Daniel T. Kline | U of Alaska Anchorage
Chaucer Pedagogy Page | Kankedort Page | Chaucer Metapage

See the Electronic Canterbury Tales Recommended Books Below

Web Resources by Tale 

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

Additional Resources Electronic Canterbury Tales

Chaucer the Narrator - Pilgrim

Chaucer's "Orphan" Pilgrims

The Frame Tale, Later Continuations,& Apocrypha

Troilus and Criseyde

Teaching Resources

The Chaucer Pedagogy Documentation Primer

The Chaucer Pedagogy Page

Electronic Chaucer Texts: What's Available Online?

Chaucer in / and Popular Culture

About This Website

ECT Revision History: What's New?

Headings, Organization, & Criteria for Inclusion

Schools, Programs, and Local & Regional Organizations

• Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

• Delaware Valley Medieval Association

• Illinois Medieval Association

• International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA)

• International Medieval Institute, University of Leeds

• The Lollard Society

• Medieval Association of the Midwest

• Medieval Association of the Pacific

• The Medieval Club of New York

• Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo)

• Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society

• Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (U of Toronto)

• Southeastern Medieval Association

• 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
• Early Theatre: A Journal Associated with the Records of Early English Drama
• Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature
• Essays in Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association
• Exemplaria
• In Parentheses: Papers in Medieval Studies
• Mediaevalia
• 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

• Other Medieval Listservs

• Other Literary Networks

• Networks in the Humanities

• Liszt - An Index to Networks on All Subjects

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

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What's new? See the ECT's revision history for what's new. Last revision on on 03.26.04.  

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

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

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

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

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

What You'll Find

• At this website, 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 Tale.
• 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.

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

1.  The Canterbury Tales In Middle English

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.

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 Ellesmere ms (El) is the other important early edition.

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.

2.  The Canterbury Tales In Translation

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.

• Although 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.

Index to the Rolls Series (99 volumes), with annotations (Steven H. Silver).  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.

Lynn H. Nelson, a respected University of Kansas historian, has generously provided a full series of online lectures from his History 108 course at his Medieval Lecture List website.  See, for example:

• The Rise of Christianity & The Development of the Western Church
• The Advent of the Germans & The Rise of the Franks
• Three Views of Feudalism & The Feudalization of the Church
• The Revival of Commerce and Towns
• The Great Famine and the Black Death & The Great Schism
• More than 50 lectures, directed toward a freshman audience.  Not to be missed.

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." 

Seafarer: A Voyage through the Worlds of Medieval England (Allen J. Frantzen, Loyola - Chicago) is an excellent, information packed website featuring original inter-related "modules" on a number of cultural issues: the Book, Children, Class, Labor, Magic, Medicine, Monastery, Monastic Life, Navigation, Penance, and Rank. Frames

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

  Norton Topics Online, the WWW companion to the ever-popular two-volume Norton Anthology of British Literature, provides material on The Middle Ages (Alfred David, Indiana University).

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.

Guide to Medieval Terms (ORB), an alphabetized list of technical terms related to the Middle Ages.

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 Ecole Initiative (U of Evansville) aim is to create "a hypertext encyclopedia of early church history on the world-wide web" and has extensive links to material from the ancient period to 1500. A couple of the more interesting aspects of this site is the the Ecole Chronology Project, a time-line creation feature, which is built around a clickable map of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, and a very extensive set of image links.

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 (Rhodes College)
• Voice of the Shuttle (Alan Liu, UCSB): The starting point for humanities research on the www.  Some dead links lately though.

4.  Sources, Analogues, & Related Texts

• 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

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!

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.

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.

Lawrence Warner's excellent William Langland Home Page (UPenn) is the WWW starting point for research on Chaucer's contemporary and author of the great Piers Plowman. David Wilson-Okamura (Macalester U) has outlined the B-Text of Piers.

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.
• Non-academic but helpful nonetheless is the website Aesop's Fables:  Online Collection (John R. Long).
• 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 (gopher), and the Douay-Rheims Bible, an English translation of the Vulgate and the best translation to cite when you're working with medieval texts.

  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.

Theological Sources

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.

Websites Devoted to 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.

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

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.

Barron's Notes on the Canterbury Tales is downloadable in a single file (177 Kb). Download and then copy to a word processing program to read.

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.

6.  Online Articles and Books

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 University of California Press has initiated a new online venture entitled the U of California Press E-Scholarship Editions, which makes available to the general public the full text of 300 or so important academic studies, including: 

• Elaine Tuttle Hanson's Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992). Available online at <http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft2s2004t2/>.   
• Richard Neuse's Chaucer's Dante: Allegory and Epic Theater in The Canterbury Tales. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1991). Available online at >http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ ft1f59n7bw/>.
• R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson's collection, Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1989). Available online at <http://ark.cdlib.org/ ark:/13030/ft809nb586/> and includes Bloch's influential essay "Medieval Misogyny."

Many more titles are available to UC faculty and students.

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. Essays 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
  • Prosody, and 
  • Language Change
    
• Vol. II: THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES, ed. by A. W. Ward & A. R. Waller. Essays include:
  • Piers Plowman
  • Chaucer
  • Gower
  • Hawes
  • The Scottish Chaucerians
  • Religious Movements of the 14th Century
  • Early Printed Books
  • Ballads
  • Songs
  • Anthologies, 
  • and 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. 

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

Essays in Medieval Studies, full-text articles from the proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, edited by Allen J. Frantzen (Loyola - Chicago). After the 2002 volume, new issues of EMS will be available only through subscription to Johns Hopkins Project Muse online journal service.

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

The articles from Cultural Frictions: Medieval Cultural Studies in Post-Modern Contexts Conference Proceedings (27-28 October 1995) are available online. Contributors include Steven F. Kruger, Kathleen Biddick, Robert Clark and Claire Sponsler, Sarah Stanbury, Andrew Galloway, Paul Strohm, and other noted medievalists.

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).

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. Jokkinen also compiles a number of resources by Canterbury Tale: 

• The Knight's Tale
• The Miller's Tale
• The Reeve's Tale
• The Cook's Tale
• The Wife of Bath's Tale
• The Friar's Tale
• The Man of Law's Tale
• The Parson's Tale
• The Nun's Priest's Tale
• The Pardoner's Tale
• The Prioress's Tale

As with any source, the quality of online materials must be closely assessed before being used for college level work.

Brief summaries (by Tom Tobias, an undergraduate student at VPI) of the General Prologue and each tale are available at the San Antonio College LitWeb site.

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.

8.  Online Bibliography

The Medieval Review (TMR) Reviews of Recent Books about Chaucer (Links to the books reviewed in The Medieval Review, compiled by Edwin Duncan, Towson U.)

The Chaucer Review: An Indexed Bibliography, vols. 1-30  (Peter Beidler, Lehigh U. & Martha Kalnin, Baylor U).

• Originally published as the April 1997 issue of Chaucer Review and now put into html, this website provides a searchable list of all of the nearly 800 articles that have appeared in Chaucer Review, and, more important, a subject index to all of those articles. Excellent, and an invaluable resource.

The Online Chaucer Bibliography (Mark E. Allen, UT San Antonio) is from Studies in the Age of Chaucer and the New Chaucer Society. Another excellent project. Searchable by keyword and other Boolean terms.

The Essential Chaucer (Mark E. Allen, UT San Antonio and John H. Fisher, UTennessee). This selective, annotated bibliography of Chaucer studies from 1900-1984 is divided into almost 90 topics, including themes, techniques, and individual works by Chaucer.  An invaluable starting point. See the Table of Contents or check a few of the entries here:

• General Treatments
• Editions
• Manuscripts and Texts
• Canon, Apocrypha, and Lost Works
• Contemporary Social Conditions
• The Persona

Canterbury Tales / General

• Canterbury Tales--General
• CT-Evolution and Order
• CT-Frame and Structure
• CT-Pilgrimage
• CT-Genres, Including Fabliaux
• CT-Marriage Argument
• CT-The Host
• CT-Names Pilgrims, and Pilgrims without Tales

Canterbury Tales / By Tale

• CT-General Prologue
• CT-The Knight and his Tale
• CT-The Miller and his Tale
• CT-The Reeve and his Tale
• CT-The Cook and his Tale
• CT-The Man of Law and his Tale
• CT-The Wife of Bath and her Tale
• CT-The Friar and his Tale
• CT-The Summoner and his Tale
• CT-The Clerk and his Tale
• CT-The Merchant and his Tale
• CT-The Squire and his Tale
• CT-The Franklin and his Tale
• CT-The Physician and his Tale
• CT-The Pardoner and his Tale
• CT-The Shipman and his Tale
• CT-The Prioress and her Tale
• CT-The Tale of Sir Thopas
• CT-The Tale of Melibee
• CT-The Monk and his Tale
• CT-The Nun's Priest and his Tale
• CT-The Second Nun and her Tale
• CT-The Canon's Yeoman and his Tale
• CT-The Manciple and his Tale
• CT-The Parson and his Tale
• CT-The Retraction

Bibliography on Renaissance Chaucer (John F. Plummer, Vanderbilt U) is a helpful compilation of academic sources tracing Chaucer's "afterlife" in the Renaissance.

Michael Hanley's A Limited Canterbury Tales Bibliography (Washington State) is a straightforward listing of important studies and anthologies.  No annotations.

Don Hoffman's annotated Essential Bibliography for English 314:  Chaucer and His Age (Northeastern Illinois U), is an especially good introduction for undergraduates.

The same is true for Alan Baragona's always current Chaucer:  A Semi- Systematic, Serendipitous Bibliography (VMI), whose entries are "grouped according to their usefulness for undergraduate research."

Stephen R. Reimer's Chaucer / English 324 Bibliography (UAlberta) is organized by topic and includes a broad array of social and cultural sources. Some annotations.

David Wilson-Okamura offers an annotated list of bibliography links on his geoffreychaucer.org page.

Other Relevant Bibliographies:

• AskERIC:  Search the massive ERIC database for abstracts related to Chaucer.
• From Malaspina Great Books, a Library of Congress Citation listing to Chaucer, with a link to the Library of Congress search engine.
• The University of Kansas Medieval Studies Bibliographies provide a good starting point for research on a number of medieval topics for both the beginning and advanced researcher (gopher).

9.  Syllabi & Course Descriptions

10.  Images & Multimedia

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

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.

  Medieval Manuscript Leaves (Images from 12th-16th manuscripts at the Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Graphic Arts Collection, Rochester Institute of Technology).

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, . . . "

11.  Audio Files & Language Helps

This section contains the following:

• Audio Files from the General Prologue
• Audio Files from the Canterbury Tales
• From the Dream Visions and Shorter Poems
• Language Helps

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

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.

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

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).

12.  Potpourri

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

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