"A suffisant Astrolabie": Childish Desire, Fatherly Affection, and English Devotion in "The Treatise on the Astrolabe."

Author / Editor
Taylor, Jamie K.

Title
"A suffisant Astrolabie": Childish Desire, Fatherly Affection, and English Devotion in "The Treatise on the Astrolabe."

Published
Studies in the Age of 39 (2017): 249-74.

Description
Explores the "ideological work" of children in Chaucer's literature, commenting on Sophie in Mel, Virginia in PhyT, Maurice in MLT, and Lewis in Astr. Treats the latter as a metonym for vernacular readers and for the potential of technological learning (also found in the brass steed of SqT) through which Chaucer projects an image of "Englishness" that "coalesces around paternal love and technological learning" and depends in part upon the sufficiency of Oxford to emulate or replace Rome in a national imaginary.

Chaucer Subjects
Treatise on the Astrolabe
Man of Law and His Tale
Squire and His Tale
Physician and His Tale
Tale of Melibee