Daniel T. Kline | U of Alaska Anchorage | Dept of English | CV | Chaucer Pedagogy  

ECT - LBW Main Page

1. The Canterbury Tales in Middle English
2. The Canterbury Tales in Translation
3. General Historical & Cultural Backgrounds
4. Sources, Analogues, & Related Texts
5. Online Notes & Commentary
6. Online Articles & Books
7. Student Projects & Essays
8. Online Bibliography
9. Syllabi & Course Descriptions
10. Images & Multimedia
11. Audio Files & Language Helps
12. Potpourri
13. Additional Resources

14. Scholar's Dozen

15. What's New? Recent Additions to the ECT

Web Resources by Tale 

Electronic Canterbury Tales Home

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 Pages in The Electronic Canterbury Tales

• Chaucer the Pilgrim Narrator & Author
• Chaucer's "Orphan" Pilgrims
• The Frame Tale, Later Continuations, & Apocrypha
• Manuscripts, Printed Editions, & e-Texts
• Electronic Chaucer Texts: What's Available Online?
• Chaucer in / and Popular Culture
• Documentation Primer
• Chaucer Pedagogy Page
  
• The Electronic Canterbury Tales:
  Troilus and Criseyde

About This Website

• ECT Revision History:
  What's New?

• Headings, Organization, & Criteria for Inclusion

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.

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).

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.

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