This course will use The Hengwrt Chaucer Research Edition CD, Digital Facsimile of National Library of Wales manuscript Peniarth 392 D, edited by Estelle Stubbs, to explore the methods used for constructing image-based scholarly electronic editions of Medieval texts. This version will be available at restricted times in the collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities in Young 3-52. Inexpensive versions of The Hengwrt Chaucer, Standard Edition on CD-ROM, edited by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, is a required text available in the bookstores.

In addition to studying the version of the Canterbury Tales preserved in the earliest manuscript, we will also seek to understand other manuscript contexts in which the Tales are preserved and the way modern editors have passed them on to us. Along with the Hengwrt electronic edition on CD, we will use the electronic versions, based on F. N. Robinson's edition, available online through the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library. For the purposes of these comparisons with other manuscripts, the 8 volumes of The text of the Canterbury tales, studied on the basis of all known manuscripts, by John M. Manly & Edith Rickert (Chicago 1940), are on one-day reserve in Young Library. The Riverside Chaucer, Third Edition, edited by Larry D. Benson (Houghton Mifflin, 1987) is recommended, and may also be placed on reserve, if needed. We will compare the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches to editing as part of the course. Students will also receive practical training in the tools and techniques, from image-capture to image-processing, from text-encoding to editing, needed to create electronic editions in a collaborative enterprise. Some of your work will take place on this website, which provides ready access to electronic versions of the Canterbury Tales as well as online resources of everything from audio pronunciation guides to comprehensive bibliographies, and a class listserv, ENG720-L@LSV.UKY.EDU, to let you discuss online anything related to the course with members of the class. As you will be responsible for keeping informed through a UK listserv, I advise you to use UK e-mail addresses for this list.

Members of the seminar must participate actively in class and in online discussions (50 percent); each student will make one or two presentations of work in progress on an electronic research topic (25 percent), and prepare a final online project, incorporating their independent research on Chaucer and their experiments in electronic editing (25 percent). The final project is due no later than the last day of classes. (Note: for students interested in pursuing a graduate certificate in Informatics for the Humanities, this course counts as the second of the three required courses, and is cross-listed as INF 510 - Informatics: Humanities Computing. For details about the Informatics program, see me or consult the Informatics webpage.)