SOURCE: "Chaucer's Religious Tales," in The Critical Review, No. 10, 1967, pp. 18-32.

Robinson is the noted author of Chaucer and the English Tradition and Chaucer's Prosody: A Study of the Middle English Verse Tradition. In the following essay, Robinson discusses the religious motifs used in the "Prioress's Tale," the "Clerk's Tale," and the "Man of Law's Tale."

Of the devotional and moral Canterbury Tales—a surprisingly large proportion of the whole work—the potentially interesting ones are the Prioress's, the Man of Law's and the Clerk's; and about these three there is a deep-seatedly mistaken critical tradition, namely that they are all pretty much the same sort of thing. Mr R. O. Payne is one of the most interesting modern writers on Chaucer, and when he follows the tradition it is time to protest on behalf of the "Clerk's Tale." Mr Payne writes of these three tales, when calling...