Kankedort.net - The Electronic Canterbury Tales: An Online Companion and Compendium to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Summer 2007
- My excursion into the for-profit realm is over. I think I made $1.35 over the last 6 months. So, I'll slowly be removing most of the ads on the ECT pages over the next few months, except for books and academic resources directly related to Chaucer and medieval studies.
April 2007
Bettina Wagner (Abteilung für Handschriften und Alte Drucke Bayerische, Munich) reports that the Munich copy of the Gutenberg Bible has been digitized and put online:
- "The Munich Gutenberg Bible is one of only two copies which contain the table of rubrics, a printed list of headlines which served as a guide to the rubricator. The Bible is printed on paper and contains some illumination and manuscript annotation, the latter can be ascribed to a Benedictine monk from Tegernsee. In 1803, the Bible was transferred to Munich from the Benedictine monastery of Andechs."
- The website includes an article in German and a link to the Humanities Media Interface Project of Keio University Tokyo who carried out the digitization.
January 2007
The Virtual Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. 1.0: A new effort from St. Louis University's Digital Theology Project, take a virtual tour of St. Francis's famous 13th Century basilica, which scholars were fortunate enough to document before a devastating 1997 earthquake destroyed part of the building. You can buy the lovely CD ROM for home or classroom study.
Want to Know What Chaucer Scholars are Discussing Online?
Check the Chaucernet Archives: http://listserv.uic.edu/archives/chaucer.html
Newly Redesigned: Chaucer Pedagogy Page & New Features, including:
- 11 Steps to a Better Term Paper
- Chaucer-Themed You Tube Student Projects
Select portions of the Medieval Mass on video, with introduction and commentary by Knud Ottosen (U of Aarhus) at the Liturgical Fragments from Denmark website:
- Introduction
- Introitus
- Graduale-Alleluia
- Offertory
- Communio
Complete Digitization of Classic Chaucer and Medieval Texts (courtesy of Google Scholar and Microsoft Book Search) at The ECT's Poor Medieval Scholar's Electronic Bookshelf

This page last revised on 30 July 2007

About This Website

Though separated by six centuries' history, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the World Wide Web actually share much in common.

Many of Chaucer's tales are joined by brief snippets of dialogue and action traditionally called "links"; on the WWW one "clicks" on a "hyperlink" to go to another "page" on the Web.

Chaucer's great work was constantly in revision and seems never to have found a final, definitive form. Many of the groups of Tales, called "fragments," seem to have been "free-floating" with several possible arrangements. By the same token, the WWW is constantly in flux. One need never follow the same path to a subject, and new links are being added while others disappear.

And in the same way the WWW is faced with issues of censorship, so Chaucer himself was aware that some might look critically upon a few of his tales, and so the Pilgrim-Narrator of the Canterbury Tales advised that if readers found a Tale offensive, they should turn the page and choose another tale. He even went so far as to rethink the value of the Canterbury Tales in the Retraction.

What You'll Find

At this website, I hope to imitate at least in form the spirit of the Canterbury Tales while assembling and annotating useful links by Tale.

Use the Upper Left Navigation Column to take you to webpages dedicated to general resources related to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in headings 1 - 13 (as listed below). I've broken the former main page into a number of more easily accessible subpages.
Use the Lower Left Navigation Column to take you to a webpage dedicated to that Canterbury Tale.
Use the Right Navigation Column to take you to Additional Pages related to Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales.
By following the links below, you will find a number of excellent general WWW sources related to late-medieval England in general and the Canterbury Tales in particular.

May the teacher, student, and interested reader find their own paths through the Electronic Canterbury Tales, and then add a link of their own!

General Resources for Chaucer, the Canterbury Tales, and Late Medieval England are now served on Individual Subpages to the ECT Main Page, as listed below

Webpages for each tale are indexed in the Left Frame, as before. You'll find the general resources from the old main page now distributed across these separate, smaller, faster loading pages. It's the same material, now reorganized.

1. The Canterbury Tales in Middle English

2. The Canterbury Tales in Modern English Translation

3. Historical & Cultural Backgrounds

4. Sources, Analogues, & Related Texts

5. Online Notes & Commentary

6. Online Books & Essays

7. Student Projects & Essays

8. Online Bibliography

9. Syllabi & Course Descriptions

10. Images & Multimedia

11. Language Helps & Audio Files

12. Potpourri

13. Additional Resources

14. Scholar's Dozen

15. What's New?

The Next Step

Google & Microsoft Academic Resources

See the The Poor Medieval Scholar's
Electronic Bookshelf for recommended texts from Google Book Search& Microsoft Live Search.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar indexes academic material but doesn't yet make all of that material available. In most cases, you'll have to access your own institution's electronic databases and library materials to get the full text versions.

Because it does not make full texts available, at this point Google Scholar is best used as a bibliographical resource.

Google Book Search & Microsoft Live Search

These projects are also showing their growing pains, but they make a number of (primarily) older studies related to Chaucer and medieval literature and culture in full text. You can contribute to the success of this effort by informing Google or Microsoft of any incorrect scans, missing pages, or other errors.

Search Google Book or Microsoft Live Search

Only out-of-copyright books are available in full and some of the scans are messy. I will cross list the relevant titles at the Electronic Canterbury Tales - Online Books and Essays main page and at the appropriate web page for each Canterbury Tale.

From the Poor Medieval Scholar's Bookshelf, some recent titles include:

Complete (or near complete) Texts of the Canterbury Tales

Pollard, Alfred W., ed. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. (New York: Macmillan, 1907).
Skeat, W.W, ed. The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1894).
---, ed. The Eight-text Edition of the Canterbury Tales: The Classification of the Manuscripts and upon the Harleian Manuscript 7334. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1909).
---, ed. The Student's Chaucer: Being a Complete Edition of His Works. (Oxford, 1897).
Tyrwitt, Thomas, ed. The Canterbury Tales: A New Edition. Illus. Edward Corbould. (London, 1867).

Manuscripts and Related Studies

Cromie, Henry. Ryme-Index to the Ellesmere Manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. (London: N. Trübner, 1875).
Furnivall, Frederick J., ed. The Harleian Ms 7334 of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. (London: N. Trubner, 1885).
---. A Temporary Preface to the Six-text Edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Part I. (London: N. Trubner, 1868).
Koch, John. A Detailed Comparison of the Eight Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., 1913).

Canterbury Tales (individual or groups)

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Clerkes Tale: With Life, Grammar, Notes, and an Etymological Glossary (London, 1888).
Furnivall, Frederick James. A Temporary Preface to the Six-text Edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Part 1 (London, 1868).
Furnivall, Frederick James and R. E. G. Kirk. Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1903).
Ingraham, Andrew, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer's the Prologue to the Book of the Tales of Canterbury. (New York, 1902).
M'Leod, Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with Explanatory Notes, a Glossary, and a Life of the Poet. (London, 1871).
Koch, John. The Chronology of Chaucer's Writing. (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., 1913).
Liddell, Mark H. The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the Knightes Tale, the Nonnes Prestes Tale (New York: Macmillan, 1908).
Pollard, Alfred W., ed. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: The Prologue (New York, 1924).
Skeat, W.W, ed. The Prioresses Tale, Sire Thopas, the Monkes Tale, the Clerkes Tale, the Squieres Tale. (Oxford, 1880).
---. The Evolution of the Canterbury Tales. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1907).
Thynne, Francis. Animaduersions Uppon . . . Chaucer,, ed. G.H. Kingsley (London, 1865).

PLEASE NOTE that some of the pages on some of the scans are imperfect or the pages out of order, especially (it seems) with the titles digitized by Google. As a service to the online community, conscientious users could inform Google (or Microsoft) when they find imperfections in the scans.

Google Custom Search

You can search for handpicked websites related to Chaucer and medieval culture as recommended by ECT users.

The Kankedort Medieval Studies Search Engine

I welcome your suggestions for suitable websites. Please be patient as I tune the search terms.

The Electronic Canterbury Tales
Scholar's Dozen

The Online Chaucer Bibliography (Mark E. Allen, UT San Antonio) is from Studies in the Age of Chaucer and the New Chaucer Society. Another excellent project. Searchable by keyword and other Boolean terms.
The Chaucer Review: An Indexed Bibliography, vols. 1-30 (Peter Beidler, Lehigh U. & Martha Kalnin, Baylor U). Originally published as the April 1997 issue of Chaucer Review and now put into html, this website provides a searchable list of all of the nearly 800 articles that have appeared in Chaucer Review, and, more important, a subject index to all of those articles. Excellent, and an invaluable resource.
The Essential Chaucer (Mark E. Allen, UT San Antonio and John H. Fisher, UTennessee). This selective, annotated bibliography of Chaucer studies from 1900-1984 is divided into almost 90 topics, including themes, techniques, and individual works by Chaucer. An invaluable starting point. See the Table of Contents
The best single site devoted to the Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, The Harvard Chaucer Page, is a tutorial in itself, brought to the WWW by Larry D. Benson, gen. ed. of The Riverside Chaucer. Check the Index for easy access to the wealth of primary and secondary material there.
Paul Halsall's consummate Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham U) offers a wealth of primary historical and cultural texts (from older print sources) and commentary on its numerous sub-pages. Comprehensive, and unsurpassed for medieval studies. See, for example, The 'Calamitous' Fourteenth Century.
TEAMS Middle English Text Series (Russell Peck, URochester) houses a number of lesser known and hard to find medieval texts in helpful student editions. A generous and fascinating selection not to be missed! Each selection includes a scholarly introduction and full notes.
Michigan's Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse has a large number of important primary texts, often older Early English Text Society volumes. The new editions also boast an upgraded search engine (Paul Schaffner & Perry Willett, UMichigan). Most important for Chaucer studies are the Chaucer Society editions of important early manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (edited by the indefatigable Furnivall).
The Middle English Collection of the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center includes searchable editions of a number of important ME texts (generally from older editions without the critical apparatus), including:
The Middle English Dictionary is online at the UMichigan site. You have to access the individual password month by month. Note: The MED seems now to be temporarily offline, or perhaps inaccessible for the moment to individual users.
A real boon for scholars, the Canterbury Tales Project (Peter Robinson, U of Birmingham) has generously made available a series of articles and working papers describing the CTProject in detail.
From Barbara Bordalejo (Canterbury Tales Project - DeMontfort U), a fully searchable online edition of Caxton's two printed editions of the Canterbury Tales: Caxton's Canterbury Tales: The British Library Copies.
The ORB: Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies (Kathryn Talarico, gen. ed.) "is an academic site, written and maintained by medieval scholars for the benefit of their fellow instructors and serious students. All articles have been judged by at least two peer reviewers. Authors are held to high standards of accuracy, currency, and relevance to the field of medieval studies."
For a peer-reviewed, academically sound evaluation of online Chaucer resources, see the links and annotations at the Chaucer Metapage project (gen. eds. Joe Wittig, UNC & Edwin Duncan, Towson State U).

The Poor Medieval Scholar's
Electronic Bookshelf
(free books!)

and

The Electronic Canterbury Tales
Bookshop
(cheap books!)

These subpages of the Electronic Canterbury Tales offers several features:

The Poor Scholar's Electronic Bookshelf
No cost books (generally older studies) available via the Google Library Project, Microsoft Book Search Live, and other public online projects.
The ECT Bookshop
Scroll down to the Electronic Canterbury Tales Bookshop, hosted by Amazon.com, to find recommended titles.
Online Search Links
At both pages will take you to major online booksellers and to lesser-known specialty bookshops for the best prices online.

I'll cross-list the recommended on the appropriate webpage throughout the Electronic Canterbury Tales under Online Articles & Books (on the expanded Electronic Canterbury Tales - Kankedort.Net Index Page) and also detail them on the webpages devoted to specific Canterbury Tales or associated pages).

This will be an ongoing project, so check back periodically for new finds!

How to Document
Print & Electronic Sources:
The Chaucer Pedagogy
Documentation Primer

Writing Resources (from Bartleby.com)

William Strunk, The Elements of Style (1918)
American Heritage Book of English Usage (1996)
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993)
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, (4th ed., 2000)
Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus (3rd ed. 1995)
Roget’s International Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (1922 ed.)
The Columbia World of Quotations (1996)
Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations (1988)

Additional Chaucer Pages in The Electronic Canterbury Tales

Chaucer the Pilgrim-Narrator & Author

Chaucer's "Orphan" Pilgrims - Those without a Tale

The Frame Tale, Later Continuations,
& Chaucerian Apocrypha

Manuscripts, Printed Editions, & Electronic Texts

Electronic Chaucer Texts:
What's Available Online?

Chaucer in / and Popular Culture

Troilus and Criseyde

Documentation Primer

Chaucer Pedagogy Page

Something Extra?

Free Books!
The Poor Medieval Scholar's Electronic Bookshelf

(no cost, older academic books,
in .pdf form from the
Google Library Project &
Microsoft Book Search Live)

Cheap Books!
The Electronic Canterbury Tales Bookshop

(recommended books for the study of Chaucer and Late-Medieval England)

Calls for Papers

Call for Papers database from the University of Pennsylvania CFP listserv

Daniel T. Kline's
Legacy Web Page (The Kankedort Page) at the U of Alaska Anchoragee

Please be advised that I no longer update most of these pages, so many of the links are likely to be bad, but will keep them alive in the ongoing battle against "link rot."

Highly Recommended!

Challenge Your Vision of Chaucer with These Critically Acclaimed, Contemporary
BBC Versions of

The Miller's Tale, The Wife Of Bath, The Knight's Tale, The Sea Captain's (Shipman's) Tale, The Pardoner's Tale & The Man Of Law's Tale

Excellent for Classroom Use!

Check Out the Revamped Chaucer Pedagogy Page!

Online Resources for Chaucer Teachers

1. Chaucer Pedagogy -
Quick Start

2. Approaching Chaucer

3. K-12 Teaching Ideas

4. College Teaching Ideas

5. Recommended Materials

6. Teaching Notes