Geoffrey Chaucer Online:
The Electronic Canterbury Tales

Daniel T. Kline | U of Alaska Anchorage | Chaucer Pedagogy | CV | What's New?  | Revision History

Web Resources by Tale 

Electronic Canterbury Tales - Kankedort.Net Index Page

Fragment I / Group A
The General Prologue
The Knight's Tale
The Miller's Prologue & Tale
The Reeve's Prologue & Tale
The Cook's Prologue & Tale

Fragment II / Group B1
The Man of Law's Introduction, Prologue, Tale, & Epilogue

Fragment III / Group D
The Wife of Bath's Prologue & Tale
The Friar's Prologue & Tale
The Summoner's Prologue & Tale

Fragment IV / Group E
The Clerk's Prologue & Tale
The Merchant's Prologue, Tale, & Epilogue
 
Fragment V / Group F
The Squire's Introduction & Tale
The Franklin's Prologue & Tale

Fragment VI / Group C
The Physician's Tale
The Pardoner's Introduction, Prologue, & Tale

Fragment VII / Group B2
The Shipman's Tale
The Prioress's Prologue & Tale
The Prologue & Tale of Sir Thopas
The Tale of Melibee
The Monk's Prologue & Tale
The Nun's Priest's Prologue,
Tale, & Epilogue
 
Fragment VIII / Group G
The Second Nun's Prologue & Tale
The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue & Tale

Fragment IX / Group H 
The Manciple's Prologue & Tale

Fragment X / Group I
The Parson's Prologue & Tale
The Retraction

The Electronic Canterbury Tales:

Troilus and Criseyde

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

Related Schools, Programs, and Local & Regional Organizations

• Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

• Chaucernet Archives, a searchable archive of the Chaucernet academic listserv, dating from September 1995 until the present.

• Delaware Valley Medieval Association

• International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA)

• International Medieval Institute, University of Leeds

• The Lollard Society

• The Medieval Academy of America (MAA), the granddaddy of medieval organizations in the US, is entering the new century with a new attitude.

• Medieval Academy of America: Committee on Centers and Regional Associations compiles data on North American (and external) medieval centers, programs, committees, libraries, and regional associations.

• Medieval Association of the Pacific

• Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo)

• Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society

• New Chaucer Society provides a forum for teachers and scholars of Geoffrey Chaucer and his age, sponsors a biennial conference, and a number of publishing projects.

• Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (U of Toronto)

• Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship

• Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (SELIM)

• Society for Medieval Languages and Linguistics

• Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages

• TEAMS: The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages

• Texas Medieval Association

• UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

The Single Best Site for Online Term Paper & College Essay

• The Purdue University OWL (Online Writing Lab)

See especially the Purdue OWL publications:

• The MLA Style Guide
• The APA Style Guide

Schools, Programs, and Local & Regional Organizations

• Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

• Delaware Valley Medieval Association

• International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA)

• International Medieval Institute, University of Leeds

• The Lollard Society

• Medieval Association of the Pacific

• Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo)

• Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society

• Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (U of Toronto)

• Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (SELIM)

• Texas Medieval Association

• UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

  Journal & Newsletter Homepages

• Æstel: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
• Arthuriana
• Chaucer Review
• Chaucer Yearbook
• Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
• Disputatio: An International Transdisciplinary Journal of the Late Middle Ages
• Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature
• Essays in Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association
• Exemplaria
• In Parentheses: Papers in Medieval Studies
• Medieval English Studies Newsletter
• Medieval Feminist Newsletter
• The Medieval Review
• New Medieval Literatures
• Nottingham Medieval Studies
• Speculum
• Studies in the Age of Chaucer
• Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies
• Yearbook of Langland Studies

Chaucernet: 
An Academic Listserv (from Edwin Duncan, Towson U)

• What is Chaucernet

• How to Subscribe

• Listserve Commands

• Laura Hodges' "Netiquette" for Chaucernet

• Chaucernet Archives

An Online Compendium and Companion 
to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

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.

This page last revised on 08 December 2008

What You'll Find

• At this website, part of the Chaucer Metapage project, I hope to imitate at least in form the spirit of the Canterbury Tales while assembling and annotating useful links by Tale.  Each page features the same set of headings and criteria for inclusion. 
• Use the navigation bar in the left frame to take you to a webpage dedicated to that Canterbury Tale or Additional Pages dedicated issues related to the Canterbury Tales.
• On this page, you will find a number of excellent general WWW sources related to late-medieval England in general and the Canterbury Tales in particular.

1.  The Canterbury Tales In Middle English

Gerard NeCastro (UMaine - Machias) has put together a wonderfully useful Chaucer Concordance: "To check on the occurrence of a specific word in Chaucer, simply click on the name of the text you wish to search. You can search via the full texts or smaller divisions of them." A very valuable and easy to use tool.

The Complete Tales in Middle English at UVa (1510 kb) or access the Tales individually by the Table of Contents.

• Search the UVa Middle English Text Archive.

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), including:

•  The Ellesmere Ms of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st ser., 2, 8, 16, 26, 32, 38, 50, 70 (1868-1879).
• The Hengwrt Ms of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st ser., 3, 9, 27, 39, 51, 71 (1869-1881).
• The Cambridge Ms (University library, Gg. 4.27) of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st ser., 4, 10, 17, 28, 33, 40, 52, 66 (1868-1884).
• The Corpus Ms (Corpus Christi coll., Oxford) of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st ser., 5, 11, 18, 34, 41, 53, 67 (1868-1884).
• The Lansdowne ms of Chaucer's Canterbury tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st ser., 7, 13, 20, 36, 43, 55, 69 (1868-1884).
• The Harleian Ms. 7334 of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st ser., 73 (1885).
• The Petworth Ms. of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st ser., 6, 12, 19, 35, 42, 54, 68 (1868-1884).
• The Cambridge Ms. Dd. 4. 24. of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, completed by the Egerton ms. 2726 (the Haistwell ms), ed. F.J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st ser., 95, 96 (1902).

The Google Library Project has made a number of venerable older (and out of copyright) works available as fully downloadable (and quite large) .pdf files. These include:

• Skeat, W.W., ed. The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1894).

• ---, ed. The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1866). 

• ---, ed. The Student's Chaucer: Being a Complete Edition of His Works. (Oxford, 1897).

While these older works are vitally important for their historical value and their place in the development of the history of Chaucerian criticism, they should be supplemented with current textual and critical studies.

Arnie Sanders (Goucher College) has written a brief "explanation for how the manuscripts of CT were placed in "families," and how manuscripts get accidentally altered in production.  The errors actually turned out to help us discover the relationships among the MSS." See also his nice introduction to Canterbury Tale Orders. 

L. Kip Wheeler offers a very nice overview of manuscript issues in his Manuscript Talk (Carson-Newman College). Requires MS PowerPoint.

David Scott Wilson-Okamura (East Carolina U) has developed a fine classroom exercise, with bibliography, illustrating Examples of Chaucerian Revision and "describing examples of authorial revision in the Canterbury Tales. Probably best used in conjunction with a facsimile of the Hengwrt manuscript." In Wilson-Okamura's own words, "Note: author buys Ralph Hanna's booklet theory of Hengwrt MS without reservation, ignores N. F. Blake at his peril." Also available as a .pdf file. 

Read the General Prologue, Fragment I, Fragment III, and the Shipman and Pardoner's Tales in the famous Hengwrt manuscript (Hg, Nat. Lib. Wales Peniarth 392), one of the two most important early manuscripts, at the University of Toronto's Representative Poetry On-line site (e-text by Ian Lancashire). The Chaucer link will take you to the Hengwrt transcriptions. The Ellesmere ms (El) is the other important early manuscript.

• The Scrivener's Tale: How Chaucer's Sloppy Copyist was Unmasked after 600 Years (Guardian Unlimited, UK) details how Adam Pinkhurst has been "recognised as the scrivener of the two most authoritative copies of the Canterbury Tales: the Hengwrt manuscript, which is now in the National Library of Wales, and the Ellesmere manuscript, kept in San Marino, California."

The British Library has generously made available a stunning online resource, Treasures in Full: Caxton's Chaucer. You can examine the two Caxton editions of The Canterbury Tales (1476 and 1483) individually or compare them tale by tale. 

Sinan Kökbugur's helpfully glossed hypertext Middle English rendition of the complete Canterbury Tales is available at the Librarius page.

• Use the Table of Contents in the left frame to click on a specific Tale, and difficult terms and phrases are glossed in the lower frame. 

The Studio for Digital Projects and Research (NYU) has put together a helpful page detailing aspects of the Canterbury Tales Project (DeMontfort U), including a listing of the 88 known pre-1500 witnesses to the text of the Canterbury Tales.

Arnie Sanders (Goucher College) has written a brief "explanation for how the manuscripts of CT were placed in "families," and how manuscripts get accidentally altered in production.  The errors actually turned out to help us discover the relationships among the MSS." See also his nice introduction to Canterbury Tale Orders. 

L. Kip Wheeler offers a very nice overview of manuscript issues in his Manuscript Talk (Carson-Newman College). Requires MS PowerPoint.

A number of images related to the Tales and CTales manuscripts:

• The "pilgrim steps" leading to Thomas Becket's tomb at Caterbury Cathedral (Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Loyola, Maryland).
• Stained glass image of St. Thomas Becket (Canterbury Cathedral, 13th century) (Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Loyola, Maryland).
• London's Inner Temple, the 'law school' where the Manciple is said to have served (A.567) and the Sergeant of Law would have been trained (A.309-30), has put online a concise account of its history and development.
• See images of the Hengwrt ms at the National Library of Wales website.
• See the detailed images at Kevin Kiernan's webpage (UKentucky) of 
  • (Hg) National Library of Wales MS. Peniarth 392 D
  • (El) Henry E. Huntington Library MS. El.26C.9
  • (La) British Library MS. Lansdowne 851
• The Huntington Library Press has released several images online in conjunction with their publication, The Ellesmere Manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, by Herbert C. Schulz.

The University of Chicago has issued a centennial celebration that includes profiles of noted faculty, like J.M. Manley and Edith Rickert:

• "In 1924, John Matthews Manly proposed a systematic study of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer, anticipating that the work "would necessarily require several years." Although the "several years" were to become sixteen, Manly and his collaborator, Edith Rickert, produced the eight-volume edition of The Text of the Canterbury Tales (1940) that was immediately hailed as the defining work in the field of Chaucerian studies."
• Their discoveries included University of Chicago Ms. 564, a "mid-fifteenth-century codex is one of fifty-seven relatively complete manuscript copies of the Tales and one of only two containing a passage from the 'Tale of Melibeus'."

David Scott Wilson-Okamura (East Carolina U) has developed a fine classroom exercise, with bibliography, illustrating Examples of Chaucerian Revision and "describing examples of authorial revision in the Canterbury Tales. Probably best used in conjunction with a facsimile of the Hengwrt manuscript." In Wilson-Okamura's own words, "Note: author buys Ralph Hanna's booklet theory of Hengwrt MS without reservation, ignores N. F. Blake at his peril." Also available as a .pdf file. 

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. Search the page by page comparison of Caxton's two editions.

• See also Peter Robinson's (U of Birmingham) "Electronic Textual Editing: The Canterbury Tales and Other Medieval Texts," as well as a series of important essays on digital textuality, at the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium website. 

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, including the following:

• From The Canterbury Tales Project: Occasional Papers, Volume 1, ed. Norman Blake and Peter Robinson (Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication, 1993):

  • Norman Blake & Peter Robinson, "Preface" (pp. 1-4).

  • Norman Blake, "Editing the Canterbury Tales: An Overview" (pp. 5-18).

  • Peter Robinson & Elizabeth Solopova, "Guidelines for Transcription of the Manuscripts of the Wife of Bath's Prologue" (pp. 19-52).

  • Robert O'Hara & Peter Robinson, "Computer-assisted Methods of Stemmatic Analysis" (pp. 53-74).

  • Daniel Mosser, "A New Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales" (pp. 75-84).

  • Stephen Partridge, "The Canterbury Tales Glosses and the Manuscript Groups" (pp. 85-94).

• From The Canterbury Tales Project: Occasional Papers, Volume 2, ed. Norman Blake and Peter Robinson (Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication, 1997):

  • Norman Blake & Peter Robinson: "Preface" (pp. 1-4)

  • Norman Blake: "The Project's Lineation System" (pp. 5-14)

  • Simon Horobin: "Editorial Assumptions and the Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales" (pp. 15-21)

  • Beverly Kennedy: "Contradictory Responses to the Wife of Bath as evidenced by Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Variants" (pp. 23-39)

  • Daniel W. Mosser: "The Language, Hands and Interaction of the Two Scribes of the Egerton 2726 Chaucer Manuscript (En¹⁾ (pp. 41-53)

  • Michael Pidd & Estelle Stubbs: "From Medieval Manuscripts to Electronic Text: A Transcriber's Tale" (pp. 55-59).

  • Michael Pidd, Estelle Stubbs & Claire E. Thomson: "The Hengwrt Canterbury Tales: Inadmissible Evidence?" (pp. 61-68)

  • Peter Robinson: "A Stemmatic Analysis of the Fifteenth-Century Witnesses to The Wife of Bath's Prologue" (pp. 69-132).

  • Elizabeth Solopova: "The Problem of Authorial Variants in The Wife of Bath's Prologue" (pp. 133-142).

  • Elizabeth Solopova: "Chaucer's Metre and Scribal Editing in the Early Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales" (pp. 143-164).

  • Reviews of the Variorum General Prologue; of The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth-Century Continuations and Additions; of the Cowen/Kane edition of The Legend of Good Women (pp. 165-179).

• From the Canterbury Tales Project CDs:

  • Peter Robinson, "Editor's Introduction, "The Wife of Bath's Prologue on CD-ROM, ed. Peter Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996).

  • Peter Robinson and Norman Blake, "General Editors' Preface;" Elizabeth Solopova, Editor's Introduction;" Peter Robinson, "Analysis Workshop," The General Prologue on CD-ROM, ed. Elizabeth Solopova (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000).

  • Estelle Stubbs, "Editor's Introduction;" Daniel W. Mosser, "Manuscript Description;" Simon Horobin, "The Language of the Hengwrt Chaucer," From The Hengwrt Chaucer Digital Facsimile, ed. Estelle Stubbs (Scholarly Digital Editions, 2000).

  • Peter Robinson, "Editor's Introduction" and "Rationale and Implementation of the Collation System Used on this CD-ROM," The Miller's Tale on CD-ROM, ed. Peter Robinson (Scholarly Digital Editions, 2004).

• Other essays ("key documents") at the Canterbury Tales Project site:

  • Peter Robinson, "The History, Discoveries and Aims of the Canterbury Tales Project," The Chaucer Review 38:2 (2003) pp. 126-139. This is the prepublication version. The article summarizes project activities to 2003.

  • Peter Robinson and Elizabeth Solopova, "Guidelines for Transcription of the Manuscripts of the Wife of Bath's Prologue," from the Nun's Priest's Tale on CD-ROM (2006), fully explains "the transcription principles upon which the Canterbury Tales Project is based." 

  • Peter Robinson's "New methods of Editing, Exploring, and Reading The Canterbury Tales," was originally fashioned as a conference paper given at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome (28 May 1998).

  • Peter Robinson and Norman Blake, "General Editor's Preface," from The General Prologue on CD-ROM (2000), describes "a key change in project policy: not only 'to help editors edit' but also 'to help readers read'."

  • Peter Robinson, "Open Transcription Policy," takes an ethically important stance toward academic collaboration and peer review: "It is a vital principle of our work that the transcripts we make should be freely available to other scholars, for their use and modification. This document explains how we reconcile this with copyright considerations."

  • Peter Robinson, "Current Issues in Making Digital Editions of Medieval Texts — or, Do Electronic Scholarly Editions Have a Future?" Digital Medievalist 1.1 (2005). 

  • Peter Robinson, "Where We Are with Electronic Scholarly Editions, and Where We Want to Be?" Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie Online 1.1 (2005).  In print in Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie 2004, 123-143.

• See also the excerpts from the editorial materials to the  Canterbury Tales Project's already-completed CD-ROMs:

  • Peter Robinson, "Editor's Introduction," from The Wife of Bath's Prologue on CD-ROM, ed. Peter Robinson (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  • Peter Robinson and Norman Blake, "General Editors' Preface;" Elizabeth Solopova, "Editor's Introduction;  & Peter Robinson, "Analysis Workshop," from The General Prologue on CD-ROM, ed. Elizabeth Solopova (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  • Estelle Stubbs,  "Editor's Introduction;" Daniel W. Mosser, "Manuscript Description;" & Simon Horobin, "The Language of the Hengwrt Chaucer," from The Hengwrt Chaucer Digital Facsimile, ed. by Estelle Stubbs (Scholarly Digital Editions, 2000). 

  • Peter Robinson, "Editor's Introduction" & "Rationale and Implementation of the Collation System Used on this CD-ROM," from The Miller's Tale on CD-ROM, ed. Peter Robinson (Scholarly Digital Editions, 2004).

  • Barbara Bordalejo, "Editor's Introduction" & "Notes on the Caxton Canterbury Tales Editions and their Place in the Textual Tradition of the Tales," from Caxton's Canterbury Tales: The British Library Copies, ed.  Barbara Bordalejo (Scholarly Digital Editions, 2003).

2.  The Canterbury Tales In Translation

Sinan Kökbugur has assembled a hypertext, helpfully glossed Middle English edition of the Canterbury Tales with side-by-side Modern English translation at the Librarius Homepage.

The Electronic Library Foundation's edition of the Canterbury Tales is available in a variety of format: in Middle English, Modern English, and facing page versions. Very good for student reading.

• Seems to be down at present.

• Unsuitable for formal academic research, the ELF edition is the best online version for younger readers and those unfamiliar with Middle English. Easily navigable, and the Middle English glosses are very helpful.

Michael Murphy (CUNY-Brooklyn) has released an expanded version of his project to "modernize" the Canterbury Tales in his Reader Friendly Edition of the General Prologue and Sixteen Tales (up from the four tales of the so called "Marriage Group"), including the General Prologue and the tales by the 

• Knight

• Miller

• Reeve

• Man of Law

• Wife of Bath

• Friar

• Summoner

• Clerk

• Merchant

• Franklin

• Physician

• Pardoner

• Shipman

• Prioress & parts of Thopas, Melibee, Monk

• Nun's Priest, and 

• Manciple. 

The collection of translations begins with a handsome Introduction and concludes with Endnotes. Each tale also features an introduction.  Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The Litrix Reading Room translation of the Canterbury Tales features rhyming couplets.

The Wiretap Canterbury Tales (from an unknown base text digitized by Ted and Florence Daniels) is incomplete and unnumbered. Not recommended.

The Canterbury Tales and other Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer (Ed. D. Laing Purves from an unknown base-text) offers an odd assortment of unnumbered texts and is probably more useful for the introductory essay than for the text and thin critical apparatus. The one advantage to this text is that it is available as an e-book download for a modest $1.75 for you digi-kiddies out there!

3.  General Historical & Cultural Backgrounds

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:

• Acta sanctorum ianuarii

• Acta sanctorum februarii

• Acta sanctorum martii

• Acta sanctorum aprilis

• Acta sanctorum maii

• Acta sanctorum junii

• Acta sanctorum julii

• Acta sanctorum augusti

• Acta sanctorum septembris

• Acta sanctorum octobris

• Acta sanctorum novembris

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

  • The Roman Empire at its Height

  • The Later Roman Empire

  • The Rise of Christianity

  • The Life of Apollinaris Sidonius

  • Notes on Reading Beowulf

  • The Advent of the Germans

  • The Age of Justinian

  • The Rise of the Franks

  • Notes on Alcuin and his Renaissance

  • Early Medieval Law

  • The Development of the Western Church

  • The Origins and Expansion of Monasticism

  • The Rise and Expansion of Islam

  • The Carolingian Empire

  • The Fall of the Carolingian Empire

• An Era of Decentralization

  • Three Views of Feudalism

  • The Life of Gerald the Good

• The Feudalization and Reform of the Church

  • Cluny and Church Reform

  • The Life of Gerbert of Aurillac

  • The Investiture Conflict

• "Feudal" Society

  • Notes on Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, The Cid

  • The Peasants: Advances in Agricultural Technology

  • The Revival of Commerce and Towns

  • European Economic Revival

  • The First Crusade

• The Twelfth-Century Renaissance

  • The Shoemaker Jofre Isaac

  • The State of the Nobility

  • The Homeless Indigents

  • Medieval Philosophy

  • The Birth of the Universities

  • The Mendicant Friars

• The Thirteenth-Century Crystallization

  • The Little Flowers

  • Innocent III and Challenges to the Church

  • The Rise of Popular Heresies

  • Frederick II, Stupor Mundi

  • Europe in 1300

• The Ordeals of the Fourteenth Century

  • The Avignon Papacy

  • The Rise of Capitalism and Decline of the Gilds

  • The Great Famine and the Black Death

  • The Hundred Years' War

  • The Sundering of Society

  • The Great Schism and Conciliar Movement

  • Some Background on the Life of Margery Kempe of Lynn

• The End of an Era and the Dawn of a New Age

  • The National Monarchies

  • Europe on the Eve of Discovery

  • The Discovery of the New World and End of the Old

  • Some Achievements of Medieval Europe

• 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

  • Introduction to Britain

  • The Roman Withdrawal

  • Independent Britain

• The Founding of England

  • The Invaders

  • Early English Society

  • The Conversion of Britain

  • The Age of Bede

  • Eighth-Century Kingdoms

• The Vikings and the Rise of Wessex

  • The Appearance of the Vikings

  • Alfred

  • England After Alfred

  • Wessex Conquers England

  • King Edgar and Church Reform

• The Eleventh-Century Invasions

  • Aethelred The Unready

  • Canute and His Sons

  • The Confessor and His Earls

  • 1066

• England under the Normans

  • Domesday England

  • The Norman Settlement

  • The Conqueror and His Sons

  • England, Wales, and Scotland

  • The Church under the Normans

  • Government under Henry I

  • Stephen and Matilda

• Henry II and His Sons

  • Henry, Eleanor and their Empire

  • Law and Administration under Henry II

  • Becket and Other Foes

  • William the Marshal as an Example of Twelfth-Century Chivalry

  • Richard and the Crusade

  • King John and the Fall of Normandy

  • Magna Carta

• The Thirteenth Century and the First Two Edwards

  • Economy and Society up to the 13th Century

  • Robert Grosseteste

  • The Thirteenth Century Civil War

  • Edward I: The Early Years

  • Edward I: Later Difficulties

  • The Deposition of Edward II

• The Era of the Hundred Years War

  • Origins of the 100 Years' War

  • Later Years of Edward III

  • Religious Conflict in Fourteenth Century England

  • Economic Change and Social Tension in the Late 14th Century

  • The Reign Of Richard II

  • Henry IV

  • The End of the French Adventure

• The Wars of the Roses

  • The Beginning of the Wars of the Roses

  • Economy and Society in the 15th Century

  • York and Tudor

  • Religion in the 15th Century

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:

• The 2nd and 3rd Centuries; An Era of Trial and Opposition

  • The Church Rapidly Expands

  • Culture and Theology in the Roman Empire: 1st Century

  • Teaching Authority in the Early Christian Communities

  • The Faith of the Early Fathers

  • The Beginnings of Monasticism

  • The New Testament Canon and Other Doctrinal Issues

• The 4th and 5th Centuries: The Church in Radical Change

  • Constantinian Christianity

  • Concerns for the Unity of Faith

  • The Growing Authority of the Roman Bishop

• The 6th to the 10th Centuries: A New Orientation for the Church

  • The Church as Authority and Power

  • Power, Politics and Religion in 800 AD

  • The Growth and Influence of Western Monasticism

  • The Church and the State -- The First 1000 Years

• The 11th to the 13th Centuries: Innocent III and the Great Schism

  • The Pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216) and the Tragedy of the Great Schism

  • Relations Between Church and the Roman State

  • Conflict between Constantinople and Rome

  • The Influence of the Crusades

  • The Results of the Disputes

  • The Understanding of Church in the West

• The 14th and 15th Centuries: The Church in Moral Crisis

  • The Church in Moral Crisis: Prelude to the Reformation

  • The Reformation of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

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:

• Geoffrey Chaucer & John Gower

• Thomas Hoccleve & John Lydgate

• Boccaccio & Boethius

• Pilgrimages & Relics

• Lollards

• Indulgences, The Communion of the Saints, & Purgatory

• The Sacrifice of the Mass, The Liturgy of the Mass, & The Divine Office

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.

4.  Sources, Analogues, & Related Texts

This heading includes the following sections:

• Literary Sources & Other Medieval Authors
• Mythology and Folklore
• Bibles and Biblical Texts
• Theological Sources
• Websites Devoted to Other Medieval Authors

Literary Sources & Other Medieval Authors

Michigan's Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse added a number of works in Middle English directly related Chaucer and other medieval authors, including Anglo-Saxon and Early Middle English (Paul Schaffner & Perry Willett, UMichigan). A generous and admirable example of online scholarship, now numbering 146 items (but without copyrighted critical apparatus). There are far too many titles to list completely, but a sampling includes the following treats:

• The Babees Book, ed. F.J. Furnivall, EETS OS 32 (1868).
• The Wycliffe Bible, ed. J. Forshall & F. Madden (Oxford, 1850).
• An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V . . . ed. J.S. Davies, Camden Society 64 (1856).
• Cursor Mundi: A Northumbrian Poem of the XIVth Century in Four Versions, ed. R. Morris, EETS OS 57,59,62,66,68,99,101 (1874,1875,1876,1877,1878,1892,1893).
• Fifty Earliest English Wills in the Court of Probate, London:
  A. D. 1387-1439, ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS OS 78 (1882).
• Hali Meidenhad, ed. O. Cockayne; rev. F.J. Furnivall, EETS OS 18 (1922).
• Hymns to the Virgin & Christ, the Parliament of devils, and Other Religious Poems, ed. F.J. Furnivall, EETS OS 24 (1867).
• King Horn; A Middle-English romance, ed. J.Hall (Oxford, 1901).
• Altenglische legenden: Kindheit Jesu, Geburt Jesu, Barlaam und Josaphat, St. Patrik's Fegefeuer, ed. C. Horstmann (Paderborn, 1875).
• The Alliterative Morte Arthure, ed. V. Krishna (New York, 1976).
• Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, ed. W.W. Skeat, EETS OS 30 (1867).
• The Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290-1483, ed. C.L. Kingsford, Camden Society, ser. 3, vols. 29 and 30 (1919).
• Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, ed. T. Wright, rev. ed., EETS OS 33 (1906).
• The Cision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-text..., ed. A.V.C. Schmidt (London, 1978).
• Lydgate's The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, ed. F.J. Furnivall, EETS ES 77, 83, 92 (1899, 1901, 1904).
• Mannyng's Handlyng Synne, ed. F.J. Furnivall, EETS OS 119, 123 (1901, 1903).
• Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century. Part I only, ed. N. Davis (Oxford, 1971).
• The English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted, ed. F. D. Matthew, EETS OS 74 (1880).
• Select English works of John Wyclif. Vol.1 only, ed. T. Arnold (Oxford, 1869).

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. 

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:

• Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Robinson, 1957) & Troilus and Criseyde (Windeatt, 1984)
• Pearl Poet's Pearl (Gordon, 1953) & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien & Gordon, 1925, rev. ed. 1967)
• Drama: York Plays (Beadle, 1982); Towneley Plays (England & Pollard, 1897), & Everyman (Cawley, 1961)
• Romance:  Alliterative Morte Arthure (Robbins, 1967) & Siege of Jerusalem (Kolbing & Day, 1932)
• Langland's Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-text (Schmidt, 1978)
• Gower's Confessio Amantis (Macaulay, 1899-1902)
• Others include works by Henryson and Dunbar, Layamon's Brut (2 versions), Owl and the Nightingale, the Paston Letters, and more!
• Search the entire Middle English Collection at UVa.

The Middle English Compendium (UMichigan) includes many of the UVa texts, plus a few extra features--some limited to University of Michigan users.  One important initiative at Michigan is their digitizing of a number of volumes from the Early English Text Society:

• The Alphabet of Tales (EETS os 126-27)
• Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry (EETS os 33)
• The Gesta Romanorum (EETS es 33)
• The Harley Lyrics (EETS os 255)
• Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
• See the useful (and searchable) Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse.

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts (University College, Cork) houses cornucopia of material related to medieval Ireland, many in modern English translation, including:

• The Annals of Ulster AD 431-1201 (HTML & PLAIN)
• The Annals of Ulster AD 1202-1378 (HTML & PLAIN)
• The Annals of Ulster AD 1379-1541(HTML and PLAIN)
• Chronicon Scotorum (HTML & PLAIN)
• St. Columba
  • On the Life of Saint Columba [Betha Choluim Chille] (W. Stokes) (HTML & PLAIN)
  • The Life of Columba, written by Adamnan (W. Reeves)(HTML & PLAIN)
  • Monks' Rules of Columbanus (G. S. M. Walker) (HTML & PLAIN)
  • Sermons of Columbanus (G. S. M. Walker) (HTML & PLAIN)
  • Letters of Columbanus (G. S. M. Walker) (HTML & PLAIN)
• The Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick & Bevis of Hampton (HTML & PLAIN)
• The Irish Version of the Historia Britonum of Nennius (HTML & PLAIN)
• The Kildare Poems Modern English by A. Lucas (HTML and PLAIN)
• On the Life of Saint Patrick [Betha Phatraic] (W. Stokes) (HTML & PLAIN)
• On the Life of Saint Brigit [Betha Brigte] (W. Stokes)(HTML & PLAIN)
• Tidings of Doomsday (W. Stokes) (HTML & PLAIN)
• The Tidings of the Resurrection (W. Stokes) (HTML & PLAIN)
• The fifteen tokens of Doomsday (W. Stokes) (HTML & PLAIN)
• The vision of Laisrén (HTML & PLAIN)

As of 31 July 2006, CELT offered 649 texts (many from later periods of literature, and also in SGML).

Ovid's Metamorphosis, an absolutely vital text to medieval authors, is available at the Internet Classics Archive.

See the Harvard Chaucer Page entries on Chaucer's classical and contemporary influences (Larry D. Benson):

• Andreas Capellanus
• Boccaccio
• Boethius
• Cato
• Dante
• Gower
• Knight of the Tower
• Langland
• Lydgate
• Ovid
• Petrarch
• Virgil
• See also the Site Index for sources, analogues, and related texts and commentary.

Several web pages are dedicated to Chaucer's contemporary, William Langland, and the great poem, Piers Plowman:

• An ambitious and astonishing project: The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive - "The long-range goal of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive is the creation of a multi-level, hyper-textually linked electronic archive of the textual tradition of all three versions of the fourteenth-century allegorical dream vision Piers Plowman." Among the current gold standard examples of advanced humanities computing and digitization.
• The Luminarium Langland Page is good starting place for web research.

The Online Classical and Medieval Library (Douglas B. Killings, Berkeley) "is a collection of some of the most important literary works of Classical and Medieval civilization," including:  

• Chaucer and Related Texts
  • Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess (ed. W.W. Skeat, 1899)
  • Chaucer's The House of Fame (ed. Skeat, 1899)
  • Chaucer's Legend of Good Women (ed. Skeat, 1900)
  • Chaucer's The Parliament of Fowles (ed. Skeat, 1900)
  • Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (ed. Skeat, 1900)
  • Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid (ed. David Laing, 1865)
  • Gower's Confessio Amantis (ed. G.C. MacAuley, 1901)
    
• Romances, by Chretien de Troyes
  • Cliges (trans. W.W. Comfort)
  • Erec et Enide (trans. Comfort)
  • Lancelot or, The Knight of the Cart (trans. Comfort)
  • High History of the Holy Graal, the anonymous continuation of Chretien's "Perceval, or the Knight of the Grail" (trans. Sebastian Evans)
  • Yvain, or The Knight With the Lion (trans. Comfort)
    
• Epics, Sagas, and Historical Works
  • Asser's Life of King Alfred (trans. J.A. Giles)
  • The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (trans. James Ingram)
  • Danish History (Books I-IX), by Saxo Grammaticus (trans. Oliver Elton)
  • The Fall of Troy, by Quintus Smyrnaeus (trans. A.S. Way)
  • Heimskringla (aka "The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway"), by Snorri Sturluson (trans. Samuel Laing)
  • Laxdaela Saga (trans. Muriel Press)
  • Kormak's Saga (trans. W.G. Collingwood & J. Stefansson)
  • Nibelungenlied (trans. Daniel B. Shumway)
  • Grettir's Saga (trans. G.A. Hight)
  • Njal's Saga (trans. George DaSent)
  • Heitharviga Saga (trans. William Morris & Eirikr Magnusson)
  • Volsungasaga (trans. William Morris & Eirikr Magnusson)

An online publishing venture on a par with The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-21) is the appearance of the renowned Harvard Classics (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909-17), which according to Bartleby.com is "The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume '5-foot shelf of books' and the the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century." Indeed! Texts especially related to Chaucer and the medieval period include:

• The Odyssey (Harvard Classics, 22) & The Aeneid (HC, 13)
• Aesop's Fables (HC, 17.1)
• Plutarch's Lives (HC, 12)
• Augustin'e Confessions (HC, 7.1)
• Epic & Saga (HC, 40): Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel & The Volsungs and Niblungs
• Dante's Divine Comedy (HC, 20)
• Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ (HC, 7.2)
• Froissart's Chronicles (HC, 35.1)
• English Poetry 1: From Chaucer to Gray (HC 40)
• Books 13-17 of Caxton's printing of Malory's Morte Darthur (HC 35.2)

Harvard Classics (vol. 40), English Poetry I, From Chaucer to Gray reproduces a number of traditional (and some) medieval ballads, including Sir Patrick Spence, The Twa Corbie, The Three Ravens, Edward, The Twa Sisters, Hugh of Lincoln, and A Gest of Robyn Hode.

Bartleby.com continues to do a great service to the educational community by making available out-of-copyright editions of valuable older scholarly texts, including:

• The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch (1919), includes
  • Medieval Lyrics: Cuckoo Song, Alison, Spring-tide, Blow, Northern Wind, This World's Joy, A Hymn to the Virgin, Of a Rose, a Lovely Rose
  • Robert Mannyng of Brunne (1269–1340): Praise of Women
  • John Barbour (d. 1395): Freedom
  • Thomas Hoccleve (1368–1450?): Lament for Chaucer
  • John Lydgate (1370?–1450?): Vox ultima Crucis
  • King James I of Scotland (1394–1437): Spring Song of the Birds
  • Robert Henryson (1425–1500): Robin and Makyne, The Bludy Serk
  • William Dunbar (1465–1520?): To a Lady, In Honour of the City of London, On the Nativity of Christ, Lament for the Makers
  • John Skelton (1460?–1529): To Mistress Margery Wentworth, To Mistress Margaret Hussey
  • Stephen Hawes (d. 1523): The True Knight, An Epitaph
    
• The Oxford Book of Ballads, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch (1910), includes dozens of traditional (and some medieval) ballads that have some bearing on Chaucerian themes and topics:
  • The Innocents
  • The Twelve Good Joys
  • Dives and Lazarus
  • Hugh of Lincoln
  • St. Stephen and King Herod
  • The Cherry-Tree Carol
    
• The Oxford Book of French Verse, ed St. John Lucas (1920), includes the work of a number of medieval French authors, some of whom were known to Chaucer,  writing at the same time, or influenced by him, including Guillaume de Machault (c. 1290–d.1377), Jean Froissart (1337–d. c. 1410), Eustache Deschamps (1340–d.1410), Christine de Pisan (c. 1363–d. c. 1430), Alain Chartier (c. 1386–d.1449), Charles D’Orleans (1391–d.1465), François Villon (b. 1431), and Marguerite de Navarre (1492–d.1549).  All texts are in French. 
  
• The classic 1914 Oxford Shakespeare, ed. W. J. Craig, includes the Bard's 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and miscellaneous verse. Shakespeare drew freely from Chaucer--in Talbot Donaldson's beautiful image, "the Swan at the Well"--for several plays, and Shakespeare famously rewrote English history during Chaucer's time in the Henry plays:
  • Troilus and Cressida (Troilus and Criseyde)
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • The Two Noble Kinsmen (Knight's Tale)
  • The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
  • The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
  • The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
  • The Life of King Henry the Fifth
  • First Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth

Mythology and Folklore

• The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes
• The Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur
• The Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of the Middle Ages

A searchable edition (by keyword and table of contents) of Bulfinch's Mythology is also available online via Project Bartleby, in addition to Bulfinch's

• The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855)
• The Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur (1858)
• The Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863)

Chaucer also drew upon common folktales for some of his material. See the following:

• D. L. Ashliman's Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts (Pittsburg) provides a collection of folktales from the world over, both ancient and modern.
• When you're stuck on a classical or mythological reference, Encyclopedia Mythica's 4300 definitions can probably help (M.F. Lindemans).
• E. Cobham Brewer's, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Rev. ed. 1898) comprises over 18,000 entries that reveal the etymologies, trace the origins and otherwise catalog “words with a tale to tell.”

For a real treat of 19th century anthropological thinking, you might also consider checking out the 1922 abridged edition of J.G. Frazer's classic, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (69 chapters!), for mythological themes, patterns in ancient religion, the dynamics of evil and taboos, and comparative ritual.  Frazer has been superceded by more recent research, but disciplines as diverse as anthropology, sociology, psychology, religion, and literature owe a debt to Frazer's pioneering work of synthesis.

Bibles and Biblical Texts

The Vulgate Bible, the Latin version in use in the Middle Ages, and a facing page translation of the Douay-Rheims Bible, the best translation to cite when you're working with medieval texts.

Here's another really nice facing page translation of the Latin Vulgate. You can also compare the Douah-Rheims against the King James (Authorized) Version at this site.

The Challoner Revision of the Douay-Rheims Bible.   According to CCEL, "The Old Testament was first published by the English College at Douay A.D. 1609 & 1610.  The New Testament was first published by the English College at Rheims A.D. 1582.  The whole translation was revised and diligently compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner A.D. 1749-1752.  He is also credited with the annotations included in this revision."

The CCEL also has compiled Bible reference works in the World Wide Study Bible, accessible by book of the Bible.

  Just in case you get a hankering, here's H. B. Sweete's edition of The Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, in three volumes (in Greek) plus an introduction in English. Or The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament with an English Translation with facing page in Greek, by Lancelot Brenton. Both of these are digital facsimiles.

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:

Theological Sources

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.

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

St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, the pinnacle of high medieval systematic theology, is certainly worth investigating both for the rigorous form as well as the systematic content!

The St. Pachomius Library strives "to make the literature of the early Christian Church available to all in electronic form -- for free!"  Specializes in Orthodox sources.

The Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) offers an unsurpassed wealth of primary sources in a variety of formats (although the digitization quality varies from text to text).  Like the online edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia, many of older secondary sources in the CCEL take polemical or apologetic stances toward their material.  Nonetheless, some of the goodies include:

• Primary Sources

  • Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (trans. A.M. Sellar) (London, 1907)

  • Boethius's Theological Tractates (trans. H.F. Stewart and E.K. Rand), from the Loeb Classical Library

  • Evelyn Underhill's treatment of The Cloud of Unknowing (2nd ed., London, 1922)
  • Lyrica Germanica: Hymns for the Sundays and Chief Festivals of the Christian Year (trans. Catherine Winkworth) (London, 1861)
  • Richar Rolle, Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love) (London, 1915).  Comparative texts in Latin.
  • Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Milwaukee, 1940)
    
• Secondary Sources
  • A classic 8 volume History of the Christian Church (by Philip Schaff). Uncorrected html.
  • Philip Schaff's The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, easily accessible through links in the index volume (.PNG page images).

Deserving its own listing, the complete 38 volume set of the Writings of the Early Church Fathers, ver. 2.0 (the Ante-, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers series) is available online and searchable from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL)  at Wheaton College. Try not to get lost in the treasures here!

Evelyn Underhill's influential text Mysticism is now available online through CCEL.

Other Medieval Authors

Several of the most important influences on Chaucer have marvelous websites devoted to them and their works:

• Boccaccio & The Decameron Web
• Otfried Lieberknecht's Homepage for Dante Studies 
• International Machaut Society: Machaut on the Web 
• Boccaccio and Decameron: Guide to Websites (David Finley, San Francisco State U)
• The Canon of John Lydgate Project (Stephen R. Reimer, U of Alberta)
• Literature of the French Middle Ages (David Gatwood, Bob Peckham)
• The International Marie de France Society (Chantal A. Maréchal, Virginia Commonwealth University)

5.  Online Notes & Commentary

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, editor of The Riverside Chaucer. Check the Index for easy access to the wealth of primary and secondary material there.

Douglas Grey's little gem of an essay, "Chaucer and the growth of vernacular literature, c.1350–c.1500."

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." The Table of Contents includes:

• The ORB Encyclopedia: A Topical Index
• The ORB Textbook Library
• Jim Marchand's inimitable WEMSK: What Every Medievalist Should Know
• Resources for Teaching
• Medieval Studies for the Non-specialist: A Guide to Online Resources

An electronic post-print from Exemplaria, Teaching Chaucer in the 90s (ed. by Christine Rose, Portland State) contains ten essays from leading Chaucerians and medievalists.  An excellent pedagogical resource for a wide variety of teaching situations.

Robert Stein (SUNY - Purchase) addresses the theoretically complex question, Medieval, Modern, Post-Modern:  Medieval Studies in a Post Modern Perspective in this essay from Georgetown U's 1995 "Cultural Frictions" conference.

Susan Yager's (Iowa State) modest essay answers the nay-sayers who ask, Why Study Chaucer?

L. Kip Wheeler offers a very nice overview of manuscript issues in his Manuscript Talk (Carson-Newman College). Requires MS PowerPoint.

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).

The best one-stop online resource for Chaucerian is David Wilson Okamura's stylish and sophisticated Geoffrey Chaucer:  Annotated Guide to Online Resources (Macalaster U).

Arnie Sanders has written a number of brief but thorough introductory essays on a variety of Chaucerian topics as part of his English 330: Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales website:

• Other Possible Tale Orders
• Manuscript Mistakes & Manuscript Families
• Chaucer's Literary Life and the Fortunes of the Canterbury Tales
• Medieval Lyrics and the Development of the Sonnet
• A number of issues in Historical Backgrounds  
• Also check out Saunders' helpful general discussions of literary and theoretical issues in his Links to Online Resources

Michael Delahoyde has posted an eminently readable series of notes to the General Prologue and each of the Canterbury Tales at his Washington State U website:

• The General Prologue
• [The Plan of The Canterbury Tales]
• The Knight's Tale
• The Miller's Prologue and Tale
• The Reeve's Prologue and Tale
• The Cook's Prologue and Tale Fragment
• The Man of Law's Introduction, Prologue, Tale, and Epilogue
• The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
• The Friar's Prologue and Tale
• The Summoner's Prologue and Tale
• The Clerk's Prologue and Tale
• The Merchant's Prologue, Tale, and Epilogue
• The Squire's Introduction and Tale
• The Franklin's Prologue and Tale
• The Physician's Tale
• The Pardoner's Introduction, Prologue, and Tale
• The Shipman's Tale
• The Prioress' Prologue and Tale
• The Prologue and Tale of Sir Thopas
• The Tale of Melibee
• The Monk's Prologue and Tale
• The Nun's Priest's Prologue, Tale, and Epilogue
• The Second Nun's Tale
• The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale
• The Manciple's Prologue and Tale
• The Parson's Prologue and Tale
• Chaucer's Retraction

Still in its beginning stages but promising to be a major academic enterprise, Chaucertext:  An On-Line Archive for Electronic Chaucer Scholarship, promises to be a major and important international scholarly enterprise (Josephine Tarvers, Winthrop U).

Highly regarded, The Canterbury Tales Project: An Electronic Chaucer for Scholars and Teachers (DeMontfort U), is offering a series of CDs with comprehensive manuscript coverage of each of the Tales, beginning with the Wife of Bath. Also offers a number of technical essays on Chaucerian manuscripts. The General Prologue has just become available.

Classicnote.com has a series of convenient summaries of each of the Canterbury Tales; ignore the other services offered at the site, however.  It smacks of a term paper mill.

Online Essays & Lectures:

• Douglas Grey's little gem of an essay, "Chaucer and the growth of vernacular literature, c.1350–c.1500."

• An introductory lecture by Lee Patterson (Yale) entitled Chaucer illustrates a New Historicist perspective in medieval and Chaucer studies.

• Robert Stein (SUNY - Purchase) addresses the theoretically complex question, Medieval, Modern, Post-Modern:  Medieval Studies in a Post Modern Perspective in this essay from Georgetown U's 1995 "Cultural Frictions" conference.

• Susan Yager's (Iowa State) modest essay answers the nay-sayers who ask, Why Study Chaucer?

• John M. Hill's Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: The Idea! is a cursory review of the state of the question as of 1985.

Jesús Luis Serrano Reyes fascinating website Chaucer and Spain and its many subpages present a comprehensive view of Chaucer from a unique angle:  Chaucer's relationship to the Iberian Peninsula. Professor Reyes' articles include:

• Spanish References in the Canterbury Tales
• Els Castells Humans: An Architectural Element in the House of Fame
• Chaucer and Montserrat
• Catalan Virolay and the Femynyn Creature Sitte in a See Imperial
• The Chaucers in Spain: From the Wedding to the Funeral
• John of Gaunt's Intervention in Spain: Possible Repercussions for Chaucer's Life and Poetry
• Spanish Modesty in the Canterbury Tales: Chaucer and Don Juan Manuel
• The Host's Idiolect
• Chaucer: "A Second Seneca"

An electronic post-print from Exemplaria, Teaching Chaucer in the 90s (ed. by Christine Rose, Portland State) contains ten essays from leading Chaucerians and medievalists.  An excellent pedagogical resource for a wide variety of teaching situations.

L. Kip Wheeler offers a very nice overview of manuscript issues in his Manuscript Talk (Carson-Newman College). Requires MS PowerPoint.

6.  Online Articles and Books

This heading includes the following sections:

• Peer reviewed articles
• Academic books
• Other studies
• Book reviews
• Google Book Search

Peer Reviewed Articles

Gallica, the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF), has also made available online page images of a number of older, out of copyright journals related to Chaucer and medieval studies, like:

• University of Toronto Quarterly (1895-96)
• Modern Language Notes (1886-1915)
• Modern Philology (1904-35)
• Romanic Review (1910-35)
• Studies in Philology (1907-35)
• Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1873-1935)

Some of the absolutely classic Chaucer-related articles from these journals include:

• J.S.P. Tatlock, "Chaucer and Dante," Modern Philology 3 (Jan 1906): 367-72.
• C. F. Brown, "Chaucer's 'Litel Clergeon'," Modern Philology 3 (Apr 1906), 467-92.

Click on Périodiques to go to a full listing of BNF online journals (most of which are in French). These are large, generally slow loading graphical images, but are valuable nonetheless.

A "special web cluster" on Medieval Noise from Exemplaria 16.2 (2004), edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen:

• Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (George Washington U), "Kyte oute yugilment: An Introduction to Medieval Noise"
• Michelle R. Warren (UMiami), "The Noise of Roland"
• Valerie J. Allen (John Jay College of Criminal Justice – CUNY), "Broken Air"
• Peter W. Travis (Dartmouth College), "Thirteen Ways of Listening to a Fart: Noise in Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale"
• Michael Uebel (UKentucky), "Acoustical Alterity"
• Requires .pdf

Grover Wonderbrook has assembled a collection of peer reviewed essays on his geocities.com website. I am not sure of their copyright status, however:

• Austen, Glyn."'The Reeve's Tale' and its Audience." The English Review, 11.1 (2000), np. 
• Barr, Helen. "Chaucer's Knight: A Christian killer?"  The English Review 12.2 (2001), np. 
• Benson, C. David. "Critic and Poet: What Lydgate and Henryson did to Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde.'" Modern Language Quarterly 53.1 (1992), np. 
• Gruenler, Curtis. "Desire, Violence and the Passion in Fragment VII of The Canterbury Tales: A Girardian Reading." Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 52.1 (1999), np.
• Nelson, Marie. "'Biheste is dette': Marriage Promises in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales." Papers on Language and Literature 38.2 (2002), np. 
• O'Brien, Timothy. "Seductive Violence and Three Chaucerian Women." College Literature 28.2 (2001), np. 
• Pelen, Marc. "Providence and Incest Reconsidered: Chaucer's Poetic Judgement of His Man of Law." Papers on Language and Literature 30.2 (1994), np.
• Rose, Christine. "Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale: Teaching Through the Sources." College Literature 28.2 (2001), np.
• Whitaker, Elaine E. "John of Arderne and Chaucer's Physician." American Notes and Queries (1995) np.
• Woods, William F. "Society and Nature in the 'Cook's Tale.'" Papers on Language and Literature 32.2 (1996), np. 

Chaucer Sourcebook, from the Harvard Chaucer Page, offers a number of classic and professional essays from noted Chaucerians, including:

• David Aers, "Imagination, Order and Ideology: The Knight's Tale," from Chaucer, Langland, and the Creative Imagination, 1980, pp. 175-95.
• David Benson, "Chaucer's Pardoner: His Sexuality and Modern Critics," Medievalia 8 (1985 [for 1982]): 337-46.
• Larry D. Benson, The Tournament in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes & L'Histoire de Guillaume Le Maréchal Chivalric Literature: Essays on Relations between Literature & Life in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Larry D. Benson & John Leyerle. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1980. 2-24.
• Susan Crane, ""Medieval Romance and Feminine Difference in the Knight's Tale," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12 (1990): 47-63.
• Richard F. Green, "The Sexual Normality of Chaucer's Pardoner," Medievalia 8 (1985 [for 1982]):  351-57.
• George Lyman Kittredge, "Chaucer's Pardoner," The Atlantic Monthly 72 (1893): 829-33. Another of Kittredge's classic articles.
• Monica McAlpine, "The Pardoner's Homosexuality and How It Matters," PMLA 95 (1980): 8-22.
• Charles Muscatine, ""The Knight's Tale," Chaucer and the French Tradition, pp. 175-190.
• Lee Patterson, "Chaucerian Confession: Penitential Literature and the Pardoner," Medievalia et Humanistica 7 (1976).
• Derek Pearsall, "Chaucer's Pardoner: Death of a Salesman," Chaucer Review 17 (1983).
• All articles on the Harvard Chaucer Page reprinted by permission.

Teaching Chaucer in the 90s (From Exemplaria, ed. Christine Rose, Portland State). Don't let the date in the title fool you. Good teaching never goes out of style.

• Christine Rose: Introduction

• Susan K. Hagen: Interdisciplinary Chaucer

• Clare Kinney: Theory and Pedagogy

• Thomas Goodman: On Literacy

• Cathalin Folks: Of Sondry Folk: The Canterbury Pilgrimage as Metaphor for Teaching Chaucer at the Community College

• Lee Patterson: The Disenchanted Classroom

• Paul Remley: Questions of Subjectivity and Ideology in the Production of an Electronic Text of the Canterbury Tales

• Peter G. Beidler: Teaching Chaucer as Drama: The Garden Scene in the Shipman's Tale

• Velma Bourgeois Richmond: Teaching Chaucer in a Small Catholic Liberal Arts College

• Daniel J. Pinti: Teaching Chaucer through the Fifteenth Century

• Copyright and published 1996 by MRTS and Exemplaria. May be read or copied without prior permission for any noncommercial use.  Quotation and citation permitted with attribution

Essays in Medieval Studies, full-text articles from the proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, edited by Allen J. Frantzen (Loyola - Chicago).  Some of the articles related to Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales include: 

• Norman D. Hinton, "The Canterbury Tales" as Compilatio," Essays in Medieval Studies 1 (1984), n.p.
• John M. Hill, Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales": The Idea!," Essays in Medieval Studies 2 (1985), n.p.
• Robert V. Graybill, Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale": Exemplum of Caritas," Essays in Medieval Studies 2 (1985), n.p.
• Frank N. Schleicher, The Yeoman Transmuted: An evolution of Penitence and Poetry," Essays in Medieval Studies 3 (1986), n.p.
• James E. Hicks, Chaucer's Inversion of Augustinian Rhetoric in "The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale," Essays in Medieval Studies 3 (1986), n.p.
• Robert V. Graybill, Humor and Humor and Humor and Chaucer," Essays in Medieval Studies 3 (1986), n.p.
• Thomas A. Goodman, "The nakid text": "Glosynge" as Distortion," Essays in Medieval Studies 5 (1988), n.p.
• Susan Yager, The End of Knowledge: The Argus Legend and Chaucer,"  Essays in Medieval Studies 10 (1993), n.p.
• Ann W. Astell, "The Peasants' Revolt: Cock-crow in Gower and Chaucer," Essays in Medieval Studies 10 (1993), n.p.
• Barbara Hanawalt, Narratives of a Nurturing Culture: Parents and Neighbors in Medieval England," Essays in Medieval Studies 12 (1995), n.p.
• Daniel T. Kline, Textuality and Subjectivity: Theorizing the Figure of the Child in Middle English Literature," Essays in Medieval Studies 12 (1995), n.p.
• Jane Cowgill, Chaucer's Missing Children," Essays in Medieval Studies 12 (1995), n.p.
• David A. Flory, The Social Uses of Religious Literature: Challenging Authority in the Thirteenth-Century Marian Miracle Tale," Essays in Medieval Studies 13 (1996), n.p.
• Bryon Grigsby, The Social Position of the Surgeon in London, 1350-1450," Essays in Medieval Studies 13 (1996), n.p.
• Timothy A. Shonk, B.L. Harley MS 7333: The "Publication" of Chaucer in the Rural Areas," Essays in Medieval Studies 15 (1998), n.p.
• Nicole Lassahn, Chaucer and Langland: Literary Representations of History in Fourteenth-Century England," Essays in Medieval Studies 17 (2000), n.p.
• After the 2002 volume, new issues of EMS will be available only through subscription to Johns Hopkins Project Muse online journal service.

I found another geocities.com website that houses a number of Chaucer essays:

• Authorizing the Reader in Chaucer's House of Fame by Laurel Amtower

• No Joke: Transcendent Laughter in the Teseida and the Miller's Tale by Timothy D. Arner

• "Wel bet is roten appul out of hoord": Chaucer's Cook, Commerce, and Civic Order by Craig E. Bertolet

• "Of Goddes pryvetee nor of his wyf": Confusion of Orifices in Chaucer's Miller Tale by Louise M. Bishop

• The Pardoner's Hyprocrisy of his Subjectivity by Robert Boenig

• Alma Redemptoris Mater, Gaude Maria, and the Prioress's Tale by Robert Boenig

• 'Shot Wyndowe; (Miller's tale, I.3358 and 3695): An open and shut case? by Peter Brown

• Chaucer's The Cook's Tale by Olga Burakov

• Performing the Prioress: "Conscience" and responsibility in studies of Chaucer's Prioress's tale by Michael Calabrese

• The Desolate Palace and the Solitary City: Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Dante by Robert R. Edwards

• The Ending of Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale by P. J. C. Field

• Petrach, Boccaccio, and Chaucer's Clerk's Tale by John Finlayson

• "Little Troilus": Heroides 5 and its Ovidian contexts in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde by Jamie C. Fumo

• Faux Semblants: Antifraternalism Reconsidered in Jean de Meun and Chaucer by G. Geltner

• The Summoner's Jankyn as an Artifical Fool by Stephen Harper
  The Name of Chaucer's Miller by Carole Hough

• Pastoral Histories: Utopia, Conquest, and the Wife of Bath's Tale by Patricia Clare Ingham

• 'Loo, lordes myne, heere is a fit!': The Structure of Chaucer's Sir Thopas by E. A. Jones

• What Ails Chaucers' Cook? Spiritual Alchemy and the Ending of The Canterbury Tales by Michael Kensak

• Apollo exterminans: The God of Poetry in Chaucer's Manciple's Tale by Michael Kensak

• "Myne by right": Oath Making and Intent in The Friar's Tale by Daniel T. Kline

• "And riden in Belmarye": Chaucer's General Prologue, Line 57 by Jeanne Krochalis

• The Mercantile (Mis)reader in the Canterbury Tales by Roger A. Ladd

• The Laws of Community, Margery Kempe, and the "Canon's Yeoman's Tale" by James H. Landman

• Romancing Ethics in Boethius, Chaucer, and Levinas: Fortune, Moral Luck, and Erotic Adventure by J. Allan Mitchell

• Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and the Question of Ethical Monstrosity by J. Allan Mitchell

• Experience and the Judgement of Poetry: A Reconsideration of The Franklin's Tale by Gerald Morgan

• Hard Lords and Bad Food-service in the Monk's Tale by Scott Norsworthy

• Interpreting Female Agency and Responsibility in the Miller's Tale and the Merchant's Tale by Joseph D. Parry

• Chaucer's Rape, Southern Racism, and the Pedagogical Ethics of Authorial Malfeasance by Tison Pugh

• Queer Pandarus? Silence and Sexual Ambiguity in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde by Tison Pugh

• "The Summoner's Tale" and Proverbs 21.14 by Thomas Rand

• May in the Marketplace: Commodification and Textuality in the Merchant's Tale by Christian Sheridan

• Speech, Circumspection, and Orthodontics in the Manciple's Prologue and Tale and The Wife of Bath's Portrait by Mel Storm

• Public Fantasy and the Logic of Sacrifice in The Physician's Tale by Michael Uebel

• A Woman in the Mind's Eye (and not): Narrators and Gazes in Chaucer's Clerks's Tale by Robin Waugh

Academic Books

A generous new online publishing venture: The University of California E-Scholarship Editions. "University of California Press now offers electronic versions of almost all of its journal titles and over 1400 books online, many of them out of print." E-journals are available to subscriber institutions; 400 full texts, many covering medieval topics, are available to the general public; the rest to members of the UC community.

• UCalifornia E-Editions main page
  • Public Only Subject List
• UCalifornia E-Books
• UCalfornia E-Journals (Caliber)

A selection of Chaucer-related and medieval studies titles available to the general public include:

• Bloch, R. Howard, and Frances Ferguson, eds. Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.)
• Delaney, Sheila. The Naked Text: Chaucer and the Legend of Good Women (Berkeley: U of California P, 1994). 
• Hall, Edwin. Medieval Marriage and the Enigma of Van Eyck's Double Portrait. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1997). 
• Hanson, Elaine Tuttle. Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992).  
• Justice, Steven V. Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley: U of California P, 1994). 
• Kendrick, Laura. Chaucerian Play: Comedy and Control in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley: U of California P, 1988). 
• Leicester, H. Marshall. The Disenchanted Self: Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley: U of California P, 1990).
• Neuse, Richard. Chaucer's Dante: Allegory and Epic Theater in The Canterbury Tales. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1991). 

Use the Search function on the UCalifornia E-Editions main page to access the Chaucer-related texts.

R. A. Shoaf, editor of Exemplaria and pioneer in making scholarly articles on medieval studies available online, has issued an e-print of his book Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word: Money, Images, and Reference in Late Medieval Poetry (Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1983). Exemplaria also issues electronic "pre-prints" of select articles, so be sure to check regularly.

Frederick Martin's e-dissertation in progress, Pilgrimage in the Age of Schism: Chaucer, Sociological Poetics, and the Canterbury Tales (Tulane).

A major e-publishing venture, the 18 volume Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-21) is now online at Bartleby.com and offers substantive articles on all aspects of medieval literature.  In probably every case the opinions and findings of these older scholars has been superceded by recent investigations, but the CHMAL is still a grand resource and an important critical milestone (11,000 pages & 303 chapters)  featuring essays by important figures in medieval literary criticism.  See particularly 

• Vol. I: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO THE CYCLES OF ROMANCE, ed. by A. W. Ward & A. R. Waller. Chapters include 
  • The Beginnings
  • Runes and Manuscripts
  • Early National Poetry
  • Old English Christian Poetry
  • Latin Writings in England to the Time of Alfred
  • Alfred and the Old English Prose of his Reign
  • From Alfred to the Conquest
  • The Norman Conquest
  • Latin Chroniclers from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries
  • English Scholars of Paris and Franciscans of Oxford
  • The Norman Conquest
  • Arthurian Literature
  • Metrical Romances
  • The Pearl-Poet, by I. Gollancz
    1. Sources and Metre of Pearl
    2. Cleanness and Patience
    3. Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight
    4. Sources of Sir Gawayne
    5. The Question of Authorship
    6. Hypothetical Biography of the Poet
    7. Ralph Strode
    8. Huchoun of the Awle Ryale
    9. Erkenwald, etc.
  • Prosody & 
  • Language Change
    
• Vol. II: THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES, ed. by A. W. Ward & A. R. Waller. Chapters include:
  • Piers Plowman, by J. M. Manly
  • Chaucer, by George Saintsbury: 
    1. Chaucer’s Life
    2. Canon of Works
    3. Early Editions
    4. Tyrwhitt’s Recension
    5. Later Rearrangements
    6. The Romaunt of the Rose
    7. Early Poems
    8. Troilus and Criseyde
    9. The House of Fame
    10. The Legend of Good Women
    11. The Canterbury Tales
    12. Prose; The Astrolabe
    13. Boethius
    14. Minor Verse
    15. Chaucer’s Learning
    16. His Humour
    17. His Poetical Quality
    18. The Tale of Gamelyn (now regarded as not Chaucerian)
         
  • English Chaucerians, by George Saintsbury: 
    1. Lydgate
    2. Occleve
    3. Burgh
    4. George Ashby
    5. Henry Bradshaw
    6. George Ripley
    7. Thomas Norton
    8. Osbern Bokenam
    9. The Chaucerian Apocrypha
    10. The Tale of Beryn or The Second Merchant’s Tale
    11. La Belle Dame sans Merci
    12. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale
    13. The Assembly of Ladies
    14. The Flower and Leaf
    15. The Court of Love
         
  • John Gower, by G. C. Macaulay:
    1. His Life
    2. His Political Opinions
    3. His Literary Work
    4. The French Speculum Meditantis (Mirour de l’Omme)
    5. The Latin Vox Clamantis
    6. The English Confessio Amantis
    7. His Latest Works
  • Hawes
  • The Scottish Chaucerians, by G. Gregory Smith:

  1. James I
  2. The Kingis Quair
  3. The Influence of Chaucer
  4. Robert Henryson
  5. The Morall Fabillis of Esope
  6. The Testament of Cresseid
  7. Henryson’s Shorter Poems
  8. William Dunbar
  9. His Allegories
  10. The Grotesque in Dunbar
  11. His Prosodic Range
  12. Gavin Douglas
  13. The Palice of Honour
  14. King Hart
  15. The Aenied
  16. Douglas’s Medievalism
  17. Walter Kennedy

  • Religious Movements of the 14th Century
  • Early Printed Books
  • Ballads
  • Traditional English Song Collections, by Frederick Morgan Padelford
    1. Characteristics of Folk-poetry
    2. Minstrels’ Songs
    3. Carols, Sacred and Secular
    4. Spiritual Lullabies
    5. Didactic Songs
    6. Satires against Women
    7. Drinking Songs
    8. Love Songs
    9. Pre-Christian Festivals and May Poems
    10. Miscellaneous Songs
  • Anthologies
  • & Prose of the 15th Century

Please note:  Although this older criticism is substantial and important, any serious student must take into account more contemporary research. Many of these findings have been supplanted.

Other Studies

See Julia Bolton Holloway's original research, for as she says, "Poor Second Nun! Who thus becomes a true saint! Chaucer and his wife were honoured by the city of Norwich. Norwich and Lincoln shared in the blood libel tale Chaucer has the Prioress tell. Benedictine Carrow Priory, just outside Norwich walls, had just such a Prioress, who in Julian's time even harboured a murderer. I did a study of it, visited the remains, just the terribly grand Tudor house left that a later Prioress had built for herself there, and this research is on the web. What could help too is the essay on Julian and Judaism, as well as the essay on the Prioress and the Second Nun."

Michael Delahoyde considers "The Plan of the Canterbury Tales" (Washington State U).

Housed at the ORB, Peter G. Beidler's (Lehigh U) Backgrounds to Chaucer includes the following lectures:

1. Chaucer's Life
2. Thomas Becket (1118-1170)
3. The Black Prince (1330-1376)
4. Richard II (1367-1400)
5. The English Rising (1381)
6. Boethius (480-524)
7. Rape and Prostitution
8. Corrupt Clerics
9. John Wyclif (1324-1384)
10. The Art of Courtly Love (Twelfth Century)
11. The Plague (1348-1349)

Medieval Misconceptions (Stephen J. Harris, UMass and Bryon Grigsby, Centenary College) offers succinct essays on several topics, addressing widely misunderstood aspects of medieval life and culture:

• The Crusades (Jessalynn Bird)
• The Myth of the Mounted Knight (James Patterson)
• Medieval Medicine (Bryon L. Grigsby)
• Medieval Drama: Myths of Evolution, Pageant Wagons, and (lack of) Entertainment Value (Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby)
• Medieval Children (Sophie Oosterwijk)
• An Austere Age without Laughter (Michael George)
• Was the Medieval Church Corrupt? (Frans van Liere)
• The Round World (Julia Bolton Holloway)

The articles from Cultural Frictions: Medieval Cultural Studies in Post-Modern Contexts Conference Proceedings (27-28 October 1995, ed. Martin Irvine and Deborah Everhart) are available online: 

Unfolding the Middle Ages

• Vance Smith and Michael Uebel, "Leaving the Fold"
• Leslie Dunton-Downer, "The Horror of Culture"
• Robert Stein, "Medieval, Modern, Post-Modern: The Middle Ages in a Post-Modern Perspective"

Bounding Culture

• Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, "Masoch / Lancelotism"
• Steven F. Kruger, "Medieval Christian (Dis)identifications: Muslims and Jews in Guibert of Nogent"
• Kathleen Biddick, "English-America: Curricular Masks/Imperial Phantasmatics"

Queering Medieval Culture

• Robert L.A. Clark and Claire Sponsler, "Queer Play: The Cultural Work of Crossdressing in Medieval Drama"
• Glenn Burger, "Queer Performativity and the Natural in Chaucer's Physician's and Pardoner's Tales"
• Sarah Stanbury, "Visibility Politics in Chaucer's Knight's Tale"

The Circulation of Cultural Bodies

• Martin Irvine, "The Pen(is), Castration, and Subjectivity: Abelard's Negotiations of Gender"
• Andrew Galloway, "Private Selves and the Intellectual Marketplace in Late 14th Century England: The Case of the Two Usks"
• JoAnn Moran, "Homosexuality and the Romance of the Rose"

Harvard Classics (vol. 50) includes the following essay, now quite dated: What the Middle Ages Read, by Professor W. A. Neilson.

Book Reviews

Chaucer Book Reviews (Edwin Duncan, Towson State) from The Medieval Review, an online book review listserv from Western Michigan University. Reviewed books include:

• 96.01.05, Lerer, Chaucer and His Readers
• 96.03.02, Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer
• 96.03.03, Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer
• 96.10.03, Beidler, ed., Chaucer's The Wife of Bath
• 97.02.12, Calabrese, Chaucer's Ovidian Arts (Kennedy)
• 97.05.06, Minnis et. al., Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Shorter Poems (Wetherbee)
• 98.03.04, Higuchi, Studies in Chaucer's English (Eliason)
• 98.05.02, Wallace, Chaucerian Polity (Bishop)
• 98.06.08, Grudin, Chaucer and the Politics of Discourse (Davidson)
• 98.07.10, Cox, Gender and Language in Chaucer (Sturges)
• 98.08.06, Howes, Chaucer's Gardens (Martin)
• 98.08.08, Rigby, Chaucer in Context (Kaminsky)
• 98.10.08, Bisson, Chaucer and the Late Medieval World (Rigby)
• 99.02.13, Andretta, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (Utz)
• 99.03.09, Cullen, Chaucer's Host (Parry)
• 99.06.08, Davenport, Chaucer and His English Contemporaries (Evans)
• 99.06.09, McGerr, Chaucer's Open Books (Parry)
• 99.10.02, Percival, Chaucer's Legendary Good Women (Vaughan)
• 99.10.06, Russell, Chaucer and the Trivium (Roney)
• 00.01.03, Obst, Die Sprache Chaucers (Utz)
• 00.02.07, Pinti, ed., Writing After Chaucer (McGavin)
• 00.03.21, Condren, Chaucer and the Energy of Creation (Hanning)
• 00.06.01, Cullen, Pilgrim Chaucer (Trigg)
• 01.02.05, McGavin, Chaucer and Dissimilarity (Russell)
• 02.03.23, Schildgen, Pagans, Tartars, Moslems, and Jews in Chaucer's (Utz)
• 02.09.12, Pope, How to Study Chaucer (Evans)
• 03.01.22, Chaucer, A Treatise on the Astrolabe, ed. Eisner (Laird)
• 03.02.16, Braswell, Chaucer's "Legal Fiction" (Gravlee)
• 03.03.29, Swanton, English Poetry before Chaucer (Yager)
• 03.10.03, Burger, Chaucer's Queer Nation (Drake)
• 04.10.01, Horobin, The Language of the Chaucer Tradition (Harding)
• 04.12.04, Delany, ed., Chaucer and the Jews (Schildgen)
• 05.01.08, Boitani & Mann, eds., Cambridge Companion to Chaucer (Scott Lightsey)
• 05.01.09, Utz, Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology (Frakes)
• 05.03.05, Gray, ed., Oxford Companion to Chaucer (Kuczynski)
• 05.08.07, Prendergast, Chaucer's Dead Body (Fredell)
• 06.02.25, Carlson, Chaucer's Jobs (Akbari)
• 06.06.12, Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, trans. Glaser (Bishop)

You can also search The Medieval Review directly.

7.  Student Projects & Essays

Anniina Jokkinen's strikingly beautiful and highly useful Luminarium includes a substantial list of professional and student essays on a number of medieval authors, and individual pages on, Chaucer, the Gawain Poet, Langland, Margery Kempe, and Julian of Norwich. Her Essays and Articles on Chaucer contains both professional and student essays. As with any source, the quality of online materials must be closely assessed before being used for college level work.

Two Auburn students (Christopher Davis and Crystal Wilson) put together Chaucer and Death in Medieval England for a senior level Chaucer course with R. James Goldstein.

Goucher College Chaucer Seminars Annotated Bibliography of Chaucer Criticism, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001 (Arnie Sanders, Goucher College) offers thorough, student generated summaries of a number of current articles, mostly from The Chaucer Review. A really nice example of critical classroom pedagogy.

Chaucer Meets the YouTube Generation

From the YouTube Generation, a number of new video projects based upon Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales have begun to appear. I include them here less as an approval of their scholarly quality than an appreciation of their creativity and Chaucerian high spirits.

• In many cases, these efforts coincide with Matthew Arnold's appraisal (not shared by most Chaucerians, I'd guess) that Chaucer lacked "high seriousness."

• In other words, be warned! Feast your eyes and ears upon . . .

Individual Tales

• 2nd Nun's Tale: This is one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It is slightly abridged in order to add comedy (8:58).
• The Franklin's Tale: Amazing acting, rockin' techno beats and good times... Chaucer at it's finest. for AP English 2004 (8:57).
• G. Chaucer: Great movie made with great friends about some tales (6:59). [A take on the Pardoner's Tale.]
• Girlfriend of Wash: Parody of the Wife of Bath (9:15).
• The Merchant's Tale: North Hollywood High School 10th grade; Chaucer's "The Merchant's Tale," interpreted in the modern scene (7:35).
• The Miller's Tale: A Film Noir Love Story (16:40).
• Physician's Tale: a modernization of one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales by a couple of my friends and i (5:37).
• The Physician's Tale: Video for Mr. McKnight (3:02).
• Reading Rainbow: The Lost Episode: This is a spoof of Reading Rainbow that I did for the Medieval Festival at my college. It consists of LeVar Burton retelling the Reeve's tale. If you don't think that's funny, go read the Canterbury tales right now. Please note: Anti-semitic remarks occur in this film, but are present only to reflect upon Chaucer's character, the Prioress (4:41).
• Wife of Bath: A modern interpretation of Geoffrey Chaucer's Wife of Bath (9:56).

• Gap teeth: Damn that Chaucer fellow! (0:24).

• Chaucer: A college project about Chaucer by Schwofield.com (9:06).

• Chaucer: A Man, A Dream, A Legend: Video about Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the Canterbury Tales...a little exaggerated (2:47). [Fine use of Legos!]

• Chaucer School Project: A little video that my friend Kaity and I made for English class. It's our take on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: The Summoner's Tale (5:24).

• Chaucer: Undead in the 'Burbs: low tech, low budget zombie film (8:53).

• Bill Bailey-Chaucer Pubbe Gagge: Bill Bailey does a pub gag in the style of chaucer, very good, forget where i nicked this from but sorry if its yours! (1:59).

• A Canterbury Tale: This is a school project for British Literature... Umm, don't ask about it's relevance to Chaucer because there isn't much there (2:54). [Using Rockwell Kent's images creatively.]

• Canterbury Tales Remix: The 10th anniversary of the Canterbury Tales (5:57).

• ehap: Woman of Bath (5:35).

Chaucer Readings

• Reading of House of Fame by Chaucer: As part of annual Celebration of Chaucer's life, a reading of the 'House of Fame' was performed by Alison (3:00).

• Chaucer's Wife of Bath read by Dolores: As part of the 2006 Celebration of Chaucer's life Dolores (author of 3 books on the Canterbury Tales), read from his 'Wife of Bath' (3:29).

Descriptions by contributors. [My comments in square brackets.]

8.  Online Bibliography

9.  Chaucer Syllabi& Medieval Course Descriptions

• An Sonjae's (Brother Anthony) English 12-160: Studies in Chaucer course page at Sogang University, Seoul, offers the very helpful Geoffrey Chaucer: An Overall Survey.

• Laurel Amtower's ENGL 530: Chaucer at San Diego State University

• Melissa D. Aaron's English 401: Chaucer at CSU Pomona

• Alan Baragona's Chaucer Page at Virginia Military Institute

• Larry Benson's Canterbury Tales Page at Harvard University.   For easy access, see Texts and General Subjects on the Harvard Chaucer Page

• Lawrence Besserman's Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales at Hebrew University of Jerusalem  

• Jennifer Bryan's English 201: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales at Oberlin College 

• Jane Chance's English 316: Chaucer page at Rice University

• Pam Clements' English 300: Chaucer at Siena College

• Susan Crane's  ENGL W3261 English Literature to 1500 at Columbia University

• James M. Dean's English 322: Chaucer page at the University of Delaware.  Also see his graduate syllabus.

• Michael Delahoyde's English 383 page at Washington State University

• Edwin Duncan's Chaucer Page at Towson State U

• Brian Gastle's English 420: Chaucer and His Age at Western Carolina University

• R. James Goldstein's English 4300: Chaucer page at Auburn University

• Joan Haahr's English 2315: Chaucer page at Yeshiva University

• Michael Hanley's Chaucer Scriptorium at Washington State University

• Carol Harding's ENG 447/547: Major Writers - Chaucer at Western Oregon University

• Susan Hanson's English 275: The Suburbs, From Chaucer to South Park at Ohio State University

• Margaret Hostetler's Chaucer and His Age page at UWisc-Oshkosh

• James Hunter's English English 430 course page at Edgewood College, Madison, WI

• Carol Jamison's Chaucer: A Web Enhanced Course at Armstrong Atlantic State University

• Kevin Kiernan's English 720: Chaucer Seminar, Electronic Editing at the University of Kentucky.  See also his English 421 page

• Jo Koster's English 511: Chaucer page at Winthrop University

• Scott Kleinman's  English 414: Chaucer at Cal State Northridge

• Dan Kline's English 421: Chaucer at the U of Alaska Anchorage

• J. Lionaron's English 329: Chaucer and His Contemporaries at Ursinus College

• Jean Lorrah's English 500: Chaucer at Murray State U

• Jack Lynch's English 9, "From Epic to Hypertext" at the U of Pennsylvania

• Kathryn L. Lynch's English 213: Chaucer at Wellesley College

• Dhira B. Mahoney's English 417/545: Chaucer, Minor Poems and Troilus & Criseyde at Arizona State U

• Maud McInerney's English 201: The Canterbury Tales at Haverford College

• Melinda Menzer's English 60S: Chaucer page at Furman U

• 21L.460 Medieval Literature: Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer from MIT Open Course Ware at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Karen Moranski's  ENG 401: Chaucer at U of Illinois - Springfield

• Dan Mosser's WWW Medieval Resources page at Virginia Tech U

• Tamara O'Callaghan's English 401: Chaucer at Northern Kentucky U

• Michael O'Connell's English 152A: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales page at UC Santa Barbara

• Gerard NeCastro's English 451: Chaucer at U of Maine Machias

• Richard Newhauser's English 4301: Chaucer's Narrative Art - The Canterbury Tales at Trinity U

• Anita Obermeier's English 581: Chaucer's Women page at the U of New Mexico

• Teresa Reed's English 401: Chaucer page at Jacksonville State U

• Thomas Reed's English 390: Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales at Dickinson College

• Philip Rusche's ENG 422/622 Chaucer at U of Nevada Las Vegas

• Arnie Saunders's English 330: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales page at Goucher College

• Deborah B. Schwart's ENGL 430: Chaucer at Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo

• Myra Seaman's English 304: Chaucer at the College of Charleston

• Gail B. Sherman's English 301: Junior Seminar at Reed College

• R. A Shoaf's ENL 4311: Chaucer at the U of Florida  

• Claire Sponsler's Chaucer 8: 071, The Canterbury Tales at the U of Iowa

• M. Sundaram's ENG 300Y: Chaucer at the University of Toronto

• Paul E. Szarmach's English 555: Chaucer at Western Michigan University

• Tess Tavormina's ENG 410: Chaucer page at  Michigan State University

• Linda Voigts' Engelond: Resources for 14th Century English Studies at UMissouri - Kansas City

• David Wallace's English 25: Chaucer at U of Pennsylvania

• L. Kip Wheeler's Medieval Literature Resources includes a Chaucer course, at Carson-Newman College

• David Wilson-Okamura's English 62-01 site at Macalester College

• Susan Yager's Chaucer Page at Iowa State U

• Jane Zatta's Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales at Southern Illinois U - Edwardsville

Related Medieval Studies Course & Web Pages

• Don Adams (Central Connecticut) offers brief discussions of key medieval philosophers on his Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy course page.

• Paul Halsall's excellent HSRU 1300: Medieval History (Fordham) course page is a fully hyperlinked introduction to the period, including Islamic, Byzantine, and Iberian developments as well Latin Christendom. A feast of primary sources and solid lecture notes.

• R.J. Kilcullen's very fine PHIL 252: Medieval Philosophy and PHIL 360: Later Medieval Philosophy course pages (Macquarrie U) offer a detailed Reading Guide to Boethius's Consolation as well as a number of other introductory (and downloadable!) lectures, notes, and primary texts for figures like Abelard, Aquinas, Anselm, Averroes, Ockham, Scotus, & Wycliffe.   See particularly his concise Medieval Philosophy: An Introduction.

• See Dan Mosser's History of the English Language Website for online resources in historical linguistics. See also the International Phonetic Association's website.

• Steve Muhlberg's  Medieval England, History 2425 offers a variety of resources (Nipissing U).

• See Steven Reimer's excellent online course, Manuscript Studies: Medieval and Early Modern (U of Alberta), for an excellent introduction and overview to the composition and development of medieval texts.

• Gary Rich's sublime Ars Subtilior. Music of the Late Medieval period and the generous list of links there.

10.  Images & Multimedia

• Chaucer Images
• Images from the Canterbury Tales
• Images from Other Medieval Texts
• Images of Historical, Architectural, & Cultural Artifacts & Places
• Collections of Medieval Images

Chaucer Images

• See the famous portrait of Chaucer addressing the court of Richard II from the frontispiece of Troilus and Criseyde in CCCC MS 61 (c. 1399-1413, courtesy of James Simpson, Cambridge).
• See Thomas Hoccleve's portrait of Chaucer from the Regiment of Princes (1412) (Larry Benson, Harvard).
• See Chaucer's Portrait from the famous Ellesmere manuscript (Ellesmere 26 C 9, Huntington Library, San Marino, California).

Images from the Canterbury Tales

• The Canterbury Tales (England, 1476), MS Hunter 197 (U.1.1)
• Thomas Godfrey (London, 1532), The workes of Geffray Chaucer newly printed, with dyuers workes whiche were never in print before (ed. Thynne), Hunterian Bs.2.17
• Richard Pynson (London, 1492), The Canterbury Tales, Hunterian Bv.2.12
• Richard Pynson (London, 1526), The Boke of Caunterbury Tales with The Boke of Fame and The Boke of Troylus and Creseyde, Hunterian Bv.2.6
• An ABC (England, 15th Century), MS Hunter 239 (U.3.12)
• The Romaunt of the Rose (England, c.1440), MS Hunter 409 (V.3.7)

The B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library at Long Island University has made available a number of images of the stunningly beautiful Ellesmere ms:

• The wordes of the hooste to the compaignye
• A leaf from the Parson's Tale
• A leaf from the Knight's Tale
• Another leaf from the Knight's Tale
• The prologe to the Clerkes Tale of Oxenford
• A leaf from the Wife of Bath's Prologue
• A leaf from the Frankelyn's Tale
• Another leaf from the Parson's Tale

You can easily see difference in quality of the El ms as compared to most other pre-1500 Chaucer ms. 

The British Library has generously made available a stunning online resource, Treasures in Full: Caxton's Chaucer. You can examine the two Caxton editions of The Canterbury Tales (1476 and 1483) individually or compare them tale by tale. Transcriptions of these images can then be examined folio by folio in Barbara Bordalejo's online edition (Canterbury Tales Project, De Montfort University). See also at this site:

• Caxton's Life
• Caxton's Texts
• Caxton in the British Library
• Caxton's England
• Caxton's Technologies

The University of Wisc - Milwaukee has put together a beautiful collection of important Canterbury Tales manuscripts and printed editions in the series Geoffrey Chaucer | The Canterbury Tales, The Classic Text: Traditions and Interpretations.   This guided tour through the history of Canterbury Tales editions includes images from the Ellesmere Chaucer (1400-05), Cambridge MS Gg.4.27 (1410-15), Caxton (1478), Wight (1561), Lintot (1721), Tyrwhitt (1786), Pickering (1852), Kelmscott (1896), through a number of rare modern editions.  A very handsome exhibit and case study in the history of the book.

Images from Other Medieval Texts

Images of Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS. 198, an important 15th century Canterbury Tales manuscript, is now available online (Oxford U). 

The Digital Scriptorium (Berkeley SUNSITE), still in its test stage, promises to be a significant project.

Early Manuscripts at Oxford University houses digital facsimiles of a number of beautiful ancient and medieval texts.

Images of Historical, Architectural, and Cultural Artifacts and Places

• The "pilgrim steps" leading to Thomas Becket's tomb at Caterbury Cathedral (Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Loyola, Maryland).
• Stained glass image of St. Thomas Becket (Canterbury Cathedral, 13th century) (Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Loyola, Maryland).

Joshua Merrill's From Gatehouse to Cathedral: A Photographic Pilgrimage to Chaucerian Landmarks is a lovely photo essay (with annotations) of the Canterbury route and the places and things the medieval pilgrims might have encountered. An excellent resource for visualizing the sites and sounds of medieval England.

Hanley's Image Archive (Michael Hanley, UWashington). Photos of Canterbury Cathedral, including a very fine image of the cathedral floor plan.

Monarchs and Monasteries: Knowledge and Power in Medieval France (late 8th -- late 15th centuries), from the Treasures from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, displays a number of wonderful images from the BNF's extensive holdings. Part of the exhibition, Creating French Culture: Treasuries from the Treasures from the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Epact is a beautiful electronic catalogue of 520 medieval and renaissance scientific instruments from four European museums: the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence , the British Museum, London, and the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden. With full cataloguing information and supporting scholarly apparatus. Beautiful images of "astrolabes, armillary spheres, sundials, quadrants, nocturnals, compendia, surveying instruments, and so on."

Collections of Medieval Images

A Hundred Highlights from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Dutch Royal Library) houses a number of glorious medieval (and post medieval) images:

• Mediaeval manuscripts and illumination
• Block books and (post-)incunabula
• Literature until 1800

Choix de miniatures des manuscrits de l'Université de Liège offers a number of high quality scans.

Bodleian Library (Images from Western European manuscripts from the 11th-17th centuries.) Really beautiful images.

Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (U of Chicago), one of the most beautiful of medieval books, is "a medieval book of hours. This was a collection of the text for each liturgical hour of the day - hence the name - which often included other, supplementary, texts. Calendars, prayers, psalms and masses for certain holy days were commonly included." Accessible by month of the year.

The Hill Monastic Manuscript Library is one of the largest medieval and Renaissance archives in the world whose aim is to microfilm all the premodern libraries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

• Hill Monastic Manuscript Library Search page

Literary texts were only one aspect of medieval culture and piety; literary texts can be profitably read alongside of visual texts.  Medieval Wall Painting in the Medieval Parish Church (Anne Marshall, Open University, UK) is an absolutely stunning collection of religious images from across England. From Prof. Marshall's page: "This site represents the continuing development of what may one day become a comprehensive catalogue. Vast quantities of Medieval Wall Painting have been lost forever, of course, but there is nevertheless more left on English church walls than is generally realised; paintings continue to be uncovered and more still are known to exist under layers of plaster. Some of these will come to light one day; in fact some are already doing so, . . . "

Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi "is an international research project dedicated to the publication of medieval stained glass. Founded in 1949, the CVMA has committees in fourteen countries and over sixty-five volumes have been published so far." See their stunning (and free!) digital picture archive of over 13,000 images. You can search for images by County Index, County Map, Location Index, or a Search Form. Just as an example, Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, is represented by 972 images, each identified by a Description, Window, and Panel (within the window). A valuable and well produced site.

The English Heritage website is the best single online portal to the remaining material culture of medieval England. A recent general search under "medieval" yielded 371 hits, including:

• A Medieval Merchant's House (Hampshire)
• The Lincoln Medieval Bishops' Palace (Lincolnshire)
• The famous Wharram Percy Deserted Medieval Village (North Yorkshire)
• The Bradford-on-Avon Tithe Barn (Wiltshire), Prior's Hall Barn, Widdington (Essex), & the Leigh Court Barn (Worcestershire)
• The Kirkham House (Devon)
• The Chapter House & Pyx Chamber, Westminster Abbey (London)
• The remains of Whitby Abbey (North Yorkshire) & Rievaulx Abbey (North Yorkshire)
• The remains of Tintagel Castle (Cornwall) & Kenilworth Castle (Warwickshire)

"The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) supports research, learning and teaching with high quality and dependable digital resources." The ADS site is a great portal to a variety of high quality, nationally supported web resources that often (though not exclusively) relate to medieval history and culture.The ADS houses a number of official reports, including digital images, of medieval archaeological sites around Great Britain, like

• The Greater London Sites and Monuments Record (GLSMR), "a computerised record of information relating to historic buildings and archaeological sites in the Greater London area."
• "The record of England's archaeological and architectural sites held by the National Monuments Record (NMR) contains over 400,000 records. It encompasses the historic environment in its widest sense and includes archaeological, architectural and historical sites from earliest times to the present day, covering England and its territorial waters."
• "The York Archive Gazeteer contains records of nearly 1,000 excavations and watching briefs undertaken by the York Archaeological Trust since 1972. The gazeteer gives a brief description of the archaeology found at the sites and the type and period of the major archaeological features encountered."
• Search the Archaeological Date Service by resource.

11.  Audio Files & Language Helps

This heading contains the following sections:

• General Audio Resources
• Audio Files from the General Prologue
• Audio Files from the Canterbury Tales
• Audio Files from the Dream Visions and Shorter Poems
• Language Helps
• Chaucer Studio Recordings

General Audio Resources

From the unparalleled Geoffrey Chaucer Page at Harvard: Teach Yourself to Read Chaucer's Middle English, which includes the following lessons:

• Introduction
• Lesson 1, The General Prologue, 1-18
• Lesson 2, Pronouncing Chaucer's Middle English
• Lesson 3, Chaucer's Final -e
• Lesson 4, Chaucer's Vocabulary
• Lesson 5, Chaucer's Grammar
• Lesson 6, The Shipman's Tale
• Lesson 7, The General Prologue
• Lesson 8, The Knight's Tale
• Lesson 9, The Miller's, Reeve's, and Cook's Tales
• Lesson 10, Reading More Tales
• List of Self-Tests

See Music of the Fourteenth Century (Alan Baragona & Peter Schwob, VMI) for .midi samples of common medieval musical forms.  Their page will also then refer you to Gary Rich's sublime Ars Subtilior. Music of the late Medieval period.

"The Crying and the Soun": The Chaucer Metapage Audio Files, compiled by Alan Baragona (VMI), offers a number of different web linked audio files of Chaucerian readings from the Canterbury Tales and other texts in Middle English. Requires RealPlayer 7, a free browser plug in. To date, Prof. Baragona has archived:

From the General Prologue:

• General Prologue (A.1-34), read by Alan Baragona (VMI) .
• General Prologue (A.1-18), read by Jess B. Bessinger, (from the old Caedmon Recording). 
• General Prologue (A.1-18), read by Tom Hanks (Baylor).
• General Prologue (A.1-14), read by Jane Zatta (SIU-Edwardsville).
• General Prologue, The Knight's Portrait (A.43-78), read by Alan Baragona.
• General Prologue, The Prioress's Portrait (A.118-62), read by Alan Baragona. 
• General Prologue, The Wife of Bath's Portrait (A.445-76, from Fisher's edition), read by Tom Farrell (Stetson U). 
• General Prologue, The Miller's Portrait (A.545-66), read by Alfred David (Indiana U). 

From the Canterbury Tales:

• Knight's Tale, the Tournament (A.2604-18, from Fisher), read by Tom Farrell.  
• Miller's Prologue (A. 3109-86), read by Alan Baragona. 
• Miller's Tale, Nicholas Seduces Alisoun (A.3271-3306), read by Alfred David. 
• Wife of Bath's Prologue (D.1-22), read by Marie Borroff (Yale). 
• Wife of Bath's Tale, The Wedding Night (D.1073-1124) read by Alan Baragona. 
• Envoy to The Clerk's Tale (D.11-77-1212 & 121a-g), read by Alan Baragona. 
• Pardoner's Tale, the Rioters Meet the Old Man (C.716-49), read by Alfred David.
• Nun's Priest's Tale, Chauntecleer Describes Pertelote's Beauty (B2.3157-86), read by Alfred David. 
• Nun's Priest's Tale, the Ending (B2.3375-3446), read by Alan Baragona.

From the Dream Visions and Shorter Poems:

• House of Fame, the Eagle's Summation (ll. 848-869), read by Tom Farrell (Stetson U). 
• The Closing of Troilus and Criseyde (V.1828-1841), read by Tom Farrell. 
• "To Adam Scryven," read by Tom Farrell (from Fisher).
• "Lak of Stedfastnesse," read by Alan Baragona. 
• "Gentilesse," read by Alan Baragona. 
• "To Rosemounde," read by Alan Baragona. 

The Chaucer Studio (Paul Thomas, Brigham Young U) offers a variety of reasonably priced cassette tapes of medieval texts in the original dialects, including most of the Canterbury Tales.  A great teaching tool; great for polishing your own pronunciation; and great for hearing the music of the Middle English. Find sample audio files of the Canterbury Tales.

Language Helps

Edwin Duncan (Towson State) has put together a handy list of the most used Middle English words in his Basic Chaucer Glossary.

The oft-noted but never fully explained phenomenon known as "The Great Vowel Shift" is described at the Harvard Chaucer Page.  Essential for understanding Chaucerian pronunciation.

Chaucer's Pronunciation, Grammar, and Vocabulary (Harvard Chaucer Page) is a fifteen part tutorial--thirteen on pronunciation and two on grammar and vocabulary. Highly recommended for students beginning their study of Middle English.

Middle English Pronunciation Guidelines (Teresa Reed, Jacksonville State U) provides an introductory overview of pronunciation rules.  Includes sound files illustrating correct pronunciation.

Glossarial DataBase of Middle English (Larry D. Benson, Harvard Chaucer Page) is a searchable index of Middle English grammatical forms in context.   See also the Middle English Glossarial Database at Harvard.  Recommended for advanced users.

Melinda J. Menzer (Furman U) has put together a whiz-bang multimedia demonstration and explanation of the Great Vowel Shift. Requires Quicktime.

An excellent introductory hyperlinked essay on The English Language in the Fourteenth Century (Harvard Chaucer Page).

  The English Language in the Fourteenth Century (Harvard Chaucer Page) is a fine essay on the varieties of English spoken and written during Chaucer's era.

  The Introduction to Michael Murphy's modernized  Reader-Friendly Edition of the General Prologue and Sixteen Tales provides a brief overview of Chaucer's career and an easy to follow elaboration of the nuances of Middle English poetics and pronunciation. Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Chaucer Studio Recordings

The best site for professionally done, academically sound, authentic recordings of Chaucer's Middle English is BYU's Chaucer Studio. The cassettes & CDs are inexpensive and first rate. The available titles in the Canterbury Tales include:

The General Prologue (Occasional Readings 8) (.wav, 204KB)

• Recorded at Brigham Young University, 1990, and published originally by York Productions; jointly published with the Chaucer Studio in 1994. Read by Paul R. Thomas.

The Knight's Tale (Occasional Readings 13) (.wav, 216KB)

• Recorded at Dartmouth College, Hanover, 1994.Read by Alan T. Gaylord.

Sir Thopas: Two Readings (NCS Readings 2) (.wav, 190KB) 

• Recorded at the 6th International Congress of the New Chaucer Society, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 1988.
• Side 1 (Monologue): Read by Bennett J. Lamond (as Chaucer).
• Side 2 (Dramatized): Bennett J. Lamond (Chaucer), Robert Worth Frank Jr.(Host), Richard Firth Green (Sir Thopas), Paul R. Thomas (Sir Olifaunt).

The Merchant's Tale (NCS Readings 3) (.wav, 160KB)

• Recorded at the 6th International Congress of the New Chaucer Society, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 1988.
• Readers: Emerson Brown Jr. (Merchant), Bennett J. Lamond (Chaucer), Robert Worth Frank Jr. (Host), D. Thomas Hanks Jr. (January), Tom Burton (Placebo), Richard Firth Green (Justinus), Paul R. Thomas (Damyan), Susan Crane (May), John Burrow (Pluto), Jane Chance (Proserpyne).

12.  Potpourri

Although a commercial site, billyandcharlie.com, specialists in pewter, has affordable and lovely modern reproductions of pilgrim badges and ampullae from medieval Canterbury, including:

• The Head of Thomas a Becket
• The Sword the Killed Becket
• The St. Thomas Qutrefoil
• Large Becket Ampulla

I receive no royalties from billyandcharlie.com sales, unfortunately.

The Medieval Fiefdom Website (Thinkquest) is a graphics rich site that takes advantage of the latest web technologies (VRML, etc.) to help especially younger students visualize the material and social culture of the Middle Ages. Very nice.

Using a clickable map and 500 webpages, Peter Collinson's Canterbury Tour presents a virtual geography of Canterbury that places the viewer in the midst of town by offering both "front" and "back" views of the different locales.  Another excellent resource for making the place of Chaucer's Tales come alive.

Read about the most expensive book in the world:  Caxton's first edition of the Canterbury Tales (c. 1476-77) was auctioned at Sotheby's for $7.5 million in July 1998!

Geoffrey Chaucer & Co., an acting troupe, "is pioneering the staging of ALL 24 Canterbury Tales . . . fully enacted in modern English. Tailor fit original music underscores each theatrical piece by Bay Area award-winning composer John Geist."

See a page by page digitization of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, retold by Katharine Lee Bates, illus. by Angus MacDonall (Chicago:  Rand McNally, 1914) at the Making of America site (UMichigan).

13.  The Next Step