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LOWYS. Chaucer says that he has written A Treatise on the Astrolabe for "lyte Lowys, my sone," Astr Prologue I.1. G.L. Kittredge offers a conjecture that the "sone" is more likely a "godson," perhaps Lewis Clifford, son of Chaucer's close friend, Sir Lewis Clifford. Little Lewis died in 1391, the date Chaucer gives for carrying out his experiments with the instrument, and Kittredge suggests that his death accounts for the unfinished state of the treatise. John M. Manly suggests that Lewis is the name of Chaucer's younger son, the older being Thomas Chaucer.

The name appears in The Prologue to the Astrolabe.


M.M. Crow and C.C. Olson, eds., Chaucer Life Records, 544; G.L. Kittredge, "Lewis Chaucer or Lewis Clifford." MP 14 (1916-1917): 513-518; J.M. Manly, "Litel Lowis my Sone." TLS, June 7, 1929: 430.
From CHAUCER NAME DICTIONARY
Copyright © 1988, 1996 Jacqueline de Weever
Published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London.

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