ENG206:03 (Fall 2003, Eskin)

Thanks to the ingenuity of all of you, we now have our very own page on Chaucer!  Below you will find links, with short discussions from your colleagues, about the contents and critical interest of the site.  Enjoy!

Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

The website admits it still needs work, but the information provided offers enormous help in understanding most of Chaucer’s works.  The site provides  links that can help any person understand the very complicated stories.        Many of the links also provide insight and history to many of the stories written in the Canterbury Tales (like the link between the Miller’s Tale and how it relates to Noah and his sons, or the Pardoner’s tale providing history of the ideas floating around Pagan and Christian religions).   One of the many links leads to a dictionary of the complex terms and words of Middle English.  This link gives any user a chance to understand the almost dead language of Middle English.  --Patrick Keely

Spark Notes: Chaucer

The site brought me a very helpful list for Chaucer, Canterbury Tales.  What I found most helpful was the "general prologue introduction" it helped me understand how the narrator opens the general prologue, as well as helping to explain lines 1-42.  --Marydee Vaile

The site offers a clear and concise way not only to get to your selected literary work but also an index of all that they have to offer about that particular piece of writing. This includes an index page with all the information and services that the site has to offer. Another thing that makes the site easy to get around is a pull-down navigation bar at the top of the page for shortcuts to all the sections. All this makes the site easy to navigate.

Among the different sections the site has to offer for Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, is a brief overview of the author and the poem as a whole. The different characters in the books along with an analysis of key players in the poem can also be found.  Other pieces of information that can be found are sections devoted to symbols along with a section of explanations for the poems' different parts.

Also, to help aide the reader the site includes: quotes, a study guide and a practice quiz with answers. Another cool thing is a helpful guide to understanding Chaucer's language, which is quite foreign to the average modern reader.  --Bonnie Baker

This website in the context part describes Chaucer's life. One thing I found very useful was the fact that Geoffrey Chaucer was influenced by numerous writers. These writers (such as, Florentines, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio) allowed for Chaucer's style, ideas, and language use. This was interesting to me because even smart people need some reference from others at times. Also I think it is cool to see others helping others out.   --Jodi Zehringer

The Canterbury Tales at Librarius

This website has the following features: provides links to “Chronology of Chaucer’s Life and Time”; complete online text of Canterbury Tales; provides translation of Middle English version in Modern English; provides glossary for Middle English terms which is linked from the text*; three frames provide user friendly format; text is divided for easy selection; and contains additional links on Chaucer.  --Elizabeth Bateman

I chose this site because it not only offers information on the life of Chaucer, it also gives translations in modern English of the Canterbury Tales.  One of the interesting things on this website is the timeline they include about half way down the web page. It gives a fairly detailed chronology not only of Chaucer's life, but of the events surrounding his life--many of which had major effects on his writings.  The site's format is slightly lacking, but it gives the basics on his life and section by section links to each part of the Canterbury Tales.  --Farrah Shultz

Chaucer on Encarta

The website I have chosen helps me to understand the author and his writing of the Canterbury Tales. The site provides some background information including where he was from and who some of his closest family members were. The site also informed me that he had also translated many other poems for other authors. He also had a couple of other poems that made him very famous as an English poet. Further down the page, there is a more detailed explanation for the way the Canterbury Tales was written and why. 

The words on this website are easier to read and help one to understand what took place amongst the pilgrims. The site also informs me that Chaucer was the "First English poet to use the seven-line stanza in iambic pentameter and the couplet later called heroic". This site provides a very good brief evaluation of Chaucer's life.

The one thing on this site that is very useful is the breakdown of some of the main pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales. The poem itself can be hard to follow at times. This site help to clear much of the confusion I had.   --Doug Lueck

Chronology of Chaucer's Life (at Librarius)

Informative site that not only details the events of Chaucer's personal life, but also aligns those details to historical events occurring simultaneously allowing readers to draw conclusions concerning the relative impact of the society Chaucer was a part of to his writings. --Jen Hirsch

Chaucer (a lecture by Prof. Lee Patterson) (link no longer available)

**interesting fact: Knowing the content and tone of the Canterbury Tales, one is able to gather (using the timeline provided on the site described above) that the Peasant’s Revolt, occurring before Chaucer began writing the tales, had significant impact on his writing approach towards the tales as well as the impact he hoped the tales would achieve upon the reader. The character’s tales mirror many of the actual events occurring during the Peasant’s Revolt, although Chaucer does take some literary liberty and avoids directly documenting the revolt.  --Jen Hirsch

The Canterbury Tales (Litrix Reading Room--www.litrix.com)

This site is most helpful to anyone who may have difficulty reading Middle English language with ease of comprehension. The Canterbury Tales are here translated into modern English, so that the aims and expressions of the original text are still conveyed, but in a much easier to digest format. The site is also conveniently organized with links to individual character’s tales.  --Jen Hirsch

 

GeoffreyChaucer.org

A very informative site devoted to giving access to a broad range of knowledge about Chaucer. The site is full of links to vast databases of information concerning Chaucer’s life, the medieval language he uses, and the times in which he lived.  (*Perk: This site is a dream due to the information it makes available. I would have to go to a couple of libraries to find all the information collected here in one comprehensive site.)  --Jeff Lehmker

Chaucer at Luminarium

This site provides several links to different areas dealing with Chaucer's life and literary works. The links include quotes, life of Geoffrey Chaucer, works of Geoffrey Chaucer, additional sources, essay on Chaucer and Chaucer in the bookstore.  The quotes section provides lines from Chaucer's most famous works, most of which come from the Canterbury Tales and where they can be found in the books. It also provides notes at the end for selected quotes.  The life of Geoffrey Chaucer section leads to another set of links where you can read about his childhood, things he experienced growing up and how he came to be a writer. It also provides a bibliography of all of Chaucer's works.  

The works of Geoffrey Chaucer portion provides links to information on Chaucer's most famous works and other popular poems. A large chunk is dedicated to the Canterbury tales with a section for each pilgrim and also audio excerpts from selected parts of the poem.  The additional sources section is a collection of miscellaneous information such as bibliographies, lectures and also a collection of pictures.  Essay on Chaucer is a collection of mostly student essays on the pilgrims from Canterbury Tales and also some other essays on different topics dealing with Chaucer's life and also his literary works.  Chaucer in the bookstore is a listing of books written by and about Geoffrey Chaucer. It provides the title of the books, a brief description, pictures of the books and links where you can purchase the book online.

One cool thing: Chaucer introduced the heroic couplet (two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter) into English verse.  --Jason Trapp

This website to me was very straight forward and well -presented.  Clicking on either his life or works, etc. they had quotes from some of his works.  Scrolling down and reading some, I came across one that to me is something that in today's society we all try to live by. I say this because the word "truth" is what we all strive for in everything we do. By having trust from family and/or friends is built on "truth."  When we tell the truth we are rewarded with friendships, it could be getting the job, etc. So to me this quote really tells us readers who Chaucer really is. Chaucer is one who earned peoples trust and its not worth giving that up.  --Nicole Bilodeau

                 Truth is the highest thing that man may keep.
          Canterbury Tales. The Frankeleines Tale. Line 11789.

Geoffrey Chaucer at Harvard U.

It has a brief history of Chaucer's life and it also has line by line translation of the material. I found this to be very helpful in deciphering the language.  It was also very easy to access the site.  --Allison Greenstein

The Life of Chaucer (also at Harvard)

This web site provided a great deal of information regarding Geoffrey Chaucer, including a timeline of his life and works, as well as quips and selections from some of his literature.  It also included a link to other authors that have been influenced by Chaucer and have even mentioned him in their own works.  What I enjoyed most about this site on Chaucer is the fact that it also provided translations, and definitions of the Old English words and terms that Chaucer used in his writings.  --Courtney Jo Veasy

last updated: 6/06