The new app is based on the Hengwrt manuscript, believed to have been copied by scribe and Chaucer associate Adam Pinkhurst. Scholars have pieced together the story from more than 80 different manuscripts, most of them written before 1500. “These include not only bachelor of arts university students and school children but also members of the public who have their own interest in Chaucer and his works.”Ī page from an early manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Public domain via Wikimedia Commonsīecause Chaucer died before he could finish the Tales, there is no one original version of the text. “While the app has material which should be of interest to every Chaucer scholar, it is particularly designed to be useful to people reading Chaucer for the first time,” says Richard North, a medievalist at University College London who worked on the project, in the statement. As users listen to the recording, they can access scholarly notes, commentary and a vocabulary explaining some of the author’s word choices. Clicking on a line in the manuscript triggers a pop-up with both the Middle English text and a translation, making the document easy to explore.Ī 45-minute audio performance by Saskatchewan student Colin Gibbings brings Chaucer’s text to life in its original language. Users can find the prologue in three different formats: a text version in Middle English, a modern English translation and a digitization of the original manuscript. According to a University of Saskatchewan statement, the project represents “the first major literary work augmented by new scholarship, in any language, presented in an app.”
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Available for free in both mobile and web formats, the app focuses on The Canterbury Tales’ General Prologue, which introduces readers to the eclectic cast of pilgrims who regale their audience with stories as they make their journey to the Canterbury shrine of St. Now, a team of experts is hoping to make the 14th-century classic more accessible by presenting it in app form.Īs Ellen Gutoskey reports for Mental Floss, the project is the brainchild of an international team of experts led by researchers at Canada’s University of Saskatchewan. For those who are not well-versed in Middle English, however, Geoffrey Chaucer’s riotous opus can make for a challenging read. Immensely popular since making its debut in medieval England, its 17,000 lines are still treasured by students and scholars centuries later. Laing Purves (1838-1873) “for popular perusal” and the language is mostly updated.The Canterbury Tales is a pillar of the Western literary canon. The characters, introduced in the General Prologue of the book, tell tales of great cultural relevance. The genres also vary, and include romance, Breton lai, sermon, beast fable, and fabliau.
The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as courtly love, treachery, and avarice. The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a group of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse).
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Download cover art Download CD case insert The Canterbury Tales
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