“The Canterbury Tales” will be the basis of a seminar this summer that will take an Eastern professor from London to the tales’ namesake in Canterbury, England.

English professor David Raybin was awarded a grant for nearly $116,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanitites.

Raybin and his wife, Susanna Fein, English professor at Kent State University, will use the grant to teach a summer seminar on Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” in London and Canterbury.

The seminar is geared toward American K-12 teachers and has 15 participants from 14 states.

The four-week seminar will begin June 22.

Three weeks of the seminar will be conducted at the Queen Mary College at the University of London, and one week will be held at Canterbury Christ Church University, in Canterbury.

Dana Ringuette, chair of the English department at Eastern, said the NEH grant is a major grant – and a major undertaking.

“It speaks well of the English department, but especially of David Raybin, that the NEH saw fit to underwrite this grant. (It) is tremendous and speaks volumes,” Ringuette said

Raybin is in the process of arranging the details of the trip.

“We’re still contacting people before the trip, making sure there’s no confusion,” Raybin said. “Just practical things at this point.”

Raybin and Fein have team-taught study abroad courses at Harlaxton College in England in past years.

“There’s always a challenge to team-teaching, but we’ve worked together in the past on articles and the study abroad program in Harlaxton,” Raybin said. “We work together well.”

Raybin is the editor of “Closure in ‘The Canterbury Tales’: The Role of the Parson’s Tale,” and has authored several articles on medieval subjects, including Chaucer, often called the “father of English literature.”

Fein has also written numerous articles on Chaucer and has co-directed a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for High School Teachers on “The Canterbury Tales.”

Raybin and Fein co-edit “The Chaucer Review: A Journal of Medieval Studies and Literary Criticism.”

“The idea of spending time with the best school teachers in the country excites me – pure joy,” Raybin said.

The 15 seminar attendees were chosen from a pool of more than 75 applicants.

Thomas Stevens can be contacted at 581-7942 or at tmstevens@eiu.edu.