Chaucer’s Astrology

174 J.A.W. BENNETT CHAUCER'S ASTROLOGY' This book follows a familiar Princeton pattern: a disciple of D.W. Robertson takes over an area to which that professor's principles have not yet been applied - in this case Chaucer's astrological passages - and provides a moral or philosophical interpretation supplemented, if not always supported, by a generous selection of plates; though those in the present book (apart from the two zodiacs from a Vatican MS, and the Crucifix and Balance from the Wellcome and Casanatense Libraries) will be known to most medievalists. As with other studies from this school, one may be doubtful about the conclusions and yet be grateful for much incidental enlightenment (e.g., on medieval tidal lore, with its possible bearing on the Franklin's Tale), and for corrections of previous emphases or misstatements (e.g., Gombrich's anachronistic reading of the Complaint of Mars in terms of neoplatonist symbolism). Mr Wood inevitably takes W .C. Curry as his point of departure; and some of Curry's judgments on matters astrological certainly stand in need of relinement . Wood righdy remarks that astrology and astronomy were not necessarily 'confused' in the Middle Ages, and not all astrology concerned divination. His directions to that great and many-sided savant Nicolas Oresme, and to Chaucer's comments in propria persona in the Astrolabe, are much in order here - perhaps even more than he realises: for he quotes Chaucer's comment in the Astrolabe on 'judicial matere and rytes of payens in which my spirit hath no feith' without comparing the objurgation of 'payens corsede olde rites' (Troilus v.l849) which we can thus consider as including Troilus's prayer to the planetary Venus (m, 715ff) . Robertsanian attitudes begin to emerge when a more famous passage about the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter is treated as one of Chaucer's 'funniest touches' (prelude to that paltry business of the meeting of Troilus and Criseyde). So Troilus is seen as 'venereal' once his name is associated with Troy - a city which Bernardus Silvestris compared to a body brought low by lechery; Troilus's tragedy begins, ironically (blessed word) on 3 May because on that day St Helena after linding the True Cross overtluew the Temple of Venus ( a climax that Evelyn Waugh's novel unaccountably ignores); and if Troilus speaks of the horned moon he is ironically alluding to the horns Diomede is to give him. Troilus as deceived husband may win more sympathy than Robertsanians for whom he is the apostle of 'aristocratic carnality' would countenance. One can grant that Ovidian humour is present in the Complaint of Mars; but surely that makes it all the harder to read its last stanza as an admonition to marriage or 'spirituallove. t It is harder still to believe that Chaucer set his pilgrims travelling a month too soon, to make a parallel with the 'departure' (sic) of Noah on his 'pilgrimage' (sic) . Like his fellow-neophytes Mr Wood wishes to have his iconological cake and eat it: rabbits and doves can symbolise at will lechery or wedded love ( Piero di Cosimo's doves can even be made to coo). If Baccaccio could seriously interpret the adultery of Venus and Mars as representing immoderate marital delight, Mr Wood has some excuse. But he has litde excuse for evidencing his "Chauncey Wood, Chaucer and. the Country of the Stars: Poetic Uses of Astrological Imagery. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1970. Pp. xix, 318, 32 pls. $10.00. FAIRLEY'S FAUST 175 Augustinianism by glossing Chaucer's 'I rede you al awake' (in a bird's song) with a quotation from St Paul (hora est iam nos de somnD S!