Abstract
The ridings and processional pageants that brought magnificent manmade wonders before substantial and varied urban audiences were initially developed in the closer confines of internal court entertainments performed among more exclusive audiences. The manmade marvels of the period developed, like elaborate pleasure gardens and other exclusive entertainments of the elite, from within the environs of the romance.
That swiche a monstre or mervaille myghte be! It is agayns the proces of nature
—Geoffrey Chaucer, The Franklin’s Tale
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Notes
Laura L. Hines, Chaucer’s Gardens and the Language of Convention (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), pp. 23–8.
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). All subsequent references to Chaucer’s works are from this edition.
Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books 1998), p. 91.
The successor to this notion of exchange is outlined by Paula Findlen, “The Economy of Scientific Exchange in Early Modern Italy,” in Patronage and Institutions, ed. Bruce Moran (London: Boydell and Brewer, 1991), pp. 5–7.
Magical automata abound in medieval romances and are discussed in Merriam Sherwood, “Magic and Mechanics in Medieval Fiction,” Studies in Philology 44 (1947): 567–92
Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 242–58
William Eamon, “Technology as Magic in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” Janus 70 (1983): 171–212
Gerard Brett, “The Automata of the Byzantine Throne of Solomon,” Speculum 29 (1954): 477–87
for a translation of Benoît’s account of automatons, see Penny Sullivan, “Medieval Automata: The ‘Chambre de Beautés’ in Benoît’s Roman de Troie,” Romance Studies 6 (1985): 1–20.
John Finlayson, “The Marvellous in Middle English Romance,” Chaucer Review 33 (1999): 403–5.
Joyce Tally Lionarons, “Magic, Machines, and Deception: Technology in the Canterbury Tales,” Chaucer Review 27 (1993): 377–86.
Lynn Thorndyke, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, v. 2 (New York: McMillan, 1929): 969–70
Bert Hansen, ed., Nicole Oresme and the Marvels of Nature: The De causis mirabilium (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1985), p. 51, n. 3.
A. C. Crombie, Science, Art and Nature in Medieval and Modern Thought (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 81–2.
R. W. Symonds, A Book of English Clocks, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1950), pp. 12–3.
Historical records of these clocks appear in R. P. Howgrave Graham, “Some Clocks and Jacks, with Notes on the History of Horology,” Archaeologia lxxvii (1928)
and C. F. C. Beeson, English Church Clocks, 1280–1850 (Antiquarian Horological Society, 1971)
Gerhard Dohrn-Van Russom, The History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
Derek J. Price, “The Equatorie of the Planetis,” Journal of the S.W. Essex Technical College and School of Art 3 (1952): 154–68
and ed., The Equatorie of the Planetis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955)
Kari Anne Rand Schmidt, The Authorship of the Equatorie of the Planetis (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1993). Ambiguities in linguistic and orthographic evidence leave precise attribution of authorship for the Equatorie inconclusive, but the enduring critical willingness to accept Chaucer’s authorship rests largely on supporting evidence of his technical inclinations and his associations with Oxford astronomers.
Sigmund Eisner, “Chaucer as a Technical Writer,” Chaucer Review 19, 3 (1985): 179–201.
For a discussion of technological self-consciousness in The Former Age, see Andrew Galloway, “Chaucer’s ‘Former Age’ and the Fourteenth-Century Anthropology of Craft: The Social Logic of a Premodernist Lyric,” ELH 63 (1996): 535–53.
William D. Wixom, Treasures from Medieval France (Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press, 1967), pp. 250–1, Plate 18.
Guillaume de Machaut, Le Judgement du roy de Behaigne and Remede de Fortune, ed. James I. Wimsatt and William W. Kibler (Athens, Georgia: Chaucer Library, 1988), pp. 212–3, editor’s translation.
Martin M. Crow and Claire C. Olson, eds., Chaucer Life Records (Oxford, 1966), pp. 42–8
Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 68, 104–5.
Anne Hagopian van Buren, “Reality and Literary Romance in the Park of Hesdin,” Medieval Gardens (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1986), pp. 117–21.
Derek de Solla Price and Silvio A. Bedini, “Automata in History: Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy” and “ Automata in the History of Technology,” Technology and Culture 5 (1964): 29–31, 33–4.
Laura Hibbard Loomis, “Secular Dramatics in the Royal Palace, Paris, 1378, 1389, and Chaucer’s ‘Tregetoures,’” Speculum 33 (1958): 242–55.
Bib. Nat. Fr. 2813, f. 473v.; Peter F. Ainsworth, Jean Froissart and the Fabric of History: Truth, Myth, and Fiction in the “Chroniques” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 68–9 and Appendix of MS facsimiles. I concur with Ainsworth’s assertions about the ideologically charged nature of chronicle accounts, although he overlooks the significance of depicting the marvelous performance in the portrait of the emperor in Bib. Nat.Fr. 2813,f. 473v.
Silvio A. Bedini and Francis R. Madison, “Mechanical Universe: The Astrarium of Giovanni di Dondi,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 56 (1966): 19–21. I would like to thank Silvio Bedini, Curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology and former caretaker of the Astrarium for his insightful expansion on his published material on automata. He has stressed the widespread fame of such devices in locations such as Hesdin and in Lombardy, confirming my hypothesis that in his adjunct ambassadorial role Chaucer would have been familiar with both Di Dondi and the marvelous Astrarium.
Bedini and Madison, “Mechanical Universe,” pp. 5–13; Linne R. Mooney, “The Cock and the Clock: Telling Time in Chaucer’s Day,” SAC 15 (1993): 91–109.
Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 308–10;
Mary Flowers Braswell, “Architectural Portraiture in Chaucer’s ‘House of Fame,’” JMRS 11, 1 (1981): 101–12
and Laura Kendrick, “Chaucer’s ‘House of Fame’ and the French Palais de Justice,” SAC 6 (1984): 121–33.
Chaucer’s connections to Merton College are documented in J. A. W. Bennett, Chaucer at Oxford and at Cambridge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), and in Pearsall’s biography, p. 333, n. 12.
The definitive study of the clockworks is by John David North, Richard of Wallingford: An Edition of His Writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), see vol. 2, 361–70, and more recently, his God’s Clockmaker: Richard of Wallingford and the Invention of Time (London: Hambledon & London, 2005).
See also H. Alan Lloyd, Some Outstanding Clocks over Seven Hundred Years 1250–1950 (London: Leonard Hill Ltd., 1958), pp. 6–20.
D. Vance Smith, The Arts of Possession: The Middle English Household Imaginary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 43.
R. W. Lightbown, Secular Goldsmiths’ Work in Medieval France: A History (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1978), p. 50.
Frank Klaassen, “English Manuscripts of Magic, 1300–1500: A Preliminary Survey,” in Claire Fanger, ed. Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (London: Sutton Publishing, 1998), pp. 3–25. Klaassen provides a revealing MS-collection basis for an assessment of popular interest in magic, citing this significant division between the major “schools” of magical practice.
Girard d’Amiens, Le roman du Cheval de Fust: ou, de Meliacin, ed. Paul Aebischer (Geneva: Droz, 1974)
and Margaret Munroe Boland, Cleomadès: A Study in Architectonic Patterns (Oxford: University of Mississippi, 1974); Cleomadès contains the closest analogue, a magical ebony horse controlled by moving steel hairs.
For a comprehensive discussion of analogues for the marvels in the Squire’s Tale, see W. A. Clouston, Notes on the Magical Elements of Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale” and Analogues, ser. 2, no. 26 (London: Chaucer Society, 1890).
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© 2007 Scott Lightsey
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Lightsey, S. (2007). Chaucer and the Culture of Commodified Mirabilia. In: Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230605640_3
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