Andrew Edmund Brae
Published: 2015-07-21
Total Pages: 130
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Excerpt from The Treatise on the Astrolabe, of Geoffrey Chaucer: Edited With Notes and Illustrations Although the Treatise on the Astrolabe is, in some respects, the most interesting of Chaucer's works - inasmuch as it brings us into familiar and almost domestic communion with his individual self, while he describes to his "lytel sonne," with delightful simplicity and in the most inartificial language, the sort of scientific know-edge which in those early days, even more than at present, was considered necessary to a gentleman's education - yet it has received so little care and attention from the editors of his works, that, since the edition of Urry, in 1721, it has not been included in any modern reprint. And even then, Urry did little more than blindly copy from preceding editions, without any attempt to explain, amend, or illustrate the text. Several years ago (in 1851) I published a series of papers explanatory of the astronomical allusions of Chaucer in the Canterbury Pilgrimage. These I shall reprint in an Appendix to this volume - if for no better reason - to shew the length of time my attention has been given to the subject, as well as to rescue the papers themselves from the oblivion of ephemeral publication. In the preparation of those papers I had necessarily recourse to Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, as printed in Urry's edition of the works, and I found it in such a deplorably faulty and neglected state, that the necessity of rectifying such parts as I then required awakened in me a desire to re-edit the whole. And although various causes had prevented the fulfilment of this object until the present time, it had never been lost sight of. For it appeared very evident to me then - and I have seen no reason since to alter the opinion - that a direct connection may be traced between the subject I was then engaged upon, namely, the astronomical evidence of date in the Canterbury Tales, and this Treatise on the Astrolabe. The date of the Pilgrimage, as I then endeavoured to shew, was 1388, and the avowed date of this Treatise is 1391: it seems then an almost unavoidable inference, - that we owe this practical treatise to the preparative study of the subject undertaken by Chaucer for the purpose of inventing and verifying his intended astronomical phenomena in diversifying the incidents of his Canterbury Pilgrimage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
