Pardoner's Duality In The Canterbury Tales

No,no, that’s never been my policy”(p,152, lines 100-114)! The Pardoner looks down upon peasants and gluttony. To which he is being hypocritical because he is greedy with gaining money. The misuse of trust is greatly displayed on how the Pardoner practically takes the earnings of people who are being tricked into believing they are

Sherika Jiang Dr. S-R Foundations of Literature 23 January 2023 Pardoner’s Greed In “The Pardoner’s Tale” from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), the pardoner’s greedy methods of money-making by manipulating people's emotions often leads to the customer falling for his scam revealing the social problem of people's greed for money can cause society to not function correctly when everyone is only looking out for themselves. As a salesman, the pardoner uses fake relics to sell to his Christian customers.

The Pardoner preaches against sin but indulges in all forms of sin simultaneously. The Pardoner even tries to excuse his behavior by favorably comparing himself to other hypocritical preachers who seek power. He preaches only to get people’s money by making them feel guilty not to correct their sin. In medieval times it was custom to serve their God as much as possible and avoid sinning. Both the medieval time and the contemporary world have that in common.

There are seven deadly sins which consist of pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth or laziness. To make the moral of a tale tempting for the reader to keep reading Chaucer includes one of the seven deadly sins in his tales to portray excitement throughout the entire tale making the theme to be surprising or unanticipated. Therefore, in the Pardoner’s Tale, the author uses greed which shows a variety of different literary elements being used to impact the theme of the tale. In the Pardoner's Tale, one of the seven deadly sins expressed in the writing is greed.

Sidney Ison AP English Mrs. Sutton November 24, 2015 Manipulative Mercy In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner, a corrupt, greedy man, uses his tale to manipulate his audience into repentance for his own profitable benefit. The Pardoner is known for cheating people and stealing their money through his selling of false relics. Through his tale, he manipulates his audience by inspiring repentance through his ability to evoke emotions of shame, guilt, and fear. These emotions are evoked by his being able to read and adjust to his audience, making his tale relatable to his audience by social status and monetary desires, and instilling in the pilgrims a fear of death and damnation.

In The Pardoner’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer presents the Pardoner as an ironic character who is deceptive and driven by his own, selfish motives despite preaching that . Chaucer uses irony to demonstrate how the Pardoner’s corruption leaves him unable to act as an intercessor between repenters and God. The Host, disappointed by the tragic ending of the Physician’s Tale, asks the Pardoner to tell an uplifting, merry story. The pilgrims interject and demand a moral tale, which the Pardoner agrees to tell.

The Pardoner in “Pardoner’s Tale” describes himself and his greed in saying “Let me briefly make my purpose plain; I preach for nothing but for greed of gain” (1-2) The pardoner would “beg from kirk to kirk and never do an honest job of work” (11-12) He preached that the people needed to give him money. Furthermore, he sold archetypes of Biblical artefacts as well to gain money cheating and lying to the people. But Chaucer also calls out the corrupt religious leaders in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” when he says that “women can now go safely up and down by every bush or under every tree; there is no other incubus but he,

For reasons no one has ever been quite able to decipher, the Pardoner responds to the Host's request for a tale with a detailed exposé of the techniques he uses to sell his fake relics and expensive pardons to the unlearned masses of Christians who gather to hear him preach. These techniques range from a display of learning meant perhaps to intimidate more than inspire; to a play on the emotions of shame, guilt, and fear; to the implication that those who fail to give him money are harboring unspeakable hideous sins. After telling his fable, which is designed to inspire a fear of damnation that loosens up the purse strings, the Pardoner tries out his techniques on the pilgrims. Like any good salesman, he knows to create perceived scarcity

Chaucer’s The Pardoner manages to be a much debated and highly controversial character of The Canterbury Tales, criticized by Chaucer himself in the way he was described. From his ambiguous sexuality and fluid gender representation to his questionable lifestyle of abusing the name of the Church for his own purposes as well as his overall defiance of the social norms of his time, the Pardoner is one character that can be explored from various angles. The Pardoner is first introduced to be travelling with The Summoner, a corrupt officer of the Church like The Pardoner himself.

There is enough in the world for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed”(Frank Buchman). This quote expresses the pardoner’s character as greed. Chaucer is the father of English poetry. Canterbury tales is where a social occasion of travelers who are prompting to tell four stories during their travel. One of the traveler is Pardoner.

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous set of poems, The Canterbury Tales, one of his most notable characters is the Pardoner. During Chaucer’s time, a Pardoner was a member of the Church who went around various neighborhoods and villages to preach the word of God and collect money or charitable donations in turn for God’s forgiveness of their sins. But in Chaucer’s story, the Pardoner is depicted as a thief and criminal who takes all of the profits from donors and boasts about this theft. As an influential member of the church and symbolically closer to God, a pardoner was automatically placed at the top of the social hierarchy during Chaucer’s time. However, his motives for taking advantage of the Church and religion places him at the bottom of humanity.

After reviewing the two tales “ The Pardoner's Tale” and “ The Wife of Bath's Tale” told by Chaucer, one tale effects me the most. Out of the two tales, I believe “The Pardoner's Tale” has better moral values and is more entertaining than, “The Wife of Bath”. The first reason that makes”The Pardoner's Tale” effective is the

In the middle ages The Wife of Bath and The Pardoner are both committing sins in different ways by taking advantage of people. The Pardoner is a man who is very friendly, gentle ,but takes great advantage of many people.

If Chaucer wrote the Pardoner’s Tale the same way but did not include that the Pardoner knew he was corrupt then the argument could be made that Chaucer believed the Christian religion had truly strayed away from the original doctrines as Luther describes in his 95 Thesis and work On Christian Liberty. Chaucer’s view on the corruptness of the Church differs from Luther’s view in that Chaucer believes a corrupt Christian figure is only corrupt because of the inner motive of greed not because his congregation entitles him to be

In the story, both the characters on the pilgrimage and the characters within the stories themselves display elements of church corruption. Out of all the characters on the journey, the Pardoner is the most obvious case of a corrupt member of the church. The prologue of the Pardoner illustrates his obsession with material wealth and the hypocrisy of his job. During this drunken state, he rants to the company that “Covetousness is both the root and stuff of all I preach” (p. 243) this oxymoronic phrase illustrates his corruption. Covetousness refers to one of the ten commandments; You shall not covet your neighbors