Manuscripts

Organized alphabetically (by last name or, if the writer goes by a toponymic, first name). Also consult the Luminarium entries for these authors.

Online Exhibitions

• The World of Chaucer at the University of Glasgow. You can also look at the Flickr set associated with this exhibition.

Working with Chaucer Manuscripts

None of the medieval texts we read originally appeared in the tidy, uniform format of the student edition. They all circulated in handwritten, unique manuscripts (with the exception of a few early printed texts). This material fact can greatly affect how we might read this literature intertextually and the kinds of assumptions we make about readerships.

How did medieval artists source and create their pigments? What techniques and resources did they use? How can modern artists' techniques help us understand how medieval artists applied their paints? How can modern analytic equipment help us understand both pigments and techniques? This list of links provides some good starting points for exploring these questions.

Core Resources

Individual Manuscripts

Obviously not an exhausive list, these manuscripts are of particular interest to the student of Middle English and/or manuscripts I often teach from. Note that Chaucer has his own page of manuscript links, and the Major Authors page also points you to some fully digitized manuscripts.

The study of medieval manuscripts and early book culture is massive and specialized. The increasing sophistication, however, of digital technologies is making it easier to learn about manuscripts and examine them in detail.Below, I've gathered useful introductory resources to accompany the readings I assign in manuscript units.

In my medieval manuscripts course, we frequently work intently with Books of Hours -- digital facsimiles from other libraries as well as specimens available at the UGA Special Collections Library. The resources below are to help both the neophyte and the experienced student engage with these complex books. This page will be in constant evolution as the manuscript/Books of Hours courses shift; suggestions welcome.

I have gathered here a wide array of resources -- mostly digital, but some crucial print ones -- for the study of Middle English culture, language, and literature. Although students are my primary audience (I assign material from many of these websites in my courses), I also use these pages as a repository for the increasing number of excellent scholarly websites, especially but not exclusively digital editions, online indices and databases, and manuscript facsimiles. These pages are therefore constantly under construction, as I continue to add (and sometimes remove) content.