Raffel was born in
New York City in 1928. An alumnus of
James Madison High School in
Brooklyn, New York (1944), Raffel was educated at
Brooklyn College (
B.A., 1948),
Ohio State University (
M.A., 1949), and
Yale Law School (
J.D., 1958). As a
Ford Foundation fellow, Raffel taught English in
Makassar,
Indonesia, from 1953 to 1955. Following the completion of his legal studies and admission to the
New York State Bar in 1959, Raffel practiced law as an
associate at
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy before deciding that he was not suited to practice law. Between 1960 and 1963, he served as founding editor of
Foundation News, a trade journal published by the
Council on Foundations. He taught at Brooklyn College (lecturer in English, 1950–51),
Stony Brook University (instructor of English, 1964–65; assistant professor of English, 1965–66), the
University at Buffalo (associate professor of English, 1966–68), the
University of Haifa (visiting professor of English, 1968–69), the
University of Texas at Austin (visiting professor of English, 1969–70; professor of English and classics and chair of the graduate program in comparative literature, 1970–71), the
Ontario College of Art (senior tutor, 1971–72),
York University, Toronto (visiting professor of humanities, 1972–75),
Emory University (visiting professor, spring 1974) and the
University of Denver (professor of English, 1975–89). From 1989 until his death, he held the Chair in Humanities at the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, ultimately retiring from active service as distinguished professor emeritus of arts and humanities and professor emeritus of English in 2003. == Translations ==