Astronomical instruments were probably made after Chaucer's designs, not before.
Want to see the astrolabe used for astronomical calculations by Geoffrey Chaucer himself? You'll be lucky, says Catherine Eagleton, a curator at the British Museum in London.
Several astrolabes have been suggested to have once belonged to Chaucer. The claims are based on the device in question's resemblance to one described by Chaucer in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, written in the late fourteenth century. Perhaps, the claimants argue, the astrolabe they now have in their collection was Chaucer's own, and served as a model for his work.
But Eagleton argues it's the other way around. It's more likely, she says, that these instruments were made after Chaucer's death, inspired by the design given in the English scholar's treatise.
Want to see the astrolabe used for astronomical calculations by Geoffrey Chaucer himself? You'll be lucky, says Catherine Eagleton, a curator at the British Museum in London.
Several astrolabes have been suggested to have once belonged to Chaucer. The claims are based on the device in question's resemblance to one described by Chaucer in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, written in the late fourteenth century. Perhaps, the claimants argue, the astrolabe they now have in their collection was Chaucer's own, and served as a model for his work.
But Eagleton argues it's the other way around. It's more likely, she says, that these instruments were made after Chaucer's death, inspired by the design given in the English scholar's treatise.
(Archaeology in Europe Weblog - 12 June 2007)
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