The Electronic Canterbury Tales

Paul Halsall's consummate Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham U) offers a wealth of primary historical and cultural texts and commentary on its numerous subpages. Comprehensive, and unsurpassed for medieval studies. See, for example, The 'Calamitous' Fourteenth Century.

Gallica, the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, has made available online page images of an invaluable source, the Acta Sanctorum (Deeds of the Saints), from the Bollandist Society:

Click "Periodiques" at the main page, and scroll down to "Religions chretiennes"

Index to the Rolls Series (99 volumes), with annotations (Steven H. Silver), from ORB, the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies. The Rolls Series is a vital collection of primary documents from medieval England, including chronicles, lives of kings and saints, legal records, and texts from other medieval institutions.

L. Kip Wheeler offers a Heresy Handout: A Convenient Guide to Eternal Damnation (Carson-Newman College). A .pdf file.

Lynn H. Nelson, a respected University of Kansas historian, has generously provided a series of online lectures from his History 108 course at the ORB: Online Reference Book of Medieval Studies. The Table of Contents includes:

From Roman Empire to Medieval World
An Era of Decentralization
- Three Views of Feudalism
- The Life of Gerald the Good
The Feudalization and Reform of the Church
"Feudal" Society
The Twelfth-Century Renaissance
The Thirteenth-Century Crystallization
The Ordeals of the Fourteenth Century
The End of an Era and the Dawn of a New Age
More than 50 lectures, directed toward an undergraduate audience. Not to be missed.

Steven Muhlberger (NipissingU) has crafted a very fine introduction to Medieval England at the ORB. The Table of Contents features:

The Fall of Britain
The Founding of England
The Vikings and the Rise of Wessex
The Eleventh-Century Invasions
England under the Normans
Henry II and His Sons
The Thirteenth Century and the First Two Edwards
The Era of the Hundred Years War
The Wars of the Roses

End of Europe's Middle Ages (UCalgary) provides in tutorial form "a brief overview of the conditions at the end of Europe's Middle Ages, the tutorial is presented in a series of chapters that summarize the economic, political, religious and intellectual environment of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."

Yuri Koszarycz has put together a series of brief lectures at the ORB entitled Ecclesiology: A Short Course on the Medieval Church. The Table of Contents includes:

Medieval Britain (Brittania Online) boasts an impressive array of online vignettes for all aspects of medieval British topics, including famous events, persons, places. Highly recommended, especially for those who would like to review their British history. See the Index and especially:

Timeline: The Medieval Period
Peter N. Williams, "England: A Narrative History" (Parts 4 & 5: Medieval Britain)
David Nash Ford, "Medieval London"
Magical History Tour: Canterbury

Exploring Ancient World Cultures (UEvansville) is an excellent, graphics rich website particularly useful to the younger student and undergraduates. Includes subpages on the ancient cultures of the Near East, India, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Islam, and Medieval Europe.

The New Advent Catholic Website hosts a number of important resources, especially the online Catholic Encyclopedia (1913 ed.) and its thousands of entries. Although the entries in the Catholic Encyclopedia are now dated in some areas and sometimes take a polemical or triumphalistic stance toward their subjects, they offer a helpful starting point, especially for matters of Catholic doctrine and practice. See, for example:

From the Annenberg/CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] Multimedia Collection comes The Middle Ages, a beautifully done set of links, images, and brief narratives that attempt to answer the question: "What was it really like to live in the Middle Ages?" Somewhat simplistic and stereotypical descriptions, but good for younger students as an introduction are its subpages on Feudal Life, Religion, Homes, Clothing, Health, Arts and Entertainment, & Town Life.

There are a number of websites devoted to different aspects of the Black Death (or Bubonic Plague) that reached England in the winter of 1347-48 and profoundly affected all aspects of English culture during Chaucer's time:

The Black Death, 1347-50 (a nice, well designed site with excellent graphics, written by Melissa Loftus, Alex Sherman, Ashley Quan, and Mieko Griffin [a student project?])
A series of coerced confessions linking the Black Death to Jews in France (Paul Halsall, IJHS)
Marchione di Coppo Stefani, The Florentine Chronicle, is a gripping eyewitness account (UVa)
Boccaccio's introduction to the Decameron details the plague's effects as well (Paul Halsall, IMSB)
The Pestilence Tyme, another site from James L. Matterer, of the Goode Cookery page devoted to medieval cooking.
See also the interesting Death in Art page by Patrick Pollefeys

Steve Mulberger's lecture notes to his course, History 2425 -- Medieval England (1998-9) are available via ORB.

Bartleby.com offers a number (and great variety) of standard reference works (online and searchable). You'll have to tolerate a pop up advertisement or two when using the site, but it's only a minor distraction.

The Internet Archive Collection at the University of Toronto offers several older historical works that are still valuable as references sources (but whose findings would need to be supplemented by more recent scholarship):

G. G. Coulton's A Medieval Garner: Human Documents from the Four Centuries Preceding the Reformation (London: Constable, 1910).

Other Medieval Metapages, Search Engines, and Link Sites:

Argos: Limited Areas Search of the Ancient and Medieval Internet (U of Evansville)
Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
The Labyrinth (Georgetown U)
Sidney Higgins' Medieval Drama Links
Medieval, Renaissance, Reformation: Western Civ - Act II (Konnilyn Feig, Foothill College): an interesting collection of links for all ages).
NetSERF
ORB (Online Reference Book) for Medieval Studies
Voice of the Shuttle (Alan Liu, UCSB): The starting point for humanities research on the Web. Some dead links lately though.

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

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Spring 2007

An Excellent Reader Full of Primary Texts from Late Medieval England

That Illuminate Chaucer's Tales

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

Looking for a Little Something More?

The Poor Medieval Scholar's Electronic Bookshelf

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

The Electronic Canterbury Tales Bookshop

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

The Kankedort
Gift Shoppe

(with many serious and some silly offerings for the medievalist
in your life)