Chaucer Online

Websites Designed for Students

• Harvard's METRO: Middle English Teaching Resources Online. One of the best online introductions to Chaucer as poetry and literature.
• One of the best recent resources for students new to Chaucer scholarship is the Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. These 2017 essays introduce students to some of the most cutting edge approaches to Chaucer's works.
• There's also an extensive Chaucer section at Luminarium.
• LibriVox also has the entire Canterbury Tales read aloud. Note, however, that these Tales were semi-modernized in the nineteenth century; not only is the pronunciation inaccurate, but the language has been modified somewhat. Still, if you are an audiobook person, you may find these files of interest.
• Better yet is an app that provides a full, Middle English read-through of the General Prologue only; you can follow along with the text in Middle English, modern English, or the original manuscript pages. You can read more about the app and click through for links to the web version, Apple, and Google Play sites for download.

As with most online sources, treat these websites as resources  or points of entry into research, not the final say on any issue in textual matters or Chaucer scholarship! These are meant to be teaching aids, not scholarly sources. Always quote Chaucer from your assigned text, not an online edition; always cite your sources properly in your essays.

Scholarly Resource Websites

These are resources you will want to consult frequently when you are preparing an essay on Chaucer.

Chaucer Bibliography Online

• Supported and updated by the New Chaucer Society, this bibliographical database contains entries for everything published on Chaucer since 1975 -- including portions of books that are not solely on Chaucer.
• Its Chaucer-related indexing is more exhaustive than the MLA online bibliography's, so you will want to use this bibliography in conjunction with the MLA.

Middle English Glossarial Concordance

• Keyed to the Middle English Dictionary
• Currently indexes the full works of Chaucer and the English works of John Gower

Chaucer Name Dictionary

• Just as it sounds; particularly useful for tracking down obscure classical figures or tracing uncommon medieval figures.

Glossorial Databate of Middle English: The Canterbury Tales

•   A Larry Benson project, housed in the Middle English Compendium website
•   It is still partly under construction, and you will also need to consult the print Chaucer glossary, but it provides a useful "first stop" for unearthing Chaucer's use of his language.