Raybin, David.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 95 (1996): 19-37.
Reads ManT as a "story both of a wife who cuckolds her jealous husband and of a sexually aware trickster [the crow] who uses his knowledge, voice, and wit to gain freedom from his gilded cage." Both the wife and the crow seek freedom, but unlike the…
The context of CT changes the meaning of SNT. Although SNT is a clear statement of the 'right path,' ParsT reminds us at the end that we cannot come close to following that path. Spiritual perfection is rare; for the rest of us there are remedies…
Raybin, David.
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 11-43.
ParsT confronts and resolves the dual focus evident throughout CT: the intricate variety of human error and the radical simplicity of penance. Echoing GP--and recalling the theology of spiritual progress reflected in FrT, PardT, ClT, and Mel--ParsT…
Raybin, David.
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 209-52.
A "full" bibliography of scholarly work on The Parson's Tale; includes 175 annotated entries, each with a bibliographic citation and a description.
Raybin, David.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 213-26.
Raybin interrogates challenges to the dramatic approach to CT, concentrating on the personalities of the narrators of NPT and PardT. The Pardoner and Chauntecleer share a number of characteristics and artfully mix sentence and solace. Their voices…
Raybin, David.
Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 21-29
Reviews scholarship on Chaucer and London and briefly examines the impact of the Black Death, noting that "the threat of death is everywhere in Chaucer's work." An appendix lists "Recent Studies Treating Chaucer and London."
Raybin compares the work by the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer with ClT. Both works involve a powerful man who marries a poor girl and who eventually dismisses her. Pramoedya pays careful attention to the heroine's thoughts and feelings,…
Raybin, David.
Helen Phillips, ed. Chaucer and Religion (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 189-95.
Offers approaches to teaching ethics and spirituality in CT. Provides models and suggestions for teaching CT, and for preparing seminars and conferences designed for new or experienced teachers.
The language and imagery of demonic temptation versus human free will connect FrT and SumT and gain dimension by comparison with ClT. Thomas of SumT is called "demonyak," but his scatological riposte to the friar is justified anger.
Raybin, David.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Visual Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016) pp. 154-74.
Emphasizes Chaucer's biographical connections to Kent to support the claim that a "visual source" for the narrative framework of CT exists in pictorial representations of the miracles of Thomas Becket on stained glass in Trinity Chapel at Canterbury…
Raybin, David.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 39 (2017): 225-48.
Contends that Th is an entertaining, nonpedagogical story written for children, the earliest example in English literature. Explores how details of the tale might appeal to a young audience and posits that its manuscript layout was "calculated to…
Identifies a series of "parallels in plot and language" between Charles Dickens's "The Cricket on the Hearth" and MerT, arguing for Chaucer's influence on "Cricket," on the Strong subplot of "David Copperfield," and on Dickens's "Chaucerian aesthetic…
Raybin, David.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 244-49.
Reviews personal experiences of helping secondary teachers learn how to approach and teach Chaucer. Offers both a summary of the necessity of this kind of outreach and the results of these types of interactions.
Describes the history and reception of friars in France and England from their inception to c. 1400, with a chapter on late fourteenth-century English literary responses: "England: The Turbulent 14th Century, and the Writings of Chaucer, Langland and…
Raymo, R. R.
Modern Language Notes 71.3 (1956): 159-60.
Identifies lines 1-4 of the "Speculum Stultorum" of Nigel de Longchamps as a source for the bird cacophony in PF 309-15, observing that Chaucer's "personal familiarity" with the "Speculum" is evident in the reference to "Daun Burnel the Asse" at NPT…
Raymo, Robert [R.] .
New York : Grolier Club, 2000.
Brief descriptions of the 93 items in the exhibition, intended to present a "comprehensive view of modern representations of Chaucer and his work" (ii). Also includes a brief chronology of Chaucer's life, an index of major editions (between 1447 and…
Raymo, Robert R., and Judith Glazer-Raymo, compilers.
Perkins, Shari, and Jared Camins-Esakov, eds.
New York: Ascensius Press, 2015.
Catalogues the Chaucer collection of Raymo and Glazer-Raymo, which includes editions of the complete works of Chaucer, critical and literary histories, recordings of readings, and collections of Chaucer ephemera.
Rayner, Samantha J.
Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton, eds. Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 69-83.
Focuses primarily on John Gower's "Confessio Amantis," but does compare Gower's use of spiritual love with Chaucer's subversive lust.
Rayner, Samantha.
Literature Compass 5.2 (2008): 195-206.
Surveys pedagogical tools for teaching Chaucer to secondary and undergraduate students, maintaining that "the future looks promising for medieval studies." Includes a summary of studies that address the topic and contrasts practice in the United…
Examines depictions of kingship among the Ricardian poets--Gower, Langland, the Gawain poet, and Chaucer--as reflections of common concerns in a time of turbulence, considering royalty in several of Chaucer's works. In BD, the royal birds are…
Rea, John A.
Philological Quarterly 46 (1967): 128-30.
Offers the "tempting hypothesis" that Adenet le Roi's "Berte aud Grans Pies" is a source of the "coincidence of . . . three motifs" in GP ("pilgrimage, spring, framing device"); also observes several "interesting verbal similarities" between the two.
Read, Dennis M.
Modern Philology 86 (1988): 171-90.
The idea for the artistic representation of the Canterbury pilgrims was that of Robert Hartley Cromek, Blake's enemy. Few preferred Blake's paintings over Cromek's engravings.
Read, Dennis M.
William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (New Castle, Del. : Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2003), pp. 211-31.
Read discusses the conditions of production and marketing of Stothard's Pilgrimage to Canterbury, arguing that the success of the painting and its engravings was due in good part to promotion by Robert Hartley Cromek, an antagonist of William Blake.
Read, Lee.
Once and Future Classroom 15, no. 1 (2019): 96-106.
Explores relations between word and deed, deception and truth in CT as examples of how fiction can help high-school students learn "critical thinking skills, self-reflection, perseverance, the value and danger of duplicity, and the power of…
Read, Michael.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 55-64.
Explores the psychological realism of the conflict at the end of PardT between the Host, a "bully" who rejects the power of language, and the Pardoner, a "conscious artist" who has attacked the Host's "coarse masculinity." Ironically, the Host's…
