These learning materials are compiled as a working bibliography that are useful resources to students and scholars working on historical English.  Most of the resources include a brief description or annotation, along with clickable links.  Last update:  19 June 2018.  This bibliography was compiled by Kenna L. Olsen, with research assistants Jeremy Blunt and Logan Pollon.

  • Barthram, Phil. “Old English to Modern English Translator.” Old English Translator, 2018, https://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/index.htm.
    For use as an aid in translation work.
  • Benson, L. D. “The Chaucer Page.” The Chaucer Page, The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2010. http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/.
    Large website devoted to Chaucer and the teaching of ME language and literature.
  • Burton, Tom. “The Chaucer Studio.” Brigham Young University, 1999, http://creativeworks.byu.edu/chaucer/Search.aspx?language=none&medium=none&keyword=_none.
    This website, currently run by the English departments of the University of Adelaide and Brigham Young University – produce their own recordings of medieval English texts, but also provide access to recordings from many other academic sources – at very low prices. The website’s audio recordings specialize in the works of Chaucer but range (temporally) from Beowulf to Mallory, and which, “provide performed readings of texts originally composed for oral delivery and models demonstrating the pronunciation of English at various stages of its development from Anglo-Saxon times onwards.”
  • Burnley, David and Alison Wiggins. The Auchinleck Manuscript. National Library of Scotland, 2003. http://auchinleck.nls.uk/
    A complete version of the Auchinleck manuscript, which is a notable manuscript and may have been read by Chaucer.
  • “Chaucer’s Pronunciation, Grammar and Vocabulary.” Harvard.edu. sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/pronunciation/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2017.
    A pronunciation guide for Chaucer, separated by each letter, using examples of words.
  • Cooper, Alan. Alan Cooper’s Homonyms. Cooper Interaction Design. https://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html
    An extensive list of homonyms.
  • Everhart, Deborah, and Martin Irvine. The Labyrinth. Georgetown University. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/
    Seemingly based around the metaphor of the labyrinth from mythology, this site has links to texts, other databases, images, and information arranged alphabetically. Perhaps most useful is its links to other OERs. Not all links are updated.
  • Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index. U of Iowa Libraries, 2014. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/default.aspx
    A collection of research and translations of works about women and gender in the medieval period.
  • A Glossorial DataBase of Middle English. U of Michigan Library. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/gloss/
    A databse for Middle English words (mostly Chaucer) that directs to where the word is found in selected works.
  • “The Great Vowel Shift.” The Geoffrey Chaucer Page. 27 July 2000. The President and Fellows of Harvard College. sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/vowels.html
    Part of a greater Chaucer collection, the page offers audio of the vowels and explains the shift in language.
  • Halsall, Paul. “Internet Medieval Sourcebook – Selected Sources: England.” Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University, 2011. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/sbook1n.asp.
    A large repository of primary sources – that are mostly presented in translation (modern English) – from Beowulf, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, through Anglo-Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor periods.
  • Harbin, Andrea R., and Caitlin Liberati. NetSERF. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. http://www.netserf.org/
    A kind of online database for all things medieval, seemingly to connect the medieval to the digital age. Of interest is the “Literature” section, which includes the “Literature Out Loud” section, people reading from the texts, and the “Medieval Glossary” which includes a substantial amount of terms. Also connects to other sites. Some of the links to external sites are broken.
  • Hare, John Bruno. “The Complete Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.” Internet Sacred Text Archive, 2010. http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/ascp/index.htm.
    A rather odd website … its focus is spirituality and sacred texts (from astrology – through every world religion – to UFOs) … but on the way is a collection of English (mostly unattributed) texts from Bede to Chaucer to Malory. The Old English texts, although unattributed, are functional.
  • Hogg, Richard. An Introduction to Old English, Edinburgh University Press, 2002. https://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/staff/herdina/an-introduction-to-old-english.pdf.
    A free, (pdf) downloadable, and fairly recent textbook.
  • Hostetter, Aaron K. Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry Project. Rutgers University, 2018, https://anglosaxonpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/.
    Hostetter’s website contains (his own) modern translations of almost every OE poetic text. It is both a useful resource of OE poetry (that is hard to find in translation) and also helpful in guiding one’s own translations.
  • Jokinen, Anniina. “Anthology of Middle English Literature.” Luminarium. www.luminarium.org/medlit/
    Essays, articles and information about authors and their texts.
  • Kiernan, Kevin. “Electronic Beowulf 4.0.” Electronic Beowulf Index and Guide. Programmed by Emil Iacob. ebeowulf.uky.edu/#.
    A nice example of a facing page OER. On the right side is the original manuscript, and on the left is the transcribed text. Highlight over lines/words there there is a translation o the terms. There is also audio available to play over top. The citation leads to the webpage that gives you information about the project, as well as how the program works. The actual program can be access through clicking “Electronic Beowulf 4.0,” or at the link: http://ebeowulf.uky.edu/ebeo4.0/start.html . Accessed through DScriptorium.
  • Late Medieval English Scribes. Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, 2011. ISBN 978-0-9557876-6-9. https://www.medievalscribes.com/
    A compendium of known and unknown medieval scribes. Searchable by character, scribe, and manuscript. Also includes letters.
  • Linguistic Geographies: The Gough Map of Great Britain. King’s College London, 2011. http://www.goughmap.org/
    An online interactive edition of one of the earliest maps of Britain. Allows look up of modern-day places as well as their Middle English equivalents, as well as information surrounding the map.
  • Lui, Alan. “Anglo-Saxon & Medieval.” Voice of the Shuttle. U of California. http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2740
    A kind of master-list of medieval links categorized by author and genre.
  • Lupack, Alan and Barbara Tepa-Lupack. “Authors and Texts.” The Camelot Project. Robbins Library Digital Projects, University of Rochester, 2017. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/authors.
    All things ‘Arthuriana’ … The ‘Authors and Texts’ page has texts (or links to) everything from Gildas and Geoffrey of Monmouth, to SGGK, to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.
  • Mastin, Luke. The History of English. 2011,  http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/
    A non-academic, but helpful guide for the history of language, including terms, examples, and issues around language. Also hosts a list of helpful sources, perhaps most notable is the “Just For Fun” section.
  • McGillivray, Murray. “Old English Poetry.” The Online Corpus of Old English Poetry, University of Calgary, 2011, http://oepoetry.ca/.
    A useful resource, containing the entire corpus of Old English poetry – in OE.
  • McGillivray, Murray. “Old English Grammar.” Gentle Introduction to Old English, University of Calgary, 2016. http://www.oegrammar.ca/.
    The companion site to Murray McGillivray’s Gentle Introduction to Old English (Broadview Press, 2011). There are (glossed) versions of the book’s texts … with accompanying audio tracks for Abraham and Isaac and Ohthere; interactive grammar exercises, that correspond to the chapters in the book; and basic outlines the grammar of Old English.
  • McGillivray, Murray. “Old English Reader.” Old English Reader, University of Calgary, 2013, http://www.oereader.ca/.
    The companion site to Murray McGillivray’s Old English Reader (Broadview Press, 2011).
  • McShane, Kara L. “Visualizing Chaucer.” Visualizing Chaucer. Robbins Library Digital Projects, University of Rochester, 2017. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/chaucer.
    This is an interesting website from the Robbins Library Digital Project, that “seeks to capture postmedieval illustrated versions of Chaucer’s work. The project provides annotations for books containing illustrated versions of Chaucer’s writings and organizes these images by character/work for easy accessibility. Our intention is to make these images readily accessible, where copyright allows, for teachers, students, and scholars interested in the afterlife of Chaucer’s works.”
  • McSparran, Frances et al. “The Middle English Dictionary.” The Middle English Compendium, University of Michigan, 2013. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/.
    The largest and most comprehensive online ME Dictionary.
  • McSparran, Frances et al. “Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse.” The Middle English Compendium, University of Michigan, 2013. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/browse.html.
    A fairly comprehensive collection of ME texts.
  • The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages. Webmaster, 2011. http://bestiary.ca/index.html
  • Peck, Russell (series editor). “TEAMS Middle English Texts.” TEAMS Middle English Texts, Robbins Library Digital Projects, University of Rochester, 2017. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/catalog.
    A source for many ME texts.
  • Rauer, Christine. “Old English Core Vocabulary.” University of St Andrews, 2016, https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~cr30/vocabulary/.
    This is a quickly searchable list of some 500+ Old English words “which could be regarded as literary core vocabulary. Some of the words are among the most frequent in Old English literature; some are of particular importance on account of their literary or linguistic usage.”
  • Robinson, Carol L. “Educational Resources.” TEAMS: Teaching Association for Medieval Studies, 2017. teams-medieval.org/?page_id=38
    Works as a kind of master page for medieval resources of all kinds, organized by section.
  • Siemens, Ray, et al. “Building A Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript.” Digital Scholarly Editing: Theories and Practices, edited by Matthew James Driscoll and Elena Pierazzo, 1st ed., vol. 4, Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK, 2016, pp. 137–160. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1fzhh6v.12. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.
    Discusses the creation of the social edition (that is, online as an OER) of the Devonshire Manuscript, a manuscript from the 16th Century that was put together by as many as nineteen people, many of whom were women. The essay connects the manuscript’s social creation with a desire to publish the text socially on Wikibooks, and examines both the manuscript and the choice to publish it socially. It was also edited collaboratively via Wikibooks. The actual Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript can be seen here at https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Devonshire_Manuscript
  • “Teach Yourself to Read Chaucer’s Middle English.” The Geoffrey Chaucer Page. sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/less-0.htm#Index.
    From the Chaucer page on Harvard’s website, http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/ , it offers complete vocal recordings of how to pronounce Chaucer’s Middle English.
  • Tichy, Ondrej et al.  “Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.” Charles University in Prague, 2017, http://www.bosworthtoller.com/.
    This is a digitized edition of the 1921(?) edition of the Bosworth-Toller AS Dictionary.
  • “A Timeline of Poetry in English.” RPO: Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries. rpo.library.utoronto.ca/timeline.
    A graphical timeline of historical events and texts, connecting the two, from Old English to present. Also provides links to the texts, and the translations.
  • Wittig, Joseph, et al. Chaucer Metapage, 2018. http://chaucermetapage.org/.
    “A collection of links to online resources about Chaucer for both students and teachers, vetted by scholars.” This is a new and actively updated website.