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 "colour" of Chaucer's originary text of "Messahala, an Arabic astronomer, by religion a Jew", and against naturalising the Treatise as an "unmarked white" text. My argument is that there are cultural and political values at stake in Chaucer's pedagogical text. © 2003, Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.