This page was first posted on the Web on Sept. 6, 1997.
Last modified August 19, 2003.
This page is privately owned and on a commercial server. The views expressed here are mine, and do not reflect any official viewpoints of Wilmington College.
My homepage, with links to my other classes and projects, is here.
Please feel free to e-mail me at mcnelis@aol.com if you wish to contact me.
These links provide a good deal of information
on various aspects of the periods we are studying. I will be adding
more material, as time permits, so as to provide a head start
for those who wish to read up ahead of time on the later
material.
These pages represent only a tiny fraction of the huge amount of Web-accessible medieval material out there.
The Voice of the Shuttle
NetSERF: Medieval Misconceptions
Misconceptions and prejudices concerning European medieval culture continue to endure year after year, originating largely in (1) Renaissance authors (Erasmus, Petrarch) who styled themselves as Romantic-age-type culture heroes who transcended their purportedly inferior predecessors, and (2) anti-Catholic prejudice, particularly in British scholarship up till the 20th century--something which unfortunately remains alive and well in America to this very day. Beyond that, it is often preserved in K-12 teaching materials derived from old books, or from books derived from older books. This link (above) helps to deflate some of the most common untruths perpetuated about the Middle Ages (itself a Renaissance label). Education majors take note; you are responsible for stopping the transmission of this stuff to the next generation!
Iceman's Apparent Cause of Death:
The Arrowhead
The right side of this page has links to other Iceman sites and articles. In particular. The most recent news, as of August '03, is that Oetzi has blood from other people all over himself and his weapons (link); he died as a result of some major fighting between a number of people, some of whom he apparently left much the worse for wear.
Bodies
of the Bogs
This page has links to the rather gruesome photos of a dozen or
so of the hundreds of bodies found in Celtic-era peat bogs, as
well as links to research and scholarship on the subject.
Stonehenge
Begun in 3050 BC, this is the most famous and dramatic of British prehistoric structures--see the National Trust Stonehenge page. A spectacular recent find is the Amesbury Archer, the most ornate of all early burials in Britain; DNA shows he came from the area that would become Switzerland. Like himself, the man buried next to him has a deformed leg, and is believed to be his son; speculation is rife that he was the "King of Stonehenge" and may have been involved in directing a major stage of its development. Another very large such structure is called Avebury--actually the biggest stone circle on Earth.
Seahenge/Woodhenge
This recent discovery is about 4000 years old.
Tobacco, cocaine, and THC (evidence of "herbal" medicine, so to speak) may have come to Egypt by way of Chinese contact with the Americas, rather than through direct trade, but the astounding fact that the products got there somehow--as demonstrated by their presence in Egyptian mummies--helps to illustrate the pitfalls of academic orthodoxy and resistance to new theories. Even today some people are simply unable to believe this truly bizarre discovery. Although the results were first confirmed in 1992, the possible implications still have not been fully absorbed. For example, this site simply dismisses the findings without any consideration of the science at all. This rather more scientific paper says, in effect, deal with it--the results are solid, and they are far from the only evidence of transatlantic contacts in ancient times. Perhaps the greatest challenge is all of the jokes we could think of about this topic:
More interesting, of course, is the evident need to reimagine previously dismissed arguments about other anomalous archaeological finds in both the Old and New Worlds over the years (most interesting at this time may be the number of finds of what appear to be ruined and submerged cities in several locations around the world; these scans [link] of a site discovered off Cuba seem inexplicable except as artificial structures). This is probably just the opening of a huge can of worms that will make ancient history a very combative, but highly entertaining, field of study for decades to come. Advances in marine archaeology are certainly going to drastically transform our understanding of human history in the next few years--see, for example, Robert Ballard's confirmation that the Black Sea was an inhabited region inundated by a sudden apocalyptic flood [link], clearly an event sufficient to generate flood myths in any European or Mideastern culture in the centuries since.
Pictures from Skara Brae
These are scenes from the 5,000-year-old British village we saw on video in class.
Asterix and Obelisk
It does my 60's-vintage heart good to see that Albert René's Asterix is still going strong. This comic strip, now on the Web with fun animations, has been part of generations of European children's education about the period of Celtic and Roman conflict (the Celts are the heroes, always tweaking Julius Caesar and the other Romans). The strip ought to be much better known in the US than it is, and is handy for teaching French as well as Roman and Celtic history--Sec. Ed. majors take note!
Course page: Women in Celtic Society at Univ. of North Carolina
A (Sort Of) Opposing View
"The Women Warriors: For decades, scholars have searched for ancient matriarchies. Will they ever find one?" From Lingua Franca magazine, November 1997.
The Morrigan and her Germano-Celtic Counterparts, an interesting-looking dissertation by Angelique Gulermovich Epstein.
The Vix Tomb
A spectacular find, the large and wealthy grave of a major Celtic princess, found in the 1950s. The museum link has some pics and a nice music score, and is in French; the US link has a bit more information.
The Complete
Cattle Raid of Cooley, English and Irish Texts
by Steve Taylor, Vassar College.
Like many people who post Celtic-related materials on the Web,
Mr. Taylor is not a specialist in the study of Celtic culture,
history or literature. However, he still seems to have done a
fine job of making the texts available in both Irish and English,
along with an index of names and guidelines for pronunciation.
Celtic
Art
This site has a good assortment of photos of Celtic art objects,
although it is not an academic page as such.
Celtic
Ogham
A good scholarly site that discusses the history of the Ogham
writing system, including a page on its possible
origins. Ogham is now believed to have
been based on Roman writing, rather than having been an independent
development. Fonts are available here too. Here is another Ogham link.
The Perseus Project
A major scholarly site for all things Classical--Greek and Latin
language, literature, culture, art, maps, etc.
Homer's Illiad
and Odyssey
This site has a lot of information and attractive graphics and
sound-clips, although it is not quite up to scholarly standards
(for one thing, there are a lot of typographical errors). A very
good hypertext Odyssey, with hyperlinked glossary, etc. is available
from the Perseus page, above.
The Virgil
Home Page
Virgil's Æneid may well be the most influential
literary work in all of Western culture to date. It
was Virgil's version of the Trojan war, rather than Homer's, which
was considered authoritative in the medieval period.
James J. O'Donnell, at Bryn Mawr, maintains a page with many high-quality links, including concentrations on Augustine and Boethius, perhaps the two most important writers in the foundation of medieval literary thought.
The SASLAC Jerome Page is one starting point for studying the work of the man who, after Augustine and Boethius, may have been the most influential scholar of the earlier Christian centuries. The site includes an emphasis on Jerome's influence on Old English literature.
Scholarship and Education in Medieval Europe
From
Jesus to Christ
The PBS series Frontline produced this website to complement a
documentary about the earliest years of Christianity.
Rutgers University Research on Religion Index Page
NetSERF Medieval Religion Index
The Online Vatican Museum Exhibit
King Alfred is here! Click the link for an online Old English tutorial, complete with hints, cheat-peeks and more. The user name and password are both "demo," then enter your name and e-mail when prompted. This is a courtesy to my friend Mike Drout, and will help him to show that his project is a useful one to people beyond his campus.
The BedeNet Page
Interest in the works of the Venerable Bede (c. 672-735), author
of the first great book of English history, has been growing steadily
in recent years. In particular read the section on his life at
The
Life of Bede.
Bede's Story of Cædmon and Cædmon's Hymn
Stuart Lee's Film of "The Ruin"
This little movie, made by the director of humanities computing at Oxford, does a wonderful job of presenting "The Ruin" (read aloud in Old English and with subtitles in Modern English) while translating its meditation on a long-fallen Roman building into a similar lament over an abandoned industrial building in modern England. Needs Apple's Quicktime (for Macintosh or Windows, see www.apple.com) to play.
Allen Frantzen's "Seafarer" Page
A web project devoted to the poem "The Seafarer."
Ruthwell
Cross and "Dream of the Rood" Page
Among other things, this page shows the runic version of this
Old English poem.
Tim Romano's "The Wanderer" Page
The Battle of Maldon
This is a very nice-looking site dedicated to The Battle of Maldon,
but I can't find the name of the author or academic affiliation
(if any). Rule of thumb: whenever that's the case, take any web
site on an academic subject with several grains of salt. It does have some good links, though.
Martin Irvine's Beowulf Resources Page
Robert
Stevick's Verbal Art of Beowulf Page
One of my advisors at the University of Washington, Professor
Stevick has long been one of the foremost scholars in "the
hard stuff"--numeric and quantitative aspects of the composition
of Old English poetry. This link shows his latest Web-available
materials on the subject.
Tom
Fish's Anglo-Saxon Slide Show
Professor Fish teaches at Cumberland College and has produced
a PowerPoint presentation of slides illustrating the history and
culture of Anglo-Saxon England.
Old English Diversions--comic fun with a dead language.
Old
English Fonts
Load your computer with all you need to print Old English characters.
The 13th Warrior
Though most reviewers hated it, the majority of medievalists seem to like
this recent film of the Beowulf story, which is based on Michael
Crichton's Eaters of the Dead. Oddly enough, not one but two big-budget Beowulf movies are coming out soon.
Ibn Fadlan's Journey with the Rus
This link has good excerpts from the actual book of Ibn Fadlan, upon which Eaters of the Dead (=13th Warrior) is based.
An
Image from the Lindisfarne Gospels
A
Second Image from the Lindisfarne Gospels
Images from the Book
of Kells
This site reproduces pages from the book which represents the
pinnacle of the Irish book arts.
Kevin S. Kiernan's Electronic Beowulf Project
Other Anglo-Saxon Manuscript Images
Manuscript Pages from the Heliand
Melissa Bernstein's Home Page, created by a friend of mine, allows study of the Sermon of Wulfstan, a great fire-and-brimstone exhortation to the English to resist the invaders of the 11th century.
The Bayeux Tapestry
The whole length of it visible on the Web, documenting the Norman
Conquest from the contemporary period. See also www.hastings1066.com and www.battle1066.com (a bit un-scholarly; amateur historian alert).
The Medieval Life magazine; see issue #5--Medieval Women
The Medieval Feminist Index at Haverford College.
Female Heterosexuality in Later Medieval Europe
A very impressive student site with a lot of valuable and not-widely-known information. (NC-17, I think!). The site may have been taken down due to its use of copyrighted images and texts, but I did save the whole web archive and will post it on the Wilmington intranet when I am able.
Links Page for Chrétien de Troyes
This page, by Professor Debora Schwartz, has links to references on the pre-eminent author of Arthurian romance.
Arthuriana, the Scholarly Journal about King Arthur
Arthurian Links for Secondary-Level Educators
This page has apparently not been updated since 1995, but still seems to have some good resources for secondary ed.
Translatio Studii et Imperii
Professor Schwartz again, this time a fine capsule introduction to early Arthurian literature and to classical and medieval theories of history.
The Pen(is), Castration, and Identity: Abelard's Negotiations of Gender
A paper focused on the writings of Abelard.
The "Stealing Heaven" Heloise and Abelard Links Page
This one is a bit offbeat; the top-level page is about a Yugoslavian film on H and A which apparently features rather more heavy breathing than deep thinking... however, for some reason they have included a fairly useful set of links to other H and A resources on the Web.
Debora Schwartz's Courtly Love Handout
Professor Schwartz has posted a compact orientation to the background and texts relevant to the study of courtly love, along with links relating to, for instance, Andreas Capellanus' Art of Courtly Love.
Rose Oser Seros: Recent Studies of the Romance of the Rose
A review of several studies of RR, written by Al Shoaf, editor of Exemplaria and specialist in Middle English literary criticism.
The Decameron Web, a page with many sources of information relating to Boccaccio.
This page is the authoritative one-stop reference both for students studying Chaucer, and for teachers who will have to teach Chaucer in class (press the appropriate link at the top of the page for teacher or student materials). All of you who are secondary-ed specialists are most strongly advised to bookmark this page; it will serve you well for years to come (sample assignments; readings; online texts; audio files; the works). And, of course, everyone else in the class will also benefit from it as a background and study guide. Read it early and read it often.
A major set of sources for Chaucer study at both introductory and advanced levels. See in particular the link dedicated to the Canterbury Tales.
A site with links to both medieval and later illustrations of Chaucer's works, along with other background materials.
The Chaucer Project, a multimedia approach to the Canterbury Tales.
The William Langland Home Page
The Robin Hood Project at the University of Rochester The
Medieval Life magazine, issue #5--Medieval Women International
Marie de France Society Mapping Margery Kempe Margery Kempe Julian of Norwich Witchcraft
Robin Hood studies have received increasing attention in recent years, and this site looks like the major Web index on the topic.
Medieval Women
by Sarah Stanbury and Virginia Raguin at Loyola University.
From the Luminarium site.
From the Luminarium site.
A site related to the Witchcraft Bibliography Project--as with Celtic topics, special caution on this subject to ensure you are looking at scholarly pages, rather than flights of fiction and fancy. . .
Shakespeare
Before Shakespeare
Baragona's Medieval Drama Home Page
Shakespeare did not invent post-classical drama, and medieval plays, as we will discuss in class, were not primitive or stupid productions by a long shot. In order to understand Shakespeare it is important to know that England and the rest of Europe had vibrant and mature dramatic traditions in place; Shakespeare participates in English theater--he doesn't invent it.
In particular, check out The York Pageant Simulator (this link is incorrectly given on the site above). Dennis Jerz has used Java to create an interactive module that shows how the pageant was staged with a succession of wagons. His Glossary of Terms is helpful, not only with medieval drama, but as a basic religious glossary as well (at least one of his links to it does not work--use the Glossary link at the bottom of his pages instead).
More links:
The
Aberdeen Bestiary Project
Meet some medieval animals.
Plague
and Public Health in Renaissance Europe
The Decameron page also has plague information.
