Subscribing to the CHAUCER Mailing List

I would like you to subscribe to the "Chaucer" mailing list. It covers all Middle English Literature, not just Chaucer's works. But most of the discussion is about Chaucer.

Furthermore, this list can be used in several very helpful ways:

• to read, to gradually become familiar with intelligent and informed discussion of issues related to Chaucer and his time;
• to ask questions -- intelligent, well-researched and thought-out questions -- on. Please wait to do this until you have completed the part of my course on using Mailing Lists for research (Brian, again you have had most of this);
• to do Database searches on (I'll show you how -- Brian, you know this as well). The archives of CHAUCER (note -- unlike many mailing lists, it's called simply CHAUCER, _not_ "Chaucer-l") are very extensive and fully searchable. It's an invaluable resource.

You may subscribe in this way. Send an email message to:

LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU

with the single line (in the message area)

SUBSCRIBE CHAUCER

Leave the subject line blank, since the server won't read it anyway.

Or, you may use the Web interface, the main page of which is here:

http://listserv.uic.edu/archives/chaucer.html

Go to the link for "Join or leave the list."

NOTE: There is a 'search' facility on this page. DO NOT RELY ON IT ALONE! It will only search the archives back to November 2003 -- not far enough back!

To search the earlier archives, you have to go to the Search link here , at http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?S1=chaucer

You'll have to do the same search on each page. You'll search for

KnT

and

Knight

"Knight" will turn up far too many 'hits'. But "KnT" -- the official abbreviation for Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" -- will not turn up those posts which write the name of the tale out. So, search for both, one at a time.

Save your searches.

Once you are successfully subscribed, you'll receive some introductory email messages. Save them.

Once you are subscribed, you may want to set your subscription to Digest Mode -- meaning you'll get all the postings in one email message about once a day.

To do this, follow the directions in the introductory email you will receive upon subscribing. It should look something like this. If it's very different, please let me know -- I sub'd a long time ago, and the message keeps changing, and getting longer...

DATABASE SEARCHES. This is the "old-fashioned" way to search, and is still extremely useful for mailing lists that go back for years. You can't do it with Chaucer, since the pre-2003 posts are on another server.

To do Database Searches, see the link "Searching Listserv Archives" at the bottom of my Research and Documentation Page. This link has changed a few times too, but it will always be at the bottom of my page, so go there for it.