ABSTRACT
In part it is such linguistic elements which have led some scholars to assert Chaucer’s authorship of the Equatorie. Like the Astrolabe, it is a manual for using an astronomical instrument, and it seems to have been written around 1393 (judging from calendar references made in the text), which makes it contemporary with the Astrolabe, and its manuscript is accompanied by a set of tables, one bearing the phrase ‘Radix Chaucer’, which inevitably led to much excitement. Several scholars find the topic as a whole fascinating, but Rand-Schmidt’s book (1993) serves to remind us that Chaucer was writing in a context of broad intellectual enquiry, not as a lone genius.
