J.D. North

This is great stuff, though I suppose of somewhat narrow appeal. Back in my days as a scholar of Eng. Lit. I did a couple of papers on astronomical aspects of a couple of Elizabethan/Jacobean plays (ex. The Revenger's Tragedy) but apart from GC's Treatise on the Astrolabe I didn't recall much astronomical lore in Chaucer. Well. For some reason I've become really interested in astrolabes, and that led me back to Chaucer's Treatise and ultimately to this book.

It's dense stuff, if you are not astronomically inclined -- and by astronomy, here, we're talking about old-style dealings with time, the meridian, the ecliptic etc etc etc ... with of course a natural overlap, more in Chaucer's time than in our own, with astrology (which, make no mistake, could be mathematically quite sophisticated) -- and definitely NOT black holes and time warps. I don't think North does a 100% super job 'explaining' how the astrolabe *works*, but it's not bad, and he delves into some really interesting minutiae elsewhere in the book. Literature aficionados might be inclined to skip the astronomical first part and go directly to the discussion of astronomical aspects of Chaucer's various works, but, naahhh, I couldn't do that.… (plus d'informations)