Chaucer pictures the cosmos: materiality, science, and astral poetics

Thesis

Geoffrey Chaucer’s works glow with dozens of poetic cosmic passages. He mentions the stars, planets, spheres of the cosmos, and the zodiac signs throughout his works, sometimes in unexpected places. Studies in the last hundred years have often applied today’s fuller, post-Ptolemaic knowledge of the solar system to expose alleged ‘hidden schemes’ underlying Chaucer’s poetry, but I argue that aesthetics and poetics should be prioritized over scientific accuracy when reading his works. I demonstrate how Chaucer manipulated astronomical settings to suit his poetic outcomes as much as they may have reflected realities. Sometimes his astral passages are scientifically viable, but often playfully misleading. He tweaked his sources, manipulated motifs, invented constellations, bent the rules, and made the stars his own.

The foundational data for this thesis is presented in the appendix where I identify each cosmic passage across Chaucer’s published works. This reveals larger patterns, specifically five distinct literary modes. These modes provide structure for the chapters, which I identify as chronographia (depictions of time), adornment (rhetorical decoration and ekphrasis), corporeality (bodiliness and the cosmos), play (instances of inventive creativity), and direct translation. I offer a fresh study of Chaucer’s astral poetics through close reading, art historical contextualization, new perspectives on famous passages, and historical research.

Astronomy and astrology in Chaucer’s time were more expansive, accessible, and present than is often recognized, which I demonstrate through a materialist approach. Cosmic imagery in the material world, in the form of church portals, book illuminations, public sculptures, paintings, astronomical instruments and even table games, were part of everyday life in London at the end of the fourteenth century. How did prevalent cosmological theories and physical representations of these theories manifest in Chaucer’s works? Artists and craftsmen worked together with astronomers to create objects, and in a similar way Chaucer’s cosmic poetry presents a combination of craft and astronomy, and is the heart of this thesis.

Authors: Williams, SM

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-wrkypy5w4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Squire's Tale; Man of Law's Tale; zodiac; history of science; Complaint of Venus; John Gower; Middle English; Middle English poetry; materiality; Knight's Tale; Geoffrey Chaucer; history of art; Franklin's Tale; John North; material culture; fourteenth century; medieval; manuscript studies; Chartres cathedral; medieval astronomy; medieval drama; poetics; Complaint of Mars; Canterbury Tales; stars in art; astrolabes; medieval astrology
• Subjects: Wife of Bath (Fictitious character); Sculpture, Late Gothic; Zodiac in art; Dorigen (Fictitious character : Chaucer); Orientalism in literature; Medical astrology; English; Romances; Literature, Medieval; Stars in literature; Cosmology, Medieval, in literature; Fiction, Medieval; Astronomy--History; Great Britain--History--Richard II, 1377-1399; Manuscripts, English (Middle); Cosmology in literature; Zodiac in literature; Games in literature; Time and art; Astrology--History; Drama, Medieval; Poetry, Medieval; Astrolabes in literature; Stars in art; Great Britain--History--Edward III, 1327-1377--Fiction; Disguise in literature; Science and civilization