Patience Agbabi, The Canterbury Tales , and Polyhistorical Form

Abstract: This essay engages the question of historical form via one of the more remarkable retellings of Chaucer, the British-Nigerian poet Patience Agbabi's 2014 book Telling Tales . Retaining Chaucer's governing conceit that the pilgrims share tales to pass the time while traveling from London to Canterbury, Agbabi layers onto this frame narrative a dazzling array of poetic and linguistic forms. The result is a work that flaunts its literary historical textures while resisting single period-based historicization. Rather than peeling back the layers of culture and history that inevitably accrue on artworks as they pass through time, Agbabi's book accentuates them, modeling a brand of historical poetics based not on recovery, but remediation.