Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:57:09.238Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forms and Celestial Motion in Chaucer's Complaint of Mars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Kara Gaston
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent discussions of form have argued that literary forms exist whether or not we pay attention to them. However, formalist criticism often begins with close reading. This essay uses medieval astronomy to consider the relation between form and perception. Chaucer's short poem The Complaint of Mars (c. 1385) presents a conjunction between the planets Mars and Venus as if it were a love affair. his celestial arrangement, wherein two planets seem to move toward each other before parting, reflects the way that celestial motion seems to an observer within a brief period of time. The arrangement disappears when integrated into a fuller account of the regular motion of the planets. Mars generates a similar excess in its literary language. Impressions of form that emerge in the process of reading dissolve against the background of larger, more stable forms when the poem is seen as a whole. These perceived, illusory forms reveal an interdependency between certain kinds of form and the time of reading.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 133 , Issue 2 , March 2018 , pp. 282 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Astell, Ann W. “Orpheus, Eurydice, and the ‘Double Sorwe’ of Chaucer's ‘Troilus.‘” Chaucer Review, vol. 23, no. 4, 1989, pp. 283–99.Google Scholar
Bahr, Arthur, and Gillespie, Alexandra. “Medieval English Manuscripts: Form, Aesthetics, and the Literary Text.” Chaucer Review, vol. 47, no. 4, 2013, pp. 346–60.Google Scholar
Best, Stephen, and Marcus, Sharon. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations, vol. 108, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–21.10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boethius. De consolatione philosophiae [he Consolation of Philosophy]. Sources of the Boece, edited by Tim William Machan, U of Georgia P, 2005, pp. 26–222.Google Scholar
Brantley, Jessica. “Venus and Christ in Chaucer's Complaint of Mars: he Fairfax 16 Frontispiece.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, vol. 30, 2008, pp. 171–204.10.1353/sac.0.0033CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronstein, Michaela. “How Not to Re-read Novels: he Critical Value of First Reading.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 39, no. 3, 2016, pp. 76–94.10.2979/jmodelite.39.3.06CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cannon, Christopher. “Form.” Middle English, edited by Strohm, Paul, Oxford UP, 2007, pp. 177–90.Google Scholar
Capellanus, Andreas. On Love. Edited and translated by Walsh, P.G., Duckworth, 1982.Google Scholar
Chabâs, José, and Goldstein, Bernard R. The Alfonsine Tables of Toledo. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.10.1007/978-94-017-0213-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberlain, David. “Philosophy of Music in the Consolatio of Boethius.” Speculum, vol. 45, no. 1, 1970, pp. 80–97.10.2307/2855986CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Anelida and Arcite. Chaucer, Riverside Chaucer, pp. 375–81.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Complaint of Mars. Chaucer, Riverside Chaucer, pp. 643–47.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Complaint unto Pity. Chaucer, Riverside Chaucer, pp. 640–41.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Edited by Larry Benson, 3rd ed., Mifflin, Houghton, 1986.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. A Treatise on the Astrolabe. edited by Eisner, Sigmund, U of Oklahoma P, 2002. Pt. 1 of The Prose Treatises, vol. 6 of A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer, Riverside Chaucer, pp. 471–585.Google Scholar
Cornish, Alison. Reading Dante's Stars. Yale UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Crane, Susan. “For the Birds.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, vol. 29, 2007, pp. 23–41.10.1353/sac.2007.0013CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Divi Alphonsi Romanorum et Hispaniarum regis, astronomicae tabulae in propriam integritatem restitutae. Ex Officina Christiani Wecheli, 1553.Google Scholar
Donaldson, E. Talbot. Speaking of Chaucer W.W. Norton, 1970.Google Scholar
Eade, J.C. The Forgotten Sky. Oxford UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Eade, J.C. “‘We Ben To Lewed or To Slowe’: Chaucer's Astronomy and Audience Participation.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, vol. 4, 1982, pp. 53–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, A.S.G. “The Unity and Authenticity of ‘Anelida and Arcite’: he Evidence of the Manuscripts.” Studies in Bibliography, vol. 41, 1988, pp. 177–88.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Frances. “Jane Austen, Emma, and the Impact of Form.” Wolfson and Brown, pp. 231–55.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine. “Formalism and Time.” Wolfson and Brown, pp. 305–27.Google Scholar
Grant, Edward. Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687. Cambridge UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Hardman, Philippa. “Narrative Typology: Chaucer's Use of the Story of Orpheus.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 85, no. 3, 1990, pp. 545–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holsinger, Bruce. Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer. Stanford UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Johnson, Eleanor. Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve. U of Chicago P, 2013.10.7208/chicago/9780226015989.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Henry Ansgar. Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine. Brill, 1986.Google Scholar
“Kinde (N.).” Middle English Dictionary Online, 2015, quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED24248.Google Scholar
Lawton, David. Chaucer's Narrators. D.S. Brewer, 1985.Google Scholar
Levine, Caroline. Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network. Princeton UP, 2015.Google Scholar
Levinson, Marjorie. “What Is New Formalism?” PMLA, vol. 122, no. 2, Mar. 2007, pp. 558–69.Google Scholar
Machaut, Guillaume de. Le jugement du roy de Behaigne. Le jugement du roy de Behaigne and Remede de fortune, edited and translated by James I. Wimsatt and William W. Kibler, U of Georgia P, 1988, pp. 59–165.Google Scholar
Manly, John Matthews. “On the Date and Interpretation of Chaucer's Complaint of Mars.” Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, vol. 5, 1896, pp. 107–26.Google Scholar
Minnis, A.J. “Chaucer's Commentator: Nicholas Trevet and the Boece.” Chaucer's Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius, edited by Minnis, , D.S. Brewer, 1993, pp. 83–166.Google Scholar
Murton, Megan. “Secular Consolation in Chaucer's Complaint of Mars.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, vol. 38, 2016, pp. 75–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Ingrid. Lyric Tactics: Poetry, Genre, and Practice in Later Medieval England. U of Pennsylvania P, 2017.10.9783/9780812293609CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholas of Lynn. The Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn. edited by Eisner, Sigmund, translated by Eoin, Gary Mac, U of Georgia P, 1980.Google Scholar
Nolan, Maura. “Medieval Sensation and Modern Aesthetics: Aquinas, Adorno, Chaucer.” Minnesota Review, vol. 80, 2013, pp. 145–58.Google Scholar
North, John. Chaucer's Universe. Clarendon Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Norton-Smith, John. “Chaucer's Anelida andArcite.” Medieval Studies for J.A.W. Bennett, edited by Heyworth, P.L., Clarendon Press, 1981, pp. 81–99.Google Scholar
Norton-Smith, John. Geoffrey Chaucer. Routledge, 1974.Google Scholar
Oruch, Jack B. “St. Valentine, Chaucer, and Spring in February.” Speculum, vol. 56, no. 3, 1981, pp. 534–65.10.2307/2847741CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otter, Samuel. “An Aesthetics in All Things.” Representations, vol. 104, no. 1, 2008, pp. 116–25.10.1525/rep.2008.104.1.116CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parr, Johnstone, and Holtz, Nancy Ann. “The AstronomyAstrology in Chaucer's ‘he Complaint of Mars.‘” The Chaucer Review, vol. 15, no. 3, 1981, pp. 255–66.Google Scholar
Patterson, Lee, Chaucer and the Subject of History. U of Wisconsin P, 1991.Google Scholar
Patterson, Lee. “Writing Amorous Wrongs.” The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard, edited by Dean, James M. and Zacher, Christian K., U of Delaware P, 1992, pp. 55–71.Google Scholar
Poulle, Emmanuel, editor and translator. Les tables Alphonsines avec les canons de Jean de Saxe. CNRS, 1984.Google Scholar
Price, Derek J., editor. The Equatorie of the Planetis. Cambridge UP, 1955.Google Scholar
Rooney, Ellen. “Form and Contentment.” Wolfson and Brown, pp. 25–48.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, Jessica. “The Doubled Joys of Troilus and Criseyde.” Te Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages, edited by Léglu, Catherine E. and Milner, Stephen J., Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 39–59.10.1007/978-1-137-09741-5_3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarry, Elaine. “The Well-Rounded Sphere: The Metaphysical Structure of The Consolation of Philosophy!” Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, edited by Eckhardt, Caroline D., Associated UPs, 1980, pp. 91–140.Google Scholar
Somer, John. Te Kalendarium of John Somer. edited by Mooney, Linne R., U of Georgia P, 1998.Google Scholar
Spearing, A.C. Medieval Autobiographies: The “I” of the Text. U of Notre Dame P, 2012.10.2307/j.ctvpg859bCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Statius, P. Papinius. TTebaidos libri XII. edited by Hill, D.E., E.J. Brill, 1983.Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan. Poetry and the Fate of the Senses. U of Chicago P, 2002.Google Scholar
Swerdlow, N.M. “Alfonsine Tables of Toledo and Later Alfonsine Tables.” Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 35, pt. 4, no. 121, 2004, pp. 479–84.10.1177/002182860403500408CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trevet, Nicholas. Expositio fratris Nicolai Trevethi anglici ordinis praedicatorum super Boetio De consolatione. Edited by E.T. Silk, Yale University, 2015, campuspress.yale.edu/trevet/.Google Scholar
Tuckerman, Bryant. Planetary, Lunar, and Solar Positions, A.D. 2 to A.D. 1649 at Five-Day and Ten-Day Intervals. American Philosophical Society, 1964.Google Scholar
Van Dyke, Carolynn. “‘To Whom Shul We Compleyn?‘: The Poetics of Agency in Chaucer's Complaints.” Style, vol. 31, no. 3, 1997, pp. 370–90.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, James I. Chaucer and His French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the Fourteenth Century. U of Toronto P, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfson, Susan J., and Brown, Marshall, editors. Reading for Form. U of Washington P, 2006. Wood, Chauncey. Chaucer and the Country of the Stars. Princeton UP, 1970.Google Scholar
“XEPHEM: he Serious Interactive Astronomical Software Ephemeris, Version 3.7.7.” XEPHEM, Clear Sky Institute, www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/. Accessed 9 Aug. 2015.Google Scholar