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- Published on Friday, 20 January 2012 10:19
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Students: This site is mainly for you. Reading medieval literature, a staple of courses in college or senior high school, is made unnecessarily difficult by the unfamiliar spelling of the period.
This adds nothing of value to the literature, only difficulty: saw turns up as saugh, say, saigh; father's as fadres; grete is great but also greet, and hundreds of others. Very misleading.
Your Shakespeare text is not presented as it was printed in his day. The spelling and punctuation there are modernized. Here we do the same for Chaucer. Understanding his work still requires effort because we have not changed his words, only his spellings and punctuation. Those words are 600 years old, and some are obsolete and some have changed their meaning. Explanatory glosses in the margin of our written version explain the difficult words. In the Audiogloss version a spoken gloss replaces the written one.
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- Category: Publisher
- Published on Friday, 20 January 2012 10:16
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This site tries to provide a key to the gate that gives entry to the lovely pleasure garden of English literature, especially medieval literature. For most readers the big obstacle is the archaic and inconsistent old spelling of early English. This site gives serious help with that. The garden is quite extensive, and the items here are varied, some medieval, some modern.
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- Category: Publisher
- Published on Friday, 20 January 2012 10:22
- Written by Admin
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Professor Murphy inflicted Chaucer on students for 30 years in old spelling. Retired and repentant, he now offers a reader-friendly version of two great classics in Chaucer’s original words, but in modern spelling, which makes reading Chaucer easier and more enjoyable. Since Chaucer is a great comic writer, reasonable speed in reading is crucial for enjoyment.
This is NOT a translation.
In addition, for those who are still compelled to read the old-spelling for classwork, we have provided an Audiogloss for some of the Canterbury Tales. Listen to it while you read the old-spelling text. It will explain itself. Many find it very helpful.