt to that book will become especially apparent in Chapter 10. Argumg that Chaucer was not an astrologer, Wood suggests ways in whch he might have accepted astrology as a usefd metaphor. Smyser suspects, on the contrary,that Chaucer "believed firmly in the possibility of astrological prediction, so firmly that he was not content simply to take his predictions fi-om almanacs, but sought the skill to reckon ascensions for himself" (?61). Smyser implies that this is why Chaucer became interested in the astrolabe in the first place. In "Kalenderes," North sees a development in Chaucer's ideas, fiom an early belief in the plausibility of astrology to "a growing disdusionment with judrcial astronomy" (442); but see also Universe 230 where he says, wittily echoing Chaucer's own words, that in the poet's "half-hearted retractions my spirit hath no feith." Nevertheless, growing disillusionment seems the Lkeliest direction for Chaucer's development as he is exposed to arguments like Bradwardine's-whether

or not

they are over his head as he claims (NPT pp).The movement in his poetry fiom boolush (i.e., literary) astrological and astronomical imagery to a more mathematical interest in the celestial mechanics of the actual sky (Smyser 36G71) could be used as evidence in either direction. Smyser's final pre-Tales example is the speed of the Moon fiom Aries through Leo in Tmilus and Criseya7eV 1016-19, which he describes as "perhaps the least typically Chaucerian

31 6

NOTE5 TO PAGES 210-19

and most Dantesque of Chaucer's astronomical passages there is" (Smyser 370). He suggests that it constitutes "an invitation to practical astronomizing, to reckoning" (?71). One could consider this interesting passage a point of departure to the arithmetical interest in astronomy expressed in The Canterbury Tales, where in fact another speed of the Moon passage occurs in The Merchanti Tale (lines 1885-g7). 10.

Our earthly pilgrimage is unelected because we do not choose the hour of our birth.

The term "election" is used technically for the act of choosing "a time in the hture that will be favorable to some action on which one has decided" (North, Universe231). It is notable for any discussion about fiee will in Chaucer that the "Of viage is ther noon eleccioun?" question is glossed in both the Ellesmere and the Hengwrt manuscripts by a quotation from the Liber Ektionem

of Zahal (Zael), as J. A. W Bennett observes in Chaucer at Oxford and Cambridge

(68). J. D. North draws particular attention to this gloss and its source while explaining the concept of astrological "elections" in Universe ( Z ~ C Y ~ ~ ) . 11.

For a thorough discussion of the passage fiom Bernardus Silvestris and the "aston-

ishing metamorphosis" it received at the hands of the Man of Law, seeWood (CountT 208-9). 12.

For discussion see Theodore Otto Wedel's chapter on "Astrology in the Medieval

Romances" in his analysis of The Medieval Attitude Toward Astrology (100-112). 13. As Charlotte Thompson points out, this metaphor is probably derived ultimately

fiom the idea in Isaiah 34:4 that "the heaven shall be folded up as a scrollf'The scroll of the skies was imagined, she explains, as "a celestial scripture in which God had written His wisdom, veiled in starry hieroglyphs" (77, 81-82n. 5). According to Blanch and Wasserman, Hugh of St. Victor says, "The entire sense-perceptible world is like a sort of book written by the finger of God" (64). Others make similar statements; see "The Book of Nature" section in Curtius (?l9-26). 14. See Stephen A. Barney's notes to Troilus and Cris~dein The Riverside Chaucer (1022). Evidence for &&er familiarity has been adduced by Mariel Morison in a paper titled "Chaucer's Man of Law as a Reader of John of Sahsbury's Policraticus" presented at the Conference of the Medieval Association of the Midwest at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio, 7 and 8 October 1988. 15. Acknowledgment should be made here t o V A. Kolve's lscussion of "The hlian of Law's Tale:The Rudderless Ship and the Sea" in Imagery, and to Mariel Morison's fine lecture on the tale as well as her unpublished paper cited above in note 14. Both works provided material and inspiration for dus discussion. For extended discussions of medieval astrology, see the first five essays in Astrology, Science, and Society, edited by Patrick Curry, and more recently Courting Disaster by Hilary M. Carey.

NOTES TO PAGES 221-32

317 Chapter 9

I.

Donald R. Howard observes that T~rwhitt,in the "Introductory Discourse to The

Canterbuty Tales" printed in his edition of 1775, "remarked once that some difficulties could be avoided by considering that the journey took more than one day, but &d not really propose this" (Writers and Pilgrims non. 17). 2.

Imagining, and a r p g against, a realistic pilgrimage,W W Lawrence remarks on the

impossibility of the pilgrims listening to and comprehending a story told by one of themselves in such circumstances (101). Sigmund Eisner adds that "even if they are riding in double file, the pilgrimage might stretch at least one hundred yards along the road" ("Fresh Day" p). 3. Modern critics are wary of over-reading Chaucer's conclusion, and one must respect

such caution.The allegory that evolves at the end of The Canterbury Tales, the "celestial" version of a pilgrimage specifically called to mind by the Parson, is just one among many modes in the work as a whole. Cooper excellentlyexpressesthis view (Cztide 40~).Derek Pears4 reminds us also that in the seriousness of h s conclusion Chaucer, lrke Boccaccio, is observing a decorum of closure: "For, as it seemed, it was for to doone-/

To enden in some vertuous sen-

tence" (ParsProl62-6j). Pearsall firther cautions: "The argument concerning the underlying religious unity of The Canterbury Tales which is derived fiom the conclusion of the fiame-narrative and The Parson2 Tale is radically defective in practice because it demands that the nature of the tales as tales be denied and that they be reconstituted as ideological discourse by retrospective realignment" (Canterbury Tales 47). Yet the "retrospective realignment" that Pearsall objects to was a widely practiced literary, political, and religious mode of medieval interpretation, or more precisely reinterpretationwithin an altered context, known as studia transhtio, studia imperii, transhtio romana, and so forth. Rosarnund Tuve calls the reinterpretation of a previously existing story to suit a new meaning "imposed allegory" (Allegm'cal Imagey zq-jjj), and one thinks of the way the meaning of the Song of Solomon was "realigned" by every new group that read it. The warnings about allegorical readmgs above might be expressed more moderately by pointing out that the Parson's vision of the celestial pilgrimage accrues importance and heightened meaning by being the final vision within the world of the story, while acknowledgingthat it does not negate previous visions by reason of its situation. 4. H . Snowden Ward dramatizes the journey to Canterbury with the invention of a tenant farmer traveling with his son along the Pilgrim's Way from Winchester (not the route fiom London), He incorporates into the narrative an account of the many sights and shrines they might have visited (108-40).

5. At the Creation, the Sun was supposed to be at the first point of Aries and all the planets in their home signs. Such a position for the Sun is technically impossible at Easter,

318

NOTES TO PACES 232-41

for reasons to be explained in detail in Chapter 10, nor would the Moon be found in Cancer on Easter Sunday.The fact that Venus actually was in Pisces on Easter 1301 has created a crux in the Cmmedia concerning the date, sirmlar to the difficulty that the 4 P.M.angle of the Sun has been thought to cause with the date in The Canterbury Tales (though it is probably less resolvable). Sayers's note on Canto I (19-21) offers a brief explanation of how Dante might have been led astray by the "almanac of Profhachius" (Profatius, produced in 12~2). Another suggestion is that Dante was intentionally combining features fiom the historical events of the year 1300 with the symbolically interesting March sky of

1301

(see Chapter 10, note 4

below). In Reading Dante's Stars Alison Cornish interprets the Easter of Dante's pilgrimage as transcending the date of any particular Easter (26-42). 6. The passage in The Squire'sTale in whichVenus is similarly stationed in Pisces (the sign, not Dante's constellation Pisces) has been thought a direct imitation of this passage from the Purgatorio. But Dante's passage is "realistic" fiom the point of view of the journey. His pilgrim persona sees the actual planet in the constellation Pisces, whereas in Chaucer's taleVenus is invisible in the daytime sky and located in an invisible zolacal sign; her presence above the dancing of her "children" is both an allegorical and an iconographic allusion. 7. The long rising of the sign Leo begins just before 10 A.M. and concludes around 1 q . 5 P.M.

on this Taurus 6" day.

8. The Host is known for the difficulty he has with saints' names. By "Seint Ronyan" he perhaps means to refer to the St. Rumwold of local cult. St. Rumwold was especially honored at Bodey Abbey near Rochester, proved by archaeology to have been a place of importance for Canterbury pilgrims (for example, many pilgrims' badges have been excavated there). In fact, the passage where the name occurs contains more of the Host's malapropisms than any other. Hence h s "St. Runyan" could have been Chaucer's attempt to allow the Pardoner to make f;n of the Host by turning h s misnarning into a frenchified "Freudnn slipJ'(runyon: testicle), which the Host turns back on hrm later.

g. Following the joking reference to Harbledown-under-Blean, the Host exclaims, "Sires, what! Dun is in the myre!" (MancProl5), about which F. N. Robinson (following Skeat) soberly explains, "Dun

. . . was a general name for a horse. The reference here is to a rural game"

(76j). Baugh, Blake, Pratt, and others also take Skeat's word on this matter without inquiring hrther. Blake goes so far as to emend dun to don in his edition of The Canterbury Tales, though dun is a more obvious color name for a horse than others that Chaucer uses. Such a game-related phrase is an appropriate remark for the game-loving Host to make. But as the previous line tells us, he has also started "to jape and pleye" with his language, llke Chaucer who just previously referred to Harbledown as "Bobbe-up-and-down" (it is very hilly there).

319

NOTES TO PAGES 241-58

Harry is playing on the name of St. Dunstan's Church, whtch David Maxwell in his guidebook The Pilgrims'

Wqy gives as the next major landmark after Harbledown (45-46).

Quick-

witted Harry makes up a Dunstan's-in-the-Mire by analogy with such famous churches as St. Dunstan's-in-the-East and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields in London. For all the "sweetness" that Chaucer attributes to April showers, real pilgrims probably could be very tired of the miry English roads they produce. Chapter ro I.

The allegory to whichThompson refers here seems lrke that "radical allegory" defined

by C. S. Lewis as "a story whch can be translated into literal narration" llke the Roman de la Rose (Lewis, Allegory

of Love 166). As Lewis observes, Chaucer was not an allegorical poet in the

sense of Langland, Spenser, or Dante. Richard Neuse similarly says: "The pilgrimage in Dante's Come4 is everydung, almost, that the one in The CanterburyTales is not: it is othenvorldly, allegorical, and inclvidual, whereas [Chaucer's] is thisworldly, literal, and collective" (Neuse

55). Neuse does, however, argue for recognizing a secular allegory in The Canterbury Tales that reflects Dante's spiritual one. The exact nature of a cosmological allegory (llke Dante's) must itself be questioned when the "discarded image" of the universe that Lewis finds behind much medieval writing, the great nest of spheres set in motion and contained by God, seems allegorical to us and yet was once considered a schematic representation of the actual heavens. 2.

Through this social euphemism expressed in terms of a sonorous phrase taken from

Psalm 45, Chaucer provides an anticipation of the far more outrageous juxtapostion of h g h with low in the Pentecostal-associated wheel of "inspiration" at the end of the story. Many have observed that the Latin phrase on the Prioress's brooch (GP 162) has s d a r potential for diverse meanings. Chauntecleer's condescending mistranslation of his mysogynist Latin slogan (NPT 3164-66) provides an exaggerated example of the standard practice of translatio that allows adaptation to a particular purpose. 3. Eisner explains succincdy what the Metonic cycle is: "In the fifth century B.c., Meton, an Athenian who may have been following Babylonian observations, declared that nineteen years to the day after a new moon another new moon would occur. In that period about 235 lunations would take place.Thus he gave his world a means of time measurement resting on both a solar and a lunar base" (Kalendarium 5). It is interesting that in the modern Western world the only use made of this ancient and pagan lunar measurement of time is to calculate the date of the Christian celebration of renewal at the vernal equinox. 4. In discussing the date that the pilgrim Dante enters the Inferno, Mary Acworth Orr refers to the idea "that Dante uses instead of the real moon the ecclesiastical moon, which, as

NOTES TO PAGES 258-60

32 0

we know, is a conventional cycle, and sometimes appearing on tables a fdl two or three days before or after the real Full Moon." She then asks: "But would Dante trouble about the ecclesiastical moon, and would his readers know anythrng about it?" (282). The problem has occupied Dante scholars for centuries and appears to be unresolvable. It has been suggested that Dante misread his almanac year, whch is easy to do (see Chapter 9n. 18). He could, however, have consciously combined the two years 1300 and 1301, wishing to use the events of 1300 because of the symbolism of the centennial year and the sky of 1301 because of the location of the planetvenus, important to his doctrine of divine love. For an argument that the year 1300

provides an astrologicallyideal date for Dante's entry to Paradise, see Kay (283-85 and his

lagram). In Chaucer's case, since we know that he was using certain tables in Nicholas of

Lynn's Kalendarium for other purposes, we can assume with some confidence that he used the lunar tables fiom the same book.

5. Upon reading this statement, Sigmund Eisner kindly offered the following commentary and figures: ''A moon is never recorded as being fdl for more than a minute. In April 1394Nicholas says that the [real] moon is fdlon April 17at 4 hours, 44 minutes, which since Nicholas begins his day at noon on the previous day, comes out to April 16 at 4:44 P.M. If we work it out on theTuckermanTables, that same fdlmoon is on the same day at 3:22 p.~.The moon at this time is about 18" of Scorpio. The [imaginary] Paschal moon, however, is about fourteen days after the new moon, which was that month on April I at 4:44 in the afternoon. The Paschal moon, therefore, would be on April 15 in the afternoon and then still in Libra. But the fill moon, you note, was a day after the Paschal moon" (Letter to author dated 11Feb-

"ary 1992). 6. In Chaucer and the Countly of the Stars, Chauncey Wood argues that four o'clock is the eleventh hour, with all that this implies about last-minute salvation (q7). The argument is attractive, and in terms of a day that has been standarbed fiom 6 A.M. to 6 P.M.,four o'clock does indeed mark the beginning of the eleventh hour. The trouble is, as soon as one uses terminology like "the eleventh hour of the day," the reference is to the artificial day with its unequal hours. In t h ~ system s 4 P.M. occurs during the ninth unequal hour: "That hour runs fiom 936 P.M. to 4:49

P.M."

(Eisner letter).

7. See Michael Olrnert, "The Parson's L u l c Formula for Winning on the Road [to

Canterbury]." 8. In the note on this passage in his edition of

La Divina Cornmedia, C. H. Grandgent

points out that for this estimate of the time Adam lived in the Garden-"only hoursp'-Dante

about six

chose one of the shortest fiom among the various estimates of the theolo-

gians, that of Petrus Comestor

NOTES TO PAG E5 260-67

321

9. The hour's number is confusing, since all three synoptists give the ninth hour as the

time of the last cry fiom the cross. In the note on these lines in her Penguin translation Sayers attempts to explain this: "Dante must mean that Christ entered into death at the sixth hour (noon), whereas at the ninth hour the act was completed. Six hours is also the length of time spent by Dante in the Earthly Paradise, and in the eighth heaven" (qo). In Dante and the Early htronomers Mary Acworth Orr discusses this matter among the other references that Dante

makes to the stars as markers of time. See also Alison Cornish, Reading Dante's Stars. 10.

J. C. Eade shows how Spenser, in the significantly numbered 180 lines of his ProthaG

amion, achieves a s~rnilareffect: "The poem begins with Virgo/Libra rising and ends with

Pisces/Aries rising (its 180" opposite). After this revolution through half a circle the poem comes to its point of rest, placing the appropriate constellations in equipoise above their earthly counterpartsJ'(Sky 186). AU that Spenser would have needed in order to work out his poem was the ready available circle of the signs. 11.

Chaucer might well be amused by the modern reader's excitement over the possibil-

ity of discovering a date in a real year, himself probably more inclined to place emphasis, especially at this point of The CanterburyTales, on the Moon's Paschal associations than on any specific or personal date that the "exalted" Moon might help to recover. O n the other hand, if he could have managed both at once, the strategic working out of the manipulation itself would no doubt have intrigued him. 12.

Whde makmg use of the game metaphor, Michaela Paasche Grudm presents a view

of "the problem of closure" in The Canterbury Tales that is very different fiom the one proposed here (Grudm 161). 13. When Chauncey Wood dismisses "the business about the moon" as "nothing more

than one of the not d d a r rhetorical flourishes in which Chaucer seemed to delight when employing astrology in ~oetry"(Country 278), he typifies the way those who are best informed about the subject can miss the point of many of Chaucer's references to the sky by assuming them to be astrological rather than physical descriptions.The scholars assume, naturally enough in view of the common practice of the times, that the intertextdty represented by these allusions in The CanterburyTales is classical and literary, whereas at this stage in Chaucer's career it may instead be contemporaryand computational,a "high tech intertextuality assuming farmliarity with tables, almanacs, the astrolabe, and "that large b o o k of the sky itself (Dante providmg the model for the latter usage). T h s possibility is supported by the recent articles by Brewer, Acker, and Shippey arguing for Chaucer's "arithmetical mentality." 14. In "Canterbury Day: A Fresh Aspect," Sigmund Eisner makes a strong argument for Chaucer's awareness of the astrological arrangement of the planets that make this day

322

NOTES TO PAGES 267-68

particularly propitious for setting out on pilgrimage (41-42). The rich profLsion of d e t d confirming Chaucer's construction of an "artificial day" for his pilgrimage would seem to outweigh the few points against it. Only two major points, both examined in previous chapters, remain insufficientlyresolved: the phrase "it is pryme" in The Squire's Tale (SqT73), and the detail of the Cook nearly falling off his horse because he is sleeping "by the morwe" in The Prologue to the Mancipk's Tale (MancProl16). Whereas Chapter 4 presents the argument that the phrase "it is pryme" may be understood as having internal reference within the tale (where it adds structure), the fact is that it seems to come as a drrect comment fiom the Squire to the pilgrims. Regarding the Cook's sleeping "by the morwe," it is possible that this phrase could simply mean "by day," as suggested by the variants with identical meaning, "day ne nyght" and "nyght ne morwe" at lines 2 and 22 of the Book of the Dtlchess. O r it could be proverbial and not have reference to the pilgrimage day at all. It seems most hkely, however, that both cruces are merely indications, llke others in Chaucer's text, of unfinished work. 15. Whereas various criticisms offered by the two anonymous readers for the Press pro-

voked the author's attention and gratitude, one response concerning Part 3 provoked anxiety lest the last pages of the book be misinterpreted: "Here, a skeptical reader might come to feel that an enormous amount of technical scholarship is being pressed into the service of a very familiar set of readings: readings whch resonate with the patristic exegetical interpretations of

D. W Robertson, Jr., and his school of the 1950sand 1960s. Unless I am doing a great injustice to t h ~ portion s of the book, this reader comes away with a sense that the claims for order and cosmos made in the book are affirmations of old verities, rather than provocations to new interpretations.While no one would doubt the centrahty of Christian calendrical imagery and setting to the CT, and while no one would question the affiliations of Chaucer's work with Dante's along certain lines, there is a sense in this book's final pages that we are moving back towards a controlling emphasis on these liturgical-christologicalh e s at the expense of a whole range of issues which the last t h t y years of Chaucer criticism and medieval studies has compelled us to r e W .

. . .As so much of the tone and tenor of Chaucer criticism of the

last two generations has struggled with getting the poet and his poem out fiom under the Parson's direction, it seems at the very least a challenge to invite us to return to such a spiritual aegis."There are, indeed, certain "affirmations of old verities" being made in this book, perhaps the oldest being that Chaucer knew the way to Canterbury. But an element of this h a l chapter has been the attempt to emphasize the fact that only at the end of the day, with the Sun declining and the Moon still to rise with its ecclesiasticalsymbolism of the season, the mind of the work turns accordingly, under the Parson's drrection, to last things (see Chapter 9n. 3). If the book had concerned The Canterbury Tales as a whole rather than Chaucer's

NOTE5 TO PAGE 268

323

specifically "astrolabic" effects, the wide range of varied interests, attitudes, and, above all, styles met along the road between the two fiarning ends of the journey would have received much more attention and thereby placed in perspective the h a l moments of that journey, echoed by the conclusion of this book. Two other matters slighted because they are not directly relevant to the topic under discussion are the question of Chaucer's authorship of The Equatorie of the Planetis, mentioned in passing and relevant only to determining the level of Chaucer's astronomical interest and expertise, not in question here; and his interest in alchemy as &splayed in The Canon's Yeoman's Tale, an interest of an entirely dfferent kind fiom his interest in the stars and

intent

on exposing the weaknesses of dus pseudo-science as it is used to gull the innocent. As Professor North says on this particular subject, and to whom the last word is hereby given: "For all its power to astonish, alchemy was lacking in that grandeur that made the cosmic sciences such an important poetic asset, at least in fourteenth-century eyes" (Universe 256).

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INDEX

Acker, Paul, 3, 5, 264,321 Adenes le Roi, 37

147-48, 15%152, 155,163,172, 174.9176, 179,181-82, 188, 199, 210, 231, 237-38,

Al-Khwarizmi, 312

242,257,268 Anchor Bible, The, 308

Al-Majriti, Maslarna, 284

Anderson, David, 299

Al-Qabisi (Alkabucius), 183,186, 264

Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 199,206,209, 213,

Al-Saffar, Ibn, 284 Albumasar, 264

217 Arabian Nights, 37

Alcabitius. See Al-Qabisi (Alkabucius)

Aries, first point of, 136, 138-39, 159, 232,

Alchemy, zoj-zoq,jzj Alexander of Macedon, 27

237, 251, 296, 298, 317-318 Aristotle, 88, 161, 280

Megory, 3-4,119,yg Men, Judson Boyce, and Teresa Anne

Ashbrook, Jose~h,306

Al-Ashraf, Sultan, 287

Moritz, 88 Men, Richard Hmkley, 27,283, 301 Alliterative Morte Arthure, The, 239

Arnold, Matthew, 267, 279-80 Astell, Ann W., 4,308 Astrolabe, 3,5,7,14, 16,48,56,58; construction of, 39-54; h c t i o n s of, 11,14,16;as timekeeper, 66

Alpheraz, 42-45,47-49,52,111,289,298 Alphonsine Tables, 309

Astrolabic allusions, 16

Altick, Richard D., 309

Astrological error, 6

Amphitheater, 130, 135, 300-301, 303;

Astrology, 3-4,12-13, 216; belief in, 313; as

astrolabic, 145,149, 155,182, 189, 197;

determinist creed, 195-96; horary, 197,

cosmic, 175;Theseus' (Knight's Tale),

199,200-201, 203, 215, 280, 302, 304;

124-25,128, 130, 133, 137, 139, 141-43, 145,

horological, 313; medical, 203-204;

344

INDEX

natal, 197,199,215;weather, 198-99,204, 3"9 3'4 Astronomical concepts, 12,18 Astronomical periphrasis, 5, 58

Boccaccio, 31,124,172,284-85, 300, 303,317; Decameron, 224; Zseida, 125-28, 131, 133, 136-39, 151-52,163, 173-74, 198, 257, 262,

Astronomical time, graphic nature of, 13

299 Bode's Law, 158, 305

Astronomy, 3, 5,12-14; and astrology dis-

Boethius, 124,155,172,175-76,189, 213, 217,

tinguished, 25-27,zg-jo,

33; judicial, 315;

and navigation, 24; terms defined, 23-24

284, 302, 306, 313, 315; Consolation of Philosophy, 31, 206-209

Augustine, Saint, 230

Boitiani, Piero, 284-85

Augustinian, 246

Bradshaw shift, 96-97, 99,101,115,224,238,

Azimuth, 67-68

294 Bradshaw, Henry, 96-97? 99 Bradwardme, Bishop, 195,216,315

Baker, Donald C., 34, 36, 95,99,102,110, 287-88,296 Baldwin, Ralph, 292 Barney, Stephen A., 291,316

Brea, A. E., 67-68, 86,250,253, 256, 258, 281 Brewer, Derek S., 3-4, 91, 93, 95, 200, 224, 227,250, 264, 266,321

Bartolomaeus Anglicus, 310

Brinton of Rochester, Bishop, 184-185

Baugh, Albert C., 222-24, 293, 318

Brooks, Douglas, and Alastair Fowler,

Baum, L. Frank, 36

301-302

Baum, Paul F., 95

Brown, Peter, and Andrew Butcher, 173, 308

Bede, 65

Bryan, W. F., and Germaine Dempster, 287

Beder, Joseph, 180

Burrow, J. A., 116,171

Beidler, Peter G., 179, 309, 312 Benedict, 307,309

Calcidius, 313

Benedictine Rule, 184

Calendar, 56,61,69,75,29o-g1 Canonical hours of prayer, 55,164,171-72,

Bennett, H. S., 267 Bennett, J. A. W., 14, 316 Benson, C. David, 290 Benson, Larry D., rj,51,57,79-80,96-1o1, 187-88, 224,281,284,289, 300, 293-94

307 Cardinal directions, 134-35, 137, 139-41, 172, 182 Carey, Hilary M., 195, 316

Beowg 303-304

Charlemagne, 282,287

Berchorius, Petrus, 246

Chaucer, Geoffie~,attitude toward astrol-

Bernardus Silvestris, 214, 216

ogy, 6; Boece, 130; Book of the Duchess, 107,

Berry, Arthur, 280,298-99

125,130,149,258,284, 289, 311-12,322;

Best, Thomas W., 36,287

Canon'sYeoman's Prologue, 240; Canon'sYea-

Blake, Norman F., 103,286,294,285,318

man's Tale, 91, 323; The Canterbuy Tales, 30,

Blanch, Robert, and Julian Wasserman, 302,

32-33, 89-92, 94; Clerk's Tale, 225-26;

316 Block, Howard, 311

217, 236, 264, 279, 296, 304-jog; Frankhi

Complaint of Mars, 4, 89, 105, 147, 150,198,

INDEX Tale, 50,101,159,199-201,217,240, 291,

295, 318,322; Summoner'sTale, 42; The Tale

296, 305; General Prologue, 32, 57, 81, 85,

of Melibee, 300; The Tale of Sir Thopas, 110;

89510,94, 96,176, 229,231, 248,259, 262,268-69,289; Howe of Fame, 5,12, 49-52,125,1jo, 161,176,203,235-36, 267-68, 304, 306; interest in astronomy,

The Treatise on the Astrolabe, 5, 13-14, 18, 31-32, 40, 42,441 47, 50, 52,561 72, 74-75,78, 81-82, 86, 92,105, 111,114, 116,

31-32; Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale,

124.1127-28, 130, 141-42, 145, 15%159, 764, 167, 170,182-84, 197, 203-204, 206, 217,

65-67,70, 72-7.+79, 81, 85,90-91,104, 113, 182, 228, 238, 258, 265, 269; Introduction

305, 312, 314; Troilus and Criseyde, 93, 163,

to the Pardoner's Tale, 240; Knight's Tale, 32-34, 93-94,

1019

104,123-28, 130-31,

271, 273-74,281, 286,289512,298, 302, 183,198,205-206, 208-209,220-21,228, 241,268,300,305-306, jog, 314-16; W!

of

134,141,146,148-54,158,16j-64,167, Bath's Prologue, 99-100,199, 240; Chaucer, Lewis (son), 16,18,40,53, 56,127, 170-76,178-82,184,186-188, 19739, 201, 206-209, 212-13,237-38,

257, 262,

242,288

265, 26849,284, qg-301, 308, p ; lapses, 93; "L'envoy de Chaucer a Buk-

Chaucer, Philippa (wife), 287

ton,'' 294; "L'envoy de Chaucer a Sco-

Chronographia, 5,70,1o1-IO~,IO~,IO~, 135,

185,1gr,zro-12,214-17,227,267,280,

29-291,297 Chronology of Chaucer's pilgrimage, 79,220

gm," 305; Man of Law's Tale, 64,125,175, 299-300, 316; Manciple's Prologue, 91,113-14,

Christ, 27, 189, 245, 260 151, 232, 236, 245, 258, 260, 264, 266, 269,

227, 241-42, 322; Manciple's Tale, 113-14;

Cicero, 304-306

Merchant's Tale, 62, 240, 314; Miller's

Claudius Ptolemy, 156. See also Ptolemy

Prologue, 90; Miller's Tale, 12, jj, 78, 171-72,

Chades, 287 177-8j,185-89,1g6,1g8,269,28o,jo8-11; Clocks, 55 Monk's Prologue, 91, 99, 116, 238; Monk's Tale, Cockcrow, 184-85, 309 269; Nun's Priest's Tale, 19,111,182,199, 201, Coghill, Nevill, 250,295 Color symbolism, 147-48

204-205, 209,216,237,239,267,270; Pardoner's Tale, ~11,293; Parliament of Fmk

Colosseum, 128,130,138, 300-301

1~5,304;Parson's Prologue, 63-65,75-76,

Colson, F. H., 307

79-80, 86, 9132, 107, 109, 115,182,224,

Condren, Edward I., 89-90, 293, 296

228-?0,241,244, 249,252,264,266,269; Parson's Tale, 92, 115, 185, 204; Prologue to the

Conjunctions, 198

Legend of G o d Women, 124; Prologue to the

Cooper, Helen, 80, 88-89, 93,100,102, 226,

Reeve's Tale, 238; Reeve's Tale, 114, 123, 231, 287; Retraction, 92, 94, 188, 230, 259, 263,

2671 293-95. 3'7 Copernicus, 11

265, 268; Squire'sTale, 34-j7,jg-40,42,

Cornford, F. M., 304

46, 52-54,70-72,75,78, 101-105, 107,

Cornish, Alison, 279, 318, 321

109, 11% 113, 115, 135, 150, 225, 227, 240-42,246, 251, 262, 269, 285-88, 291,

Crecy, Battle of (1347)~195

Contrast Group, 96, 99, 115

Cumont, Franz, 280,307

INDEX Cunningham, F. J., 125,248

Elbow, Peter, 289

Curry, Patrick, 316

Eliot, T. S., 11,14,232,279-80

Curtius, Ernst, 149,316

Ellesmere, 94-95, 97, 99-101,115, 270,

Cynewulf, 149

293-951 2979 y6 Equatorie of the Planetis, The, 281, 322

279, 297, 316,318-22; Purgatorio, 12, 49

308-309, 3x1

Dates of composition, 4,139

Fate, 134

Davenport, W. A., 280

Faulkes, Anthony, 303

David, Alfred, 229-30

First Mover, 153-54, 161, 171, 174-75, 210,

Day. arc of, 6, 255; artificial, 64, 68, 74, 115, 167,228,238, 260,266, 320, 322; Canter-

218,265,305 Fisher, John H., 281

bury, 6; imaginary, 243; natural, 167; $-

Flammarion, Cande, 306

grimage, 80,247; single, 241; symbolic,

Floating Fragment, 95 Floure and the w e , Be, 103,109, 112

230

Days of the week, 16546

Fortune, 124, 206,212,217, 239, 300

Dean, James, 292

Fragments, 8 9 , 9 4 3 7 Frame tale, 13, 18, 56, 89, 96, 107, 110-11, 113,

Delaney, Sheila, 212 Delasanta, Rodney, 245,259

188, 215, 22-21,

23-31,

237, 241-42,263,

De Vedia, Enrique, 310

26748,270,294, 297,317 Free will, 195

Diana's temple, 150

French, Samuel, 92, 265-66

Dickens, Charles, 223

Frese, Dolores Warwick, 80,114, 255,

Di Macco, Michela, 130, 301

28932,295 Froissart, 37,287

De Machaut, Guillaume, 258

DMarco, Vincent J., 286,291,303 Dohrn-van Rossum, Gerhard, 184,282,285, 287-88,jo7,jog Dondi, Giovanni, 301

Fulgentius, 103 Furnivall, F. J., 97, 99,115, 119, 223-28, 238,

Dronke, Peter, 54, 303 Duke of Berry, 58,190 Eade, J. C., 65, 7-71,

Frye, Northrop, 94 Fueros, laws of the, 310

74, 78, 111,133, 135, 139,

zoo, 2g1,297,jog-306,309,321 Edward 111,195

24-01 293

Gallicinum, 184

Egyptian order, 304

Gaylord, Alan, 5 Genesis, 180 Gentilesse Group, 95, 99,101

Eisner, Sigmund, 62,7&80, 111, 2 2 ~ 0 ,

Geoffre~of Vinsauf, 195, 300

237-39, 258, 266, 281, 288-90, 292, 317,

Geography, 89,99,101,114,116,119, 265-66,

INDEX Gide, Andre, 300,308

Hugh of SLVictor, 316

Ginger& Owen, 282

Hugonnard-Roche, Henri, 32,304

Gleadow, Rupert, 25,283

Human destiny, 152

Goddesmvetee, 179-81, 18731,195-96,218,

Hypatia of Alexandria, 281-82

267, 311 Goldstein, Bernard R., 293

Isidore of Seville, 12

Goossens, Jan, 286-87 Gower, John, 104

Jadcson, W W , 260

Graf, Arturo, 130

Jeffers,Robinson, 3, 279

Grandgent, C. H., 320

Joan of Kent, 14,222

Gfaphia aureae urbis, 128

John of Gaunt, 14,107

Gray, Douglas, 183

John of Salisbury, 218, 316

Green, Jonathan, 310

John of Wales, 308

Greenfield, Stanley, 295

Jones, H. S. V, 287

Gregory Xm, Pope, 290-91 Grirnrn, Florence, 216,306 G r u b , Paasche Michaela, 280,321 Guido delle Colonne, 61-62

Joseph, Gerhard, 311 Joyner,Tim, 281

Gunther, R. T., 42,288,302

Kay, Richard, 4,264,267,279,297,320 Kean, P. M., 284

Gurshtein, Alex A., 282

Keiser, George R., 294

Guye, Samuel, and Henri Michel, 37, 307

Kelvin, George V, 40 Kmg, David A., 164, 307

Hallissy, Margaret, 130-32,149

Kittredge, George Lyrnan, 95

Halsall, Maureen, 285

Kolve,V A., 125,128, 132-33, 151, 178, 181,

Hamrnond, Margaret, 95

185-86,189, 212,215,220-21, 227-28,

Havely, N. R., 299

3og-11,316 Konas, Gay, 310

Harun-&Rashid, 282, 287 Heffernan, Carol F., 296

Krieger, Murray, 285

Hengwrt, 29335,297, 316 Henry r\5 14,281

Kunitzsch, Paul, 284

Henry the Navigator, 281

Landes, David S., 280-81,307

Hill, Donald R., 288

Lang, Kenneth, 299

H o f h a n , Arthur W., 248

Langlmd, William, 182,279,319

Horoscope, natal, 204,211

Latitude, 56, 65, 72, 75

Horse/hors, 34,40,42,48,52-53,7678,

Lawler, Traugott, 244

150, 291 Howard, Donald R., 90-91,93-96,176,

Lawrence, D. H., 254-55

227-28,230,293,301,317 Huffer, Charles M., 275

Lawton, David, 110,113,295

Lawrence, W. W , 317 Leeu, Gerard, 286

INDEX Lessing, Erich, 288

Moore, Patrick, 280

Levitan, Alan, 42

Morison, Mariel, 290, p6

Lewis, C. S., 4, 161, 172, 279,306, 319 Leyerle, John, 49 Lionarons, JoyceTdy 287 Lists (lystes), 130

Mumford, Lewis, 309 Muscantine, Charles, 228,284

Literary realism, 88 Littlehales,Henry, 238 Livermore, H. V, 281 Lopez de Gomara, Francisco, 310 Lowes, John Livingston, 167 Lydgate, John, 53,6142,288, 290,297; The Siege of Thebes, 58

Navigation 5, 18; celestial, 86, 155 Neugebauer, Otto, 282, 314-15 Neuse, Richard, 319

Lyle, Emily, 130, 302

Mythology: Greek, 153; Norse, 154

Nicholas of Lynn, 14,49, 65, 68,78,82,85, 105,107,112-13, 167, 182, 189,204,238, 241,245,252,254,256-58,26243,320 Nimrod the astronomer, 303 Noah's flood, 311 Nolan, Barbara, joo

MacQueen, John, 308 Macrobius, 304-305 Mandeville'sTravek, 142, 288 Manly, John M., and Edith Rickert, 293, 296 Mann, J d , 6, 208-10,221, 315 Manzalaoui, Mahmoud, 146-47,172 Marriage Group, 95,293 Mathematics, 3 MaxwelL, David, 319 Mayr, Otto, 288 Medieval cosmos, 173 Meditation on penance, 81

North, J. D., 4-5,40,43-45,47-48, 68-69, 78-79, 92, 104-105, 107, 110, 139, 141, 147, 182-83,186--87,198, zoo, 227-29, 245, 249-53, 25657,266, 28-81, 283-86, 288, 290,295-96, 301-305, 309, 315-16, 323 Norton-Smith, John, 175 O'Brien, Timothy D., 289

0 Carragh, ~arnonn,304 Olmert, Michael, 320 Olson, Paul A., 308 Onions, C. T., 24,221 Operations, astrolabic, 6, 56,61,74,82

Melothesia, 314-15 Merton College, 14

Orr, Mary Acworth, 11,232,236, 279,

Messahda, 31,150, 182,196,284,302-303 Metlitzki, Dorothee, 288

Osborn, Marijane, 48,290,301,303-304 Ovid, 3, 12

Metonic cycle, 319 Milton, John, I1Pelrrero, 34

Owen, Charles A., Jr., 226,297 Oxfo~dEnglish Dictionay, 221, 254-55 Oxford University, 14

Minnis, A. J., 209, 304, 308, 315 Misch, Tony, 299 Mistake about Libra, Chaucer's supposed, 245,248-56,266 Mooning, 185, 310

379-2'

Pagan, 153-54,163,170-74, 179,188-89,197, 217, 238,261,285, 300, 303,307, 319 Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, 164

INDEX Parr, Johnstone, 297

Reidy, John, 281,288, 303, 305

Patterson, Lee, 267

Rete, zoomorphc, 14

Pearsd, Derek, 4, 88-89, 91, 97, 226, 241,

Reynaert'sHistoric, 36

295, 3'7 Peck, Russell A., 92

Reynolds, Barbara, 263

Pegasus (constellation), 43-49,52,104, 107,

Richard of Wallingford, 305

289 Penn, J o b 34 Peters, Edward, 285 Petrarch, jor Petrus Comestor, 320 Plullippa of Lancaster, 281 Pilgrimage, duration of, 222-30,265-68; multiple day, 252

Richard II,14,195 Rifkin, Jeremy, 177 Riverside Chauq The, 183 Robertson, D.W., Jr, 246, 292,322 Robinson, F. N., 70, 96,101, 281, 288, 299, 3 0 3 7 318 Robinson, Fred C., joj

Robinson, Pamela, 281 Rochester Cathedral, 116

Planetary d u e n c e , 184

Roman circus, 147

Planet's mansion, 71-72

Roman de la Rose, The, 31,125, 279, 284, 319

Plato, 153, 156, 304-306, 308, 313

Roney, Lois, 293

Play of Noah, The, 180

Root, Robert K., and Henry N. Russell,

Plotinus, 313 Polaris, 142

309 Root, Robert Kilburn, 226

Pollard, A. W, 37,125

Rowland, Beryl, 284

Pratt, Robert A., 280, 318

Ruggiers, Pad G., 294

Priestly, J. B., 39

Rule, 58

Prime Mover, 206 Prins, A. A., 61-62

St. Peter's Basilica, 130

Prior, Sandra Pierson, 311

Sayers, Dorothy, 232-33, 235-36,y8,jz1

Problem of order, 96

Schaevernock, Ham, 308

Profatius, 318

Schless, Howard, 261

Prophecy, 12

Schmidt, Kari Anne Rand, 281

Ptolemaic: arrangement, 174; cosmology,

Schweitzer, Edward C., 301-302

163; cosmos, 161,170,306; model,

Seyrnour, M. C., 291

304-305; order of the planets, 71,156,

Seznec, Jean, 303, 307

164,166, 203-204; week, 260

Shadow, length of, 16

Ptolemy, 16, 18, 21, 24, 32, 199, 282, 314

Shadow scale, 75-76

Punctuation, 70-71~74

Shakespeare,William, King Lear, zoo

Pythagoras, 308

Shippey,T. A., 3, 264,289,311-12, Shurnaker, Wayne, 314

Raban, Jonathan, 11,155

Silverstein,Theodore, ,292

Recipes, examples of time in, 55

Silvia, Daniel S., 293

321

INDEX Sir Gawain and the G e m Knight, 34, 37

Tillyard, E. M. W, 187

Sisam, Kenneth, 225-26

Time, graphic expressions of, 196

Sittingbournecrux, 225

Torode, R. K. E., 257

Skeat,W. W., 4.~~44-45,71, 86,145,184, 223, 250, 253, 273-74,281, 291, 293, 302, 34 ' 9 318 Smyser, H. M,, 50,155, 210, 215, 284, 288, 315-16 Snorri Studuson, 154, 303 Somer, John, 14

Travels of Marco Polo, The, 287-88

Traversi, Derek, 228-29 Tuckerman, Bryant, 52,252-53,25657 Tuckerman Tables, 320 Tuve, Rosarnund, 317 Twain, Mark, A Connecticut Yankee in King ArthrS Court, 201

Song of Solomon, 317 Spenser, Edmund, 34,279,319 Stahlman,William D., and Owen Gingerich, 52 Stanley, Arthur P, Dean of Westminster, 115, 221-23, 228

Wdace, David, 172, 299, 308 Ward, H. Snowden, 317 Warton,Thomas, 34

Statius, 124

Weber, Max, 309

Steed of brass, 35-37,39, 47-48, 52, 107,

Webster, Roderick S., 44, 303

110, 150,269, 289; as metaphor for astro-

Wedel, Theodore Otto, zoo, 216, 316

labe, 39,42,53-54 Steffes, Michael, 310

Wenzel, Siegfried, 250, 297

Stone, Remington, 299

Wheel of Fortune, 231, 238-39

Strohrn, Pad, 173,178-80,289,308

Windeatt, B. A., 258

Swift, Jonathan, 255

Wood, Chaunce~,103,197,245-46, 303,

Symmetry, 13y40,152,182 Syrnonds, R. W, 307

Wetherbee,Winthrop, loo, 214

309-11, 313-14,

320-21

Yevele, Henry, 231

Tab of Beryn, 226,242

Young, Jean I., 303

Tales, arrangement of, 87, 97, loo-101, 295 Tatlock, John S. P, 223

Zacher, Christian K. 292

Tertullian, 147

Zerubavel, Eviatar 309

Tester, Jim, 12, 23,25,40, 313-14

Zodiac 61,206; and constellations,

Thompson, Charlotte, 246,248-49,253,

&stinguished 63