Click here to go to the course syllabus
This website is a link on the
Chaucer Metapage.
This is one of the most useful tools available for the study of Chaucer, a searchable, annotated bibliography of every book and article written about Chaucer since 1975 (a few items go back to 1973). The annotations are excellent and will give you a good idea whether or not you need to look at the work.
When you click this link, you will come to a search page much like an online library catalogue. If you are a student, read the Basic Search Tips and consider using the Guided Keyword Search method. You can also make use of the Chaucer Subject Headings used by SAC if you click "Subject Headings" and then "Help." At any time you can click the title bar "Chaucer Bibliography Online to return to the main search page. You may note that the Back key of your browser will not let you go from the main SAC page back to this page. To do that, click "Go" on the Netscape menu and "View/Go To" on the Internet Explorer menu.
"The Essential Chaucer is a selective, annotated bibliography of Chaucer studies from 1900-1984. It was first published in 1987 by G. K. Hall and Mansell Publishers Limited. The bibliography is divided into almost 90 topics, including themes, techniques, and individual works by Chaucer."
Annotated and Indexed Bibliography of the first 30 years of The Chaucer Review. From "Abraham" to "Zitter," scholars have published nearly 800 articles in the first 30 volumes of the premier Chaucer journal, and they are all listed and summarized here. The bibliography is now searchable using keywords or the Subject Index.
Includes a list of important print bibliographies, most annotated, as well as important scholarly studies.
From the University of Alberta, Canada, an extensive bibliography that covers Chaucer's historical, social, and philosophical background as well as a wide range of literary studies organized by theme.
Part of the home page for the Harvard Chaucer course, this not only is a bibliography, but also has links to online texts of published scholarly articles that are either out of copyright or used with permission of the author.
A general bibliography of standard works prepared by Prof. Hanly. Go "up" to his EN 555 Home Page (see below) for several shorter, more focused annotated bibliographies by his students.
The Medieval Review, both a browsable and searchable collection of electronic reviews of books on all medieval subjects, literary, historical, and cultural. A good way to find out about new books on Chaucer.
University of Kansas International Medieval Bibliography Online
Texts of The Canterbury Tales
The General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales: An Electronic Version
Created by Edwin Duncan of Towson University, this site provides the Middle English text with excellent glosses in Java Script, an introduction to Chaucer's language, a parallel text/translation, images, and links to background information. If you use Internet Explorer, click here instead.. This site is part of the Chaucer Metapage.
The Canterbury Tales: an HTML Version
Edited by Sinan Kökbugur for the Librarius website, this is a version of the complete work in Web format with a table of contents and glossary in frames. There is a link to each tale as a separate file.
The Canterbury Tales: an ASCII Version, Table of Contents for Electronic Texts of Individual Canterbury Tales
Provided by the University of Virginia E-text Center, this site allows you to browse the text of any tale individually. Based on the Robinson edition, it is a good way to search for passages when preparing a paper.
Selected Canterbury Tales in Modernized Spelling
A "user-friendly" edition by Michael Murphy of The General Prologue, The Wife of Bath's Tale, The Franklin's Tale, and others (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).
"The Criyng and the Soun": Chaucer Audio Files
These are links to web pages with excerpts from Chaucer's works read by professors. The main purpose of these recordings is to help students improve their pronunciation of Chaucer's Middle English. The emphasis is on accuracy of pronunciation, according to the most current scholarly thinking, though you will notice some individual variation among the readers. Some of the recordings are classics. Most are brand new. There are several variant versions of the opening of "The General Prologue" for comparison, as well as readings from individual Canterbury Tales and lyric poems. All are accompanied by texts of the edition the reader is actually using. This site is part of the Chaucer Metapage.
Information about and samples from the project, begun at Cambridge University and now based at De Montfort University, Leicester, to put all manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales on CD-ROM and to establish the textual history of the work from Chaucer's conception to its various manuscript versions.
Edited by Barbara Bordalejo, this site, a companion to a CD-ROM edition, provides images of the earliest printed editions of Chaucer's Tales with transcriptions in parallel columns.
Other Sources Related to Chaucer
Compiled by Edwin Duncan of Towson University
A Glossarial Database of Middle English
Created by Larry Benson, editor of The Riverside Chaucer. See also his text Glossarial Concordance to the Riverside Chaucer listed in Baragona's Chaucer Bibliography (above). Use these concordances to find every occurrence of any single word in Chaucer's work, an excellent way to do a study, for example, of imagery and motifs.
Now available for free without subscription, the MED covers the period from 1100 to 1500 A.D. It is part of the Middle English Compendium created at the University of Michigan.
A Guide to Astrological, Biblical, Historical, Literary, and Mythological Names in the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer by Jacqueline de Weever (Garland Press, 1996)
Chaucer: An Annotated Guide to Online Resources
David Wilson-Okamura's excellent and up-to-date collection of links to Chaucer websites and guide to some print material. "The purpose of this site is not to duplicate the vast amount of Chaucer material that has appeared on the internet in the last five years, but to make it more accessible."
Beginning with Volume 34 in the year 2000, the full text of The Chaucer Review, the leading journal of Chaucer studies for over 30 years, is available in web format. (To read the articles, you or your institution must subscribe to Project Muse. However, anyone can gain access to the table of contents for authors and titles.)
A well organized and thorough site constructed by Prof. Larry Benson (editor of The Riverside Chaucer) and his colleagues at Harvard. Materials include historical and cultural background, introductions to all Chaucer's works, and summaries or English translations of many of the sources and analogues of stories in The Canterbury Tales.
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Electronic Canterbury Tales
A companion to The Canterbury Tales, a compendium of links, literary, biographical, bibliographical and pedagogical. The site is created and maintained by Dr. Dan Kline of the University of Alaska at Anchorage.
ENG 555: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Home Page (by Michael Hanly)
An interactive home page for English 555 at Washington State University. Login and you can join discussions about Chaucer, as well as read essays and students' annotated bibliographies and surf through other useful links (see above for Prof. Hanly's bibliography).
Links to useful information on the literary and historical background of The Canterbury Tales. Includes a chronology of the 14th century illustrated with medieval illuminations from Froissart and translations and analysis of sources like Dante and Boccaccio. This site is part of the Chaucer Metapage.
Anthology of Middle English Literature
Works by and about Chaucer and the Gawain-poet, as well as other 14th- and 15th-century English writers, such as William Langland. Includes links to bibliographies and numerous online essays, especially about Chaucer.
Search the entire corpus of Middle English texts at the University of Virginia's E-Text Center. Enter a Middle English key word to search through the whole corpus. You can also pick individual works to search.
Calvin College's site for the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, including Jerome's Against Jovinianus, Book I and Book II, a major source for The Wife of Bath's Tale.
The Text of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy
A Biographical Note on Boethius by Prof. Dan Mosser of VA Tech
James O'Donnell's Website on Boethius and His Consolation of Philosophy.
An excellent website for one of the most influential medieval philosophers and a major source for Chaucer. A short bibliography is included.
Otfried Lieberknecht's Homepage for Dante Studies
An indispensible resource for study of the archetype of medieval poets and a major influence on Chaucer. If your browser does not support frames and JavaScript or you prefer not to use them, click here.
Introduction to The Romance of the Rose with excerpts
Norton Topics Online provides a brief overview of a major source of Chaucer's, Le Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, along with excerpts from the advice of La Vieille (the Old Woman) to Bel Aceuil (Fair Welcome) about how women can ensnare men. These passages match sections of Chaucer's General Prologue (e.g., the description of the Prioress's table manners) and of The Wife of Bath's Prologue .
International Machaut Society: Machaut on the Web
Guillaume de Machaut is one of the most important French poets of the 14th century, as well as perhaps the greatest composer of the time (see the link to 14th-century music below). He was a major influence on Chaucer, especially the early work. This site provides links to material for the study of Machaut's poetic and musical works, including texts and translations, scholarly essays, biographies, bibliographies, and discographies (not to mention "Machaut Oddities").
More than just a site on Boccaccio's Decameron, a resource for cultural studies of 14th-century Europe. Includes bibliography of articles about stories from The Decameron that Chaucer adapted. A good place to start for a comparison of two great 14th-century poets.
Lollardy, or Wycliffism, was England's most important medieval heresy. The movement originated in the 1370s or early 1380s in Oxford with the followers of John Wyclif. The Host in The Canterbury Tales accuses the Parson of being a "Lollere," and some scholars argue that Chaucer may have had Lollard sympathies. For information on this important 14th-century movement, including bibliography, go to this website.
Pictures of the sumptuous tomb of Chaucer's friend, the poet John Gower, courtesy of Prof. Dan Mosser of Virginia Tech. Note that Gower's pillows are actually manuscripts of his three most famous works, Vox Clamantis, Speculum Medicantis, and his English Confessio Amantis, a collection written about the same time as The Canterbury Tales with some analogous stories.
Music of the Fourteenth Century
If you have a multimedia computer, you can listen to .midi files of music by such fourteenth-century composers as Guillaume de Machaut.
A 15th-Century Manuscript of The Canterbury Tales
Images of Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS. 198 (heavily graphic; can be slow to load). For other medieval manuscripts at Oxford, click here.
The Age of King Charles V (1338-1380)
In 1996, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France mounted a virtual exhibit of 1,000 illuminations from its Department of Manuscripts. Many of the manuscripts were from the 15th century, but all chronicled the period in France and England of Chaucer's life. The link above to the archived site will take you to the manuscript titles, but not deep enough to see the pictures themselves. However, some individual illuminations are still available in the archive. Here are a few from a manuscript of Jean Froissart's Chronicles that have a direct bearing on the kings during Chaucer's life time.
The coronation of Edward III, Chaucer's first king.
Robert the Bruce before King Edward III.
Siege of Reims (where Chaucer was held as a prisoner of war) by King Edward
III.
The marriage of Richard II , Chaucer's second king
The death of Wat Tyler during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381
The abdication of Richard II to Henry IV, Chaucer's third king
A Gallery of Illuminated Manuscripts
Images from illuminated manuscripts, provided by Steve Mulder.
A Catholic translation of the Vulgate Bible into English, often closer to the Latin text that medieval authors would have known than any more modern translations, Catholic or Protestant. If a student can't read the medieval Latin Vulgate itself, this is the translation to use. Also available at Intratext Library, which contains a built-in concordance for many of the words.
An excellent first stop for research into Catholic doctrine and the history of the medieval Catholic Church.
ORB: The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies
ORB 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.
Fordham University's website with links to translations of many medieval texts, including Richard de Bury's Philobiblon, a source of the antifeminist tradition and The Wife of Bath's Tale.
A prime site for all medieval resources on the World Wide Web.
A companion web site to the Pilgrims and Pilgrimage CD-ROM produced by the Center for Christianity of Culture, sponsored by the University of York.
A collection of links to websites with guidelines for citing material from the World Wide Web, CD-ROMs and other electronic sources. The emphasis is on MLA format, but there is information for APA, Chicago, and Turabian, as well.
Click here to return to the List of Course Home Pages
Click here to return to the Department of English and Fine Arts Home Page
Last modified September 24, 2007
