Reading by Said's Lantern: Orientalism and Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe

This paper takes Edward Said's foundational critique of western discourses of knowledge about the orient as a way of intervening in the tradition of reading Chaucer's only scientific text, The Treatise on the Astrolabe. I argue for recognizing the 'color' of Chaucer's originary text of 'Messahala, an Arabian astronomer, by religion a Jew', and against naturalizing the Treatise as an 'unmarked white' text. My argument is that there are cultural and political values at stake in Chaucer's pedagogical text. © 1999 Brill.