Time and the Astrolabe in The Canterbury Tales
- Author / Editor
- Osborn, Marijane.
Time and the Astrolabe in The Canterbury Tales
- Published
- Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
- Physical Description
- xviii, 350 pp. : 59 b&w figs.
- Series
- Science and Culture, no. 5.
- Description
- Osborn explores how Chaucer used an astrolabe in his composition of CT and explains the use of the instrument in celestial navigation; includes a cutout astrolabe. Throughout most of CT, Chaucer's references to time and place are realistic. Such references have implications for tale order, supporting the "Bradshaw shift," and for dating portions of the poem (and HF). .
- Osborn considers positions of the sun in GP, MLP, and ParsP; the "astrolabic" amphitheater in KnT and the "Monday night planetary hours" of MilT; allusions to Leo and the Sun in MkT; and the steed of brass (a metaphoric astrolabe) and the chronographia of SqT. Only at the end of the one-day pilgrimage do planetary references take on allegorical dimensions similar to those of Dante.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Canterbury Tales--General.
- Treatise on the Astrolabe.