Welcome to The Canterbury Tales, a complete and unabridged text of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work in its original Middle English, alongside a transcript that updates each word into the spelling of the Oxford English Dictionary. The transcript also includes a tooltip glossary for unfamiliar words and phrases, and links to Wikipedia throughout the General Prologue and one or two of the more popular tales.

You are welcome to read the complete work online, the General Prologue and Knight’s Tale are publicly available, the remaining tales will require you to complete a free registration. If you wish to record, copy or print the work out, please request permission here. 

When starting out with reading Middle English, the word endings “-n,” or “-en” (which have to do with plurality and tense) can be largely read over or ignored; “weren” can be understood simply as “were;” “longen” as “long,” etc.   

The transcript used The Oxford English Dictionary, available at OED.com (with a subscription), and Wiktionary, which is a very good alternative. W. W. Skeat’s Middle English Glossary (A-D) (E-K) (L-R) (S-Z), and Index of Proper Names were also extensively used, and are available online at Wikisource, as were editions of Chaucer by W. W. Skeat, F. N. Robinson, and Larry D. Benson. The text is from W. W. Skeat’s edition. It serves here as more of a guide to the transcript than an authoritative text,, as I am aware of some errors in it.

If you enjoy the transcript, you can purchase a copy of The Knight’s Tale and the Miller’s Tale: A Dramatised Edition in Modernised Spelling (PB) here, or The Knight’s Tale and the Miller’s Tale: A Modern-Spelling Edition (eBook) here.

There is no one definitive way to pronounce Middle English.