Hoccleve's Regement of Princes (British Library, Harley 4866, f.88). All images by permission of the British Library.
This image is supposed to be the earliest and most authentic portrait of the poet Chaucer. He certainly looks like someone who knew a thing or two. His finger is pointing toward a line in the poem which refers to the portrait. Such relationships between text and image are not unknown in medieval manuscripts, and probably acted as prompts for reading the text.
| overview | image | text | alphabet | abbreviations | exercises | transcript |
Click on each of the above to walk your way through a segment of the text. The transcript will appear in a separate window so that you can use it for reference at any time. These exercises are designed to guide you through the text, not test you, so you can cheat as much as you like.
If you are looking at this page without frames, there is more information about medieval writing to be found by going to the home page (framed) or the site map (no frames).
This site is created and maintained by Dr Dianne Tillotson, freelance researcher and compulsive multimedia and web author. Comments are welcome Material on this web site is copyright, but some parts more so than others. Please check here for copyright status and usage before you start making free with it. This page last modified 27/5/2003.
