I cannot comment on whether Dantesque awareness of the night sky was common or not, I was, however, quite taken by surprise by Chaucer when and where I least expected it.
I only know of Chaucer because of my history classes in secondary school. I knew of him as the author of Canterbury Tales and of that period in history of the end of middle ages where vernacular literature was rising in stature and becoming accessible.
So finding a manual for an Astrolabe, when I was digging into the mechanics of an Astrolabe myself, written by Chaucer for his son was an unexpected and delightful surprise. Completely blindsided.
It's written in English for his son affectionately refered to little Lewis could follow along without a need to understand sophisticated Latin. He was to young at that time to have mastered Latin.
The manual draws from an 8th-century Latin translation of the Persian-Jewish astronomer.
I came to know later that position of stars occur frequently in the poems in Canterburys Tales, where characters use them to tell time.
If you have the time I highly recommend toying with an Astrolabe. Understanding them is a delight. They were essentially the high end smartphones of their era and id you were rich enough or you had to sail often enough you had one.
lanstin•10h ago
seeing the stars away from artificially lit areas, for me, made it immediately obvious why they are important to all human animals that can perceive them. Worth a trip once in a while to a dark place if you can swing it (and at least in the US, dark places tend to take relatively more time and less money).
srean•10h ago
Yes absolutely. I spent much of my childhood under dark skies (minimal light pollution).
In the city that I live I miss the sky of my childhood. My wife and I do visit less light polluted areas every year. The sight always takes your breath away. But these areas are becoming harder and harder to come by.
srean•12h ago
I only know of Chaucer because of my history classes in secondary school. I knew of him as the author of Canterbury Tales and of that period in history of the end of middle ages where vernacular literature was rising in stature and becoming accessible.
So finding a manual for an Astrolabe, when I was digging into the mechanics of an Astrolabe myself, written by Chaucer for his son was an unexpected and delightful surprise. Completely blindsided.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_the_Astrolabe
It's written in English for his son affectionately refered to little Lewis could follow along without a need to understand sophisticated Latin. He was to young at that time to have mastered Latin.
The manual draws from an 8th-century Latin translation of the Persian-Jewish astronomer.
I came to know later that position of stars occur frequently in the poems in Canterburys Tales, where characters use them to tell time.
If you have the time I highly recommend toying with an Astrolabe. Understanding them is a delight. They were essentially the high end smartphones of their era and id you were rich enough or you had to sail often enough you had one.
lanstin•10h ago
srean•10h ago
In the city that I live I miss the sky of my childhood. My wife and I do visit less light polluted areas every year. The sight always takes your breath away. But these areas are becoming harder and harder to come by.