This site was created by Hope Kaye (Haverford College, Class of 2008) for a class called Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. The assignment was to do an in-depth research project relating to a Chaucerian or medieval subject.
I chose to look at this particular section of "The Miller's Tale", because I find the vernacular interesting--which allowed me to look into etymology, etc.--and because of the historical references that also provided fodder for research. I am particularly struck by the irony involved in presenting my research in the form of a website; the idea of using modern technology in the interest of historical preservation appeals to me enormously.
The research doesn't have a particular thread connecting the data: I researched elements of the text that interested me or confused me. They are, if you will, simply in-depth notes, going into more detail than the notes provided in Larry D. Benson's The Riverside Chaucer. The amount of information to be discovered about just a small section of just one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is startling, and hints at the vast amount of research to be done about the rest of Chaucer's texts.
Most of the words merely have information about them that comes up when you roll your mouse over the word. In addition to this, five of the words/phrases (i.e. “voluper”, “latoun”, “the boos of a bokeler”, “Seint Thomas of Kent”, and “paryssh chirche”) lead to outside links when clicked on.
One of the words in the particular that doesn’t lead to an outside link—
“Queynte”—probably should. However, the reasons why it doesn’t
are very interesting. I was planning on having this word lead to a somewhat
well-known illumination from the Taymouth Hours, which depict some ecclesiastic
personage seizing a prostitute by the queynte in front of what is perhaps a
tavern. The Taymouth Hours book is located at the British Library, which has
nearly all of the illustrations from this illuminated manuscript online. However,
this particular one – Yates Thompson manuscript, 13, fol, 177r –
is missing from the online collection. The online images of the illustrations
pass straight from f. 175 and f. 175v to f. 179 and f. 179v. This could be for
unrelated reasons, but it seems feasible that this online collection has simply
been censored, because of the blatantly inappropriate sexuality of this—what
shall we say?—quaint illustration.