Global Medieval Sourcebook
The Global Medieval Sourcebook (GMS) is an open access teaching and research tool. It offers a flexible online display for the parallel viewing of medieval texts in their original language and in new English translations, complemented by new introductory materials.
The GMS spans one thousand years (600-1600) of literary production around the world. It contains short texts of broad interdisciplinary interest in a variety of genres, almost all of which have not previously been translated into English.
For teachers, the project provides curated collections of medieval texts, which may be assigned as course reading or used in the classroom. For students, the project allows for an immersive engagement in medieval text culture and the possibility to practice translation and transcription skills through the selective display of text and image modules. For researchers, all texts in the compendium are downloadable as TEI-XML files to allow for computational or other analysis.
The GMS was made possible by funding from the Roberta Bowman Denning Fund for Humanities and Technologies and funding and support from Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). In 2018, we receive an Advancement (Level II) Grant from the Office of Digital Humanities (ODH) at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The transcriptions, translations, and commentaries in the GMS are produced and reviewed by scholars of medieval studies. From 2016-2021, the GMS operated a submissions-based model, but the project is now transitioning into a static exhibition of our material.