Bringing medieval texts to a contemporary audience | Stanford News
A new website curated by Stanford faculty and students, the Global Medieval Sourcebook, translates medieval literature into English for the first time. The Middle Ages produced a staggering wealth of literary works, spanning dozens of languages and nearly 1,000 years. The question today is how to bring these texts to a modern audience who may not have specialized knowledge of medieval languages and contexts. The illustration depicts King Henry II of England demanding that the Arthurian romances be written down. It appears in the beginning of La mort au Roy Artus, a 13th-century manuscript of Arthurian romances. (Image credit: Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University) The Global Medieval Sourcebook (GMS) answers that question. Curated by Stanford faculty and students, the GMS is an online, interactive collection of medieval texts and their translations.
