Just this past week, teaching a new class required that I rediscover Geoffrey Chaucer. Sometimes folks will ask me what book I would want on a desert island. I usually say the Riverside edition of Chaucer. That huge tome has all his works with textual and explanatory notes.

But why him instead of Shakespeare? That will be answered later.

In the midst of preparing lessons for this class, I discovered that one can actually turn the digital pages of both the Ellesmere MS and the Hengwrt MS! And that since I studied Chaucer in graduate school, scholars have established that the same scribe, Adam Pinkhurst, wrote both manuscripts and it looks like the Hengwrt is the older copy. If you like to see the Hengwrt MS and read about its history, click here. The Ellesmere MS is more lavishly illustrated with the pilgrim portraits and wonderful illuminations and thus might be the “good” copy. If you would like to see the Ellesmere MS, click here. 

And then there is the even more amazing web site called Mirador which will allow you to compare the two manuscripts side by side! Or any other work of art or text if you can paste in the URL.

And the for the use of students, there is a wonderful site which will allow you to compare simultaneously the Middle English with the Modern English for each and every one of the Canterbury Tales. Click here for this resource.

All of these internet sources are quite simply astonishing! When I was in graduate school, if you wanted to see the manuscripts, you had to travel to the library, provide a letter of introduction to the rare book librarian, and then maybe get to turn the folio leave while wearing white gloves.

Now you can “see” the manuscripts on your computer. Yes, it is not the same. But is better than looking at a poor facsimile or just dreaming about seeing the thing.