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Forms and Celestial Motion in Chaucer's Complaint of Mars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Kara Gaston
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Abstract

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Recent discussions of form have argued that literary forms exist whether or not we pay attention to them. However, formalist criticism often begins with close reading. This essay uses medieval astronomy to consider the relation between form and perception. Chaucer's short poem The Complaint of Mars (c. 1385) presents a conjunction between the planets Mars and Venus as if it were a love affair. his celestial arrangement, wherein two planets seem to move toward each other before parting, reflects the way that celestial motion seems to an observer within a brief period of time. The arrangement disappears when integrated into a fuller account of the regular motion of the planets. Mars generates a similar excess in its literary language. Impressions of form that emerge in the process of reading dissolve against the background of larger, more stable forms when the poem is seen as a whole. These perceived, illusory forms reveal an interdependency between certain kinds of form and the time of reading.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 133 , Issue 2 , March 2018, pp. 282 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2018

References

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