A fantastic resource for students of the Middle Ages, or those with just a casual interest in the period. The goal of the Labyrinth project is to develop a centralized, organized resource for information on Medieval literature, history and culture, currently located on a variety of sites all over the world. Labyrinth meets the goal with a wealth of links to Medieval resources, both textual and graphical.
Medieval texts are grouped by language: Latin, Italian, French, Middle English and Old English. The Latin and English language resources are by far the most comprehensive. While many of the Latin texts are available in translation, most of the texts for the other languages are not. There These texts are not facsimiles of the originals, just reprints. If one wishes to look at facsimiles of pages from manuscripts, there is a link to "Manuscripts, Paleology, Codicology." Here one can learn about a variety of projects to reproduce manuscripts on the Internet, as well as view pages from some Medieval texts.
Labyrinth groups cultural information both by region, for items that are limited to one part of Europe, and international, for subjects that knew few boundaries. From these sources, one can look at manuscripts, read historical essays or critical articles, or view pictures from the Book of Kells or a Botticelli painting. Under the International Culture heading, one can browse through topics such as history, music, manuscripts, philosophy and the sciences. There are active links to information on Norse Culture and Arthurian Studies under the heading Special Cultures.
For the serious researcher, there are links to on-line bibliographies and teaching resources, including language learning aids and course materials, as well as links to Medieval Studies databases. To keep up with the latest developments, there are links to professional news, publications (including electronic journals), and organizations, as well as conference information.
Labyrinth is constantly growing, with new items being added every month. Find out what the latest changes are by licking on the "What's New" link. This page not only lists the most recent additions, but all the additions, each grouped under the month they were added to Labyrinth.
One clever feature of this site is called Ariadne's Thread. Just as Ariadne prevented Theseus from getting lost inside King Minos' labyrinth, this device prevents the user from getting lost inside the Web. At the bottom of many pages, no matter where in the world they are located, the Labyrinth icon appears. Clicking on this icon allows the user to instantly return to the Labyrinth home page.
Some of the graphics files containing facsimiles of manuscript pages are very large JPEG files, and take a while to load.