I observe the following procedures in my citations: I use modern punctuation and capitalization; regularize u/v, i/j, and i/y; and I convert edh, thorn, and yogh into modern values. I treat medieval Latin like the vernacular of the author of each passage (which is the way the author spelled and pronounced it); and in citing classicized editions, I convert ae and oe to their medieval form (namely, e). This is in keeping with my manifesto, ‘‘Uniformity and Sense in Editing and Citing Medieval Texts,’’ published in the Medieval Academy News, Spring 2004, and my supplementary letter in the Spring 2005 issue. 1 For a review of bibliography, including older works, see Larry D. Benson’s edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), p. 438. Among recent noteworthy studies are: Lawrence Besserman, ‘‘Chaucer, Spain, and the Prioress’s Antisemitism,’’ Viator 35 (2004): 329–53; Jeffrey J. Cohen, ‘‘The Flow of Blood in Medieval Norwich,’’ Speculum 79 (2004): 26–65; Roger Dahood, ‘‘The Punishment of the Jews, Hugh of Lincoln, and the Question of Satire in Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale,’’ Viator 36 (2005); the various articles in Sheila Delany, ed., Chaucer and the Jews: Sources, Contexts, Meanings (New York: Routledge, 2002); Denise Despres, ‘‘Cultic Anti-Judaism and Chaucer’s Litel Clergeon,’’ MP 91 (1993–94): 413–27 (Despres’s ‘‘The Protean Jew in the Vernon Manuscript’’ is in Delany, pp. 145–64); Elisa Narin van Court, ‘‘Socially Marginal, Culturally Central: Representing Jews in Late Medieval English Literature,’’ Exemplaria 2 (2000): 293–326; Lee Patterson, ‘‘ ‘The Living Witnesses of Our Redemption’: Martyrdom and Imitation in Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale,’’ JMEMSt 31 (2001): 507–60; Sylvia Tomasch, ‘‘Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew,’’ The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey J. Cohen (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), pp. 243–60 (repr. in Delany, pp. 69–85). 2 Brenda Deen Schildgen, Pagans, Tartars, Moslems, and Jews in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), has made a good start in this direction; and see Gila Aloni and Shirley Sharon-Zisser, ‘‘Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Lyne Oriental’: Mediterranean and Oriental Languages in the Treatise on the Astrolabe,’’ Mediterranean Historical Review 16:2 (December 2001): 69–77; and Sheila Delany, ‘‘Chaucer’s Prioress, the Jews, and the Muslims,’’ in Delany, Chaucer and the Jews, pp. 43–57.

Jews and Saracens in Chaucer's England: A Review of the Evidence

Little Lewis, my son, I appreciate well your ability to learn sciences related to numbers and proportions; I also consider your special eagerness to learn the treatise on the astrolabe. As the philosopher says, the person who considers the rightful wishes of his friend wraps himself in his friend. Therefore, I am giving you sufficient [information] on the astrolabe, according to our horizon and the latitude of Oxford, and through the mediation of this little treatise I propose to teach you a certain number of conclusions appertaining to this instrument. I say certain conclusions for three reasons. The first reason is this: be sure that all conclusions to be found in so noble an instrument as is an astrolabe are not perfectly known to any man in this region, I suppose. Another cause is this: that truly, in any treatise on the astrolabe that I have seen, there are some conclusions that will not in all cases [lead the astrolabe] to perform what it is expected to. And some of these [conclusions] are too hard for someone of your tender age to understand. This treatise is divided into five parts. I will show you in full light rules and naked words in English, for you know Latin but little, my little son. But nonetheless, these true conclusions stated in English are sufficient, as they are sufficient to noble clerks Greek, and to Arabs in Arabic, and to Jews in Hebrew, and to Latin folk in Latin. Latin folk were the first to have [translated] these conclusions from various other languages and to write them in their own tongue, that is to say, in Latin. And God knows that in all these languages and in many more, these conclusions have been sufficiently learnt and taught, by diverse rules; just as diverse paths lead diverse folk the right way to Rome. I meekly pray every person who should read or hear this little treatise to excuse my uneducated teaching, and the superfluity of my words, for two reasons. The first is that the peculiar type of teaching

Shirley Sharon-Zisser

Papers

TESTIMONIUM - Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Lyne Oriental': Mediterranean and Oriental Languages in the Treatise on the Astrolabe