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  • A Case Against Chaucer’s Authorship of the Equatorie of the Planetis
  • Jennifer Arch

Fifty years have passed since Derek J. Price published his edition of the Equatorie of the Planetis, a Middle English treatise in Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Peterhouse MS 75.1, which describes how to build and use a planetary equatorium.1 Yet there remains some question as to whether this treatise should be included in the Chaucer canon. In his edition Price made what is still the most persuasive case for Chaucer's authorship of the treatise, and he established the terms in which the discussion has been conducted ever since. For example, he argued that the notation "deffea Xpi & Rxa chaucer," on fol. 5v, was the phrase "differentia Christi et Radix Chaucer," or, as he translated it, the "difference (in number of days) between (the year of) Christ and the (year of the) radix of Chaucer."2 Price acknowledged the objections that could arise from using this radix as the basis for an ascription to Chaucer—for example, the improbability that the writer would refer to himself in the third person.3 However, the radix fit neatly into his claim for the Peterhouse MS as a holograph written by the author-translator-astronomer. Most compelling was his linking of the Equatorie with Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe. He noted that the two treatises were written no longer than a few years apart and that they contain similar terminology for technical concepts.4 Though he made the claim cautiously, Price went so far as to suggest that parts of the Equatorie may have been meant for some portion of the missing Parts III–V of the Astrolabe.

This latter view—that writing the Equatorie might follow naturally from writing the Astrolabe—has been revisited by J. D. North, the leading expert on Chaucer's astronomy, in his 1988 book Chaucer's Universe.5 It is an attractive argument, for it forms a narrative in which Chaucer "advances" in his study of astronomy. In this narrative the Equatorie verifies what is sometimes depicted ambiguously in the poetry: Chaucer's extraordinary expertise as an astronomer. It is this claim I wish to dispute in this paper, as part of a more general [End Page 59] argument against Chaucer's authorship of the Equatorie of the Planetis. In answer to Price's claim that the equatorium can be seen as a "companion instrument"6 to the astrolabe, I will argue that the two instruments served very different functions: planetary equatoria were built to accelerate the calculation of horoscopes, particularly in the field of medicine—a purpose inconsistent with Chaucer's clearly amateur interest in astronomy and astrology. In my view, to insist that Chaucer composed the Equatorie is to attribute to him a level of commitment to astronomy not borne out by the evidence in the poetry and prose, in which he consistently displays a concern more for examining the philosophical problems raised by astrology than for transmitting mathematical data. Further, the prose styles of the two texts are plainly different, one demonstrating an attempt to promote clarity through syntactic patterns, the other showing little effort to maintain a particular prose style.

The case against Chaucer's authorship has already been made persuasively by A. S. G. Edwards and Linne R. Mooney, who argue that the Peterhouse text is probably not a holograph, and therefore not by Chaucer.7 They base their argument on codicological and paleographical evidence: the size of the manuscript, the nature of the scribal "improvements," and the quality of the illustrations. However, in the same issue of The Chaucer Review in which Edwards and Mooney's article appears, Pamela Robinson uses codicological and paleographical evidence to make a case for Chaucer's authorship, and she notes that she has listed Chaucer in an index of scribes.8 With arguments such as Robinson's, and particularly with the endorsement of Price's original claim by J. D. North, the balance of opinion seems to remain in favor of Chaucer's authorship of the Equatorie. North's endorsement carries especial weight as it is a reversal of his earlier published opinion. In a...

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