The Electronic Canterbury Tales: The Cook's Tale

Complete Online Versions of the Canterbury Tales

The Complete Tales in Middle English at UVa (1510 kb)

Search the UVa Middle English Text Archive

Sinan Kökbugur's hypertext, helpfully glossed Middle English edition at the Librarius Homepage

The Electronic Library Foundation's edition of the Canterbury Tales is available in a variety of formats

The Litrix Reading Room Translation of the Canterbury Tales

Top 15
Medieval & Chaucer-Related Sites

The Aberdeen On-line Bestiary

Argos: Limited Area Search of the Ancient & Medieval Internet

The Camelot Project

Exploring Ancient World Cultures

Geoffrey Chaucer: Annotated Guide to Online Resources

Gothic Dreams

The Harvard Chaucer Page

Internet Medieval Sourcebook

The Labyrinth

The Luminarium

The Online Medieval and Classical Library

Project Seafarer / Anglo-Saxon.net

TEAMS Middle English Text Series

Univ. of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative

Voice of the Shuttle

The Cook's Tale

1. In Middle English

The Cook's Tale at the UVa Electronic Text Center.

Read the Cook's Tale in the context of Fragment I - Group A.

Read the Cook's Prologue and Tale according to the Hengwrt ms (Hengwrt - Hg), one of the two most important early manuscripts, at the University of Toronto's Representative Poetry On-line site. The Ellesmere manuscript (El) is the other important early edition.

The Cook's Tale, from the TEAMS Middle English Text volume, The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth- Century Continuations and Additions, edited with an Introduction by John M. Bowers.

2. In Modern English Translation

Scott Gettman's edition of the Canterbury Tales (Electronic Literature Foundation) is accessible by individual tale & available in a variety of formats: Middle English, Modern English, Facing Page, & Interpolated - Glossed (frames; from unknown base text).

Although unsuitable for formal research or college work, the ELF is the best online version for younger readers and those unfamiliar with Middle English. Easily navigable, and the Middle English glosses are very helpful.

The Litrix Reading Room translation of the Canterbury Tales features rhyming couplets.

Sinan Kökbugur's helpfully glossed hypertext Middle English rendition of the complete Canterbury Tales is available at the Librarius page. Use the Table of Contents in the left frame to click on a specific Tale, and difficult terms and phrases are glossed in the lower frame.

Skip Knox's selection of Canterbury Tales in Modern English (Boise State) includes the Cook's Prologue and Cook's Tale (from an unknown base text).

3. Historical & Cultural Backgrounds

James L. Matterer's very impressive online A Boke of Gode Cookery has assembled everything from soup to nuts: medieval recipes, new versions of old recipes, articles, links, and a happy stew of other historical foods materials. See especially:

A Chaucerian Cookery
The Historical Cookery Page
For those who might like to set up a medieval feast, this is your site.

4. Sources, Analogues, & Related Texts

5. Online Notes & Commentary

Discussion and links concerning the Cook's Tale on Larry D. Benson's superlative Geoffrey Chaucer Page (Harvard). Includes e-texts of scholarly essays, sources and ancillary texts, and capsule discussions of key issues. Some of the items related to the Cook's Tale include:

6. Online Articles & Books

A generous new online publishing venture: The University of California E-Scholarship Editions. "University of California Press now offers electronic versions of almost all of its journal titles and over 1400 books online, many of them out of print." E-journals are available to subscriber institutions; 400 full texts, many covering medieval topics, are available to the general public; the rest to members of the UC community.

Academic studies from the University of California Press related to the Cook's Tale include:

Bloch, R. Howard, and Frances Ferguson, eds. Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1989
Elaine Tuttle Hanson's Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992).
Laura Kendrick's Chaucerian Play: Comedy and Control in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley: U of California P, 1988).
H. Marshall Leicester's The Disenchanted Self: Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley: U of California P, 1990).
Richard Neuse's Chaucer's Dante: Allegory and Epic Theater in The Canterbury Tales. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1991).

R.A. Shoaf's online postprint Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word devotes Chapter 10 to "Fragment A and the Versions of the Household"

Essays in Medieval Studies features full-text articles from the proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, online version edited by Allen J. Frantzen (Loyola - Chicago), including:

Although it has nothing to do with the Cook's Tale, it concerns the things the Cook is noted for and details the medieval theory of humors: Kristen M. Burkholder's "'Attempree diete was al hir phisik': The Medieval Application of Medical Theory to Feasting." Essays in Medieval Studies 13 (1996).

Richard Embs has written The Cook's Tale: Maybe Not a Fragment (Anniina Jokinnen - Luminarium).

7. Student Projects & Essays

Anniina Jokkinen's Essays and Articles on Chaucer includes a number of sample student essays, of varying quality. Like any other source, student essays must be evaluated rigorously, cited correctly, and used responsibly. Jokkinen also compiles a number of resources by Canterbury Tale: The Cook's Tale

8. Online Bibliography

9. Syllabi & Course Descriptions

10. Images & Multimedia

11. Language Helps & Audio Files

Sample audio files (.wav, .au, .aiff) from the Clerk's Tale, recorded at the University of Adelaide, 1994, and read by Tom Burton, are available from the Chaucer Studio (Paul Thomas, Brigham Young).

12. Potpourri

James Matterer's A Chaucerian Cookery would make Chaucer's Cook proud!

13. The Next Step

How to Document
Print & Electronic Sources:
The Chaucer Pedagogy
Documentation Primer

Daniel T. Kline & The Kankedort Page