3 - The General Prologue

Summary

For generations the conventional “roadside drama” reading of the General Prologue, despite or even because of its undeniable explanatory efficiency, has made it difficult for critics trying to view the Prologue as an object of analysis to view the whole of it. In its construction, Chaucer teases readers with the expectations evoked by the conventional genres of the dream-vision and the estates satire, dangling their promises but leaving them unfulfilled, and uses their features while rejecting their premises and withholding the normal modes of their action. Ultimately what is most distinct about the achievement of the General Prologue is how successfully it seems to ward off grasp of its artifice, organizing the experience of reading to make it seem an experience of something prior to reading.