From: Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill)
Subject: Re: Medieval Astronomy
Organization: University of Tasmania (Australia)
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 01:22:54 GMT

In article <1992Nov11.061731.4273@reed.edu>, odlin@reed.edu (Iain Odlin) writes:
> 
> In article <1992Nov11.025928.12177@newsroom.utas.edu.au> Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill) writes:
> >I am very interested in medieval astronomy and am currently working on an 
> >annotated translation of Chaucer's 'Treatise on the Astrolabe'. I have already
> 
>   No disrespect for your efforts intended, but what's there to translate?
>   Annotation I can see (I had my father to use as a resource for the various
>   references -- most folk have no such source), but the text is clearly read-
>   able.  The trick is to read it aloud to yourself with a *heavy stereotyped*
>   Texas accent.  (I am *not* kidding.  Go ahead and laugh anyway, though ;)

I won't laugh at all, you're absolutely right and the method you suggest is one I 
recommend to my students. I am no fan of translations of Chaucer's work, on the
whole. So why am I translating the 'Astrolabe'? Basically because of it's neglect
at the hands of literary scholars over the last century or so. We literary scholars are
interested in literature (obviously), but when a poet like Chaucer does something
odd like produce a scientific text, there isn't a great deal for us to do with it. A few
of us have used it to produce some (highly unlikely) hypotheses about Chaucer's life
and a couple of us have used it to analyse his prose style and to compare his poetic 
vocabulary to that of his prose, but other than this it has sat at the back of his
collected works, largely unread and widely misunderstood.

I hope to bring the work to the attention of an audience who will appreciate it for
what it is: an eminently readable scientific text. This audience, whether they be
historians of science, medievalists, astronomers or anyone else, may well be *capable*
of comprehending Chaucer's Middle English, but may never have the incentive to do
so. An annotated modernisation would, I hope, give them the scientific substance of
the text and perhaps encourage them to tackle it in the original. The notes would
serve to help the reader understand the cosmology which lies behind Chaucer's text
and will hopefully include instructions for making one's own astrolabe. Chaucer's
work was written for his son Lewis, to whom he had just given an astrolabe, and
Chaucer was assuming that his reader had one as he read the text.

So, while I'm no fan of translations of Middle English, and will always encourage
people to tackle the original, I am doing the translation to try to bring this 
remarkable work to a wider audience and to help them to actually *use* it as it was
written to be used. 
 
>   At any rate, I implore you to take great care with the translation.  In my
>   high school, we read Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and were provided with a
>   translated edition.  My father insisted I read the original instead (would
>   that everyone had a father such as mine...) and I did.  I also compared the
>   two and was completely astounded by the omissions, changes, differences of
>   emphasis, et cetera.
> 
>   Middle English takes getting used to, but it's no Sanskrit...

Thanks for the warnings Iain, I have been studying ME for over a decade now and
teaching it at University for the last five years, so I appreciate your concerns. As
for doing an accurate translation, all I can say is that I will do my best.

Tim O'Neill
Tasmanian Devil & Fanatical Chaucerian

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