Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utastro.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!ut-sally!utastro!dipper
From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate: May 12 Chaucer's Conjunction
Message-ID: <79@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-May-85 02:00:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.79
Posted: Sun May 12 02:00:19 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 14-May-85 08:17:22 EDT
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 40

Jupiter, Saturn and the moon made a guest appearance in the first
English novel.  More on literature and astronomy -- after this.

May 12  Chaucer's Conjunction

On this date in the year 1385 a crescent moon was near the planets
Jupiter and Saturn on the dome of the sky.  The three worlds appeared
against the background of stars in the constellation Cancer the Crab.
The early English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, must have seen this celestial
grouping.  Chaucer mentioned it in a long narrative poem that's been
called the first true English novel.

Chaucer lived at a time when most literature was written in Latin.  He
chose to write in the language of the common people -- what we today
call English.  This was also during a time when superstitious people
still believed that the movements of celestial objects affected people
or things happening on Earth.

In Chaucer's story, a prince of Troy and a young widow are in love.
They're trapped together overnight in the same house due to a raging
thunderstorm -- which medieval astrology attributed to Saturn, Jupiter
and the moon appearing together in the constellation Cancer.  Chaucer
really could have seen this pattern in the night sky on today's date in
the year 1385 -- around the time that Chaucerian scholars believe he
wrote his novel.

It's known that Chaucer was familiar with the movements of celestial
objects.  He later wrote an instructional manual -- also in English --
for the astrolabe -- a device used for sighting and predicting the
positions of heavenly bodies.

During Chaucer's time, astrological superstition still dominated
people's views of the heavens.  But curiosity as to why things move in
the sky as they do eventually led -- a century and a half later -- to
the birth of modern astronomy.


Script by Diana Hadley.

(c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin