The Art of Impersonation: A General Prologue to the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>

Abstract

“Unimpersonated artistry,” the idea that narrators in the Canterbury Tales are intermittently replaced by the voice of the poet, is a notion common in Chaucer criticism. The idea arises from a confusion of voice with presence, and this confusion leads critics to posit preexisting characters and a preexisting poet whose combined traits constrain the meaning of the text. On the contrary, the poem is conspicuously textual, and the voices of the text create the characters and the narrator. Only by treating the pilgrims as the products, rather than the producers, of their tales can we construct their personalities. Similarly, we must construct the poet from his poem. The general narrator is not a naive “Chaucer the pilgrim” but a complex and sophisticated impersonator who withholds himself and directs us to the roles he plays in order to create himself as fully and complexly as possible in his poem.