Caption: Imaginative portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343--1400), 17th century.

Poet, astronomer, civil servant. See Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World (1987) by Donald R. Howard (1927--1987).

It was really very kind of Chaucer to let on in one his poems that he (Geffrey as he called himself) and Geoffrey Chaucer, the royal civil servant, were the same the person.

Chaucer often worked astronomical allegories into his poems which often go right past modern readers including modern astronomers. For example, the day of Chauntecleer's unfortunate episode with the fox is 1392 May 3, Friday as internal evidence shows (see John North 1994, The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology, p. 233). Chaucer was using Friar Nicholas of Lynn's (c. 1330--after 1411) astronomical tables (AKA ephemerides):

Bifel that Chauntecleer, in al his pryde,
His seven wyves walking by his syde,
Caste up his eyen to the brighte sonne,
That in the signe of Taurus hadde y-ronne
Twenty degrees and oon, and somewhat more;
And knew by kynde, and by noon other lore,
That it was pryme, and crew with blisful stevene.

---The Canterbury Tales (1387--1400): The Nun's Priest's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343--1400). See Harvard Geoffrey Chaucer: The Nun's Priest's Tale, lines 3191--3197.

As it happens, the Sun was passing through the Pleiades asterism (M45) (an actual physical grouping of gravitationally bound stars, an open cluster) in Taurus on that day. In Medieval Europe, the Pleiades were often called the Seven Chickens: Chauntecleer and his wives are, among other things, allegorical to Sun and Pleiades (see John North 1994, The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology, p. 233).

Credit/Permission: Anonymous artist, 17th century (uploaded to Wikipedia by User:Victory's Spear, 2008) / Public domain.
Image link: Wikipedia: File:Geoffrey Chaucer (17th century).jpg.
Local file: local link: chaucer_17th_century.html.
File: Chaucer file: chaucer_17th_century.html.