BornLondon, England, circa1340
Died London, England, 25 October 1400
Poet Geoffrey Chaucer was the son of a prosperous wine merchant. Our earliest records, dating from 1357, show him as a page in a royal household and later a soldier and prisoner of war in the 100 Years War. He possibly studied law at the Inns of Court. Nothing else is known of his education, although his works show that he was deeply learned in a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy. By the early 1370s he had begun a career in government, in various positions such as a diplomat, tax auditor, member of parliament, manager of royal properties, and finally, deputy forester.
Some of these appointments, certainly the last, might have been more or less honorary, because he was already a practicing poet by the late 1360s, writing first for Richard II’s uncle, John of Gaunt, and then for Richard II himself. Always a cosmopolitan and international poet, Chaucer began imitating French models, then came under the...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsSelected References
Benson, Larry (ed.) (1987). The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin. (Includes A Treatise on the Astrolabe, John Reidy (ed.), pp. 661–683, 1092–1104.)
Carter, Tom (1982). “Geoffrey Chaucer: Amateur Astronomer?” Sky & Telescope 63, no. 3: 246–247. (Astrolabe and perhaps Equatorie may indicate that Chaucer was an amateur astronomer who made his own astronomical observations.)
Eade, J. C. (1982). “‘We ben to lewed or to slowe’: Chaucer’s Astronomy and Audience Participation.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 4: 53–85. (Discusses what we can learn from Chaucer’s work about his audience’s familiarity with astronomy and how it can clarify passages that seem obscure.)
Eisner, Sigmund (1975). “Building Chaucer’s Astrolabe.” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 86: 18–29, 125–132, 219–227. (How to translate Chaucer’s description of procedure into a modern understanding of the working of the astrolabe.)
— (1985). “Chaucer as a Technical Writer.” Chaucer Review 19 : 179–201. (Argues for Chaucer’s superiority as a technical writer over his contemporaries. Suggests that, if he did not write Equatorie himself, the author was influenced by Chaucer’s method.)
Fisher, John H. (1977). The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. (Includes Treatise on the Astrolabe, pp. 906–934, and Equatorie of the Planetis, pp. 936–948. This is the only complete works of Chaucer that argues for his authorship of the Equatorie.)
Hager, Peter J. and Ronald J. Nelson (1993). “Chaucer’s’A Treatise on the Astrolabe’: A 600-year-old Model for Humanizing Technical Documents.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 36: 87–94. (Uses Chaucer as a model for good technical writing.)
Laird, Edgar S. (1997). “Astrolabes and the Construction of Time in the Late Middle Ages.” Disputatio 2: 51–69. (Discusses how Chaucer’s Astrolabe and other medieval treatises reflect medieval notions of time.)
Laird, Edgar S. and Donald W. Olson (1990). “Boethius, Boece, and Boötes: A Note on the Chronology of Chaucer’s Astronomical Learning.” Modern Philology 88: 147–149. (Argues from a reference to the constellation Boötes that Chaucer relied on commentaries rather than his own observations for his astronomical knowledge.)
Manzalaoui, Mahmoud (1975). “Chaucer and Science.” In Writers and Their Background: Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by Derek Brewer, pp. 224–261. Athens: Ohio University Press. (Covers Chaucer’s knowledge of medieval sciences and pseudo-sciences, with an emphasis on astronomy and astrology. Argues that compared to his contemporaries, Chaucer is striking for his use of scientific material.)
Mooney, Linne R. (1999). “Chaucer and Interest in Astronomy at the Court of Richard II.” In Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honor of Norman Blake, edited by Geoffrey Lester, pp. 139–160. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. (Connects “specific astronomical references” in Chaucer’s works to events in his life and to the years of Queen Anne’s reign.)
Osborn, Marijane (2002). Time and the Astrolabe in the Canterbury Tales. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Ovitt, Jr., George (1987). “History, Technical Style, and Chaucer’s ‘Treatise on the Astrolabe.’” In Creativity and the Imagination: Case Studies from the Classical Age to the Twentieth Century, edited by Mark Amsler, pp. 34–58. Newark: University of Delaware Press. (Chaucer demonstrates comprehension of astronomical principles.)
Smyser, Hamilton M. (1970). “A View of Chaucer’s Astronomy.” Speculum 45: 359–373. (Astronomy is unusually important to Chaucer’s characters for determining things like time and portents.)
Veazie, Walter B. (1939–1940). “Chaucer’s Text-book of Astronomy, Johannes de Sacrobosco.” University of Colorado Studies, ser. B. Studies in the Humanities 1: 169–182. (Examines Chaucer’s debt to Holywood’s De Sphaera.)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Baragona, A. (2014). Chaucer, Geoffrey. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_269
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_269
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-9916-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-9917-7
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics