Comparing Canterbury Tales 'And' The Pardoner's Tale

In the late 1300s Geoffrey Chaucer began wrote The Canterbury Tales, a story which follows the religious journey of twenty-nine people, who represent many aspects of Medieval society, to the Canterbury Cathedral in southeast England. While on the pilgrimage the host of the tavern, where all the pilgrims meet, suggests that the pilgrims each tell a story for the group’s entertainment. Chaucer intended for all the voyagers to tell two stories, but he unfortunately died before he could finish the book and only got to write one story apiece. However, the goal of the storytelling contest is to tell the most moral story possible, and the one who wins receives a free meal, which the rest of the pilgrims will pay for. Although some of the other stories have good moral messages, “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” are on different ends of the moral spectrum. “The Pardoner’s Tale” focuses on a pardoner who preaches against greed. While “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” exemplifies what all women want in their relationships: power. Although both “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” demonstrate the value of the opinion of elders, the stories differ in their moral values and their storyteller’s values.

Greed greed is in the air, greed greed is everywhere. Geoffrey Chaucer’s story The Canterbury Tales begins with a prologue explaining the main points of the stories that follow the prologue. The two Stories “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of bath’s Tale” are two of the stories in The Canterbury Tales. The two stories have a main focus of explaining morals in a hiddin way. Both stories express more than one moral and it gives the reader a sense of what chaucer is trying to express. “The Pardoners’s Tale” Is a better story because of its relatible moral that focuses on greed, and its multiple uses of figurative language and irony.

The Pardoner has many other examples of irony just waiting to show up to the readers.
    The Pardoner's next example of irony is situational irony. The reader is originally told a story about three men searching for a man named death. Readers seem to forget all about the part of the story when these young men find the gold. At this point the story took a sure twist up until all of the young men are dead. When this happens Chaucer goes back “Thus these two murderers received their due,/So did the the treacherous young poisoner too” (294-5).   The “due” in this case is death. When this occurs the reader will most likely remember that death was what these young men were searching from the beginning for, the reader would assume that the quest to find this assassin would be a wild goose chase, the young men did indeed find what they where looking for. The Pardoner has one more form of irony in store for his listeners.
    The final example of irony from the Pardoner is dramatic irony. To let his audience know that these three young men are doomed to death before they have the slightest idea Chaucer uses foreshadowing. The best example of foreshadowing is the old man that they meet on the road to find Death. The old man give several clues to his identity such as “One who would change his youth to have my age/And so my age is mine and must be still” (121-2). The reader easily mistakes the old man as looking for an exchange of youth and old age when in

Throughout history greed has corrupted and destroyed many people plunging them farther into the need for more; in contemporary times this has only strengthened. In 1387, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote “The Canterbury Tales” within this consist of “The Pardoners Tale”. This tale consists of a greedy pardoner preaching sermons only to benefit himself. An English poet, William Blake believes that “The characters of Chaucer’s Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations…” As Blake states Chaucer’s pilgrims, can be considered a universal theme throughout all ages. The Pardoners greed is universal because of his sermons, his use of relics, and can be related to modern day Ponzi schemes.

During the Middle Ages, The Canterbury Tales was the first major English literary work of Geoffrey Chaucer. One of Chaucer’s classic tales, “The Pardoner’s Tale,” establishes a concrete image of the Pardoner’s greed. Chaucer uses “The Pardoner’s Tale” to expose that “greed is the root of all evil” through verbal, situational and dramatic irony.

The world is full of hypocrites and in the story “The Pardoner’s Tale”, Chaucer writes about a man who is living a life of sin. The Pardoner’s tale is an epologia of a pardoner who has the power from the church to forgive others for their sins but makes a living out of lying and tricking his audience. Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale he preaches about greed, drinking, blasphemy, and gambling but in the Pardoner’s Prologue he admits to committing these sins himself. The pardoner is really just a 14th century con artist who makes a living by his own hypocrisy.

In the story, “The Pardoner’s Tales”, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the character the Pardoner in descriptive way. He describe the Pardoner’s corruption teaching and the way the Pardoner act in the tale. The religious that the Pardoner teaching is corrupted and very selfish, greediness, and gluttony. This thing are all opposite to what the real church religious is teaching. In the story, he tricks the people to buy his fake relics and other things by using the church’s believe. The Pardoner act and his teaching are all corrupted because of the church. It shows the side of greediness, gluttony and selfishness which highly reflect into himself and his believe.

The consumption of alcohol is a key component in medieval literature. Due to drinking water being scarce. It was often preferred to drink beer, “Beer often had a low alcohol content” (Unger 3). The lack of germ theory made it very simple for individuals to drink alcohol instead of water for fear of sickness. It was when an individual drank abhorrent amounts of this beer that their decision making abilities were compromised. Within the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, it is quite important to notice all the situations in which alcohol encouraged foolishness, but it also encouraged its own consumption. The Pardoner’s Tale has sparked my interest from the beginning. The sermon that the pardoner tells focuses on the sins of the tavern, those being gambling, drinking, and swearing. These three indulgences are what led them to their downfall later in the tale. This tale is one that utilizes alcohol consumption as a catalyst. The Pardoner’s Tale is a tale that utilizes alcohol consumption as a driving factor for the tale and the pardoner’s intentions are then revealed to be that they are not so different.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of stories by a group of pilgrims who are heading to Canterbury Cathedral. In this book, the pardoner and the reeve show antipodal characters in many ways. The pardoner is beautiful blonde hair man who is being loved by everyone. However he is very corrupted and smart and sells fake religious stuff to people saying very good compliment. On the other hand, the reeve is very serious and honest business man. He is very smart enough to know what criminals think and do. The pardoner story-tells a great example (or tale?) of seven deadly sins and reeve’s story is mocking of the miller. These very different characteristic men tell story telling that human beings are always punished for

Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tale," a relatively straightforward satirical and anti-capitalist view of the church, contrasts motifs of sin with the salvational properties of religion to draw out the complex self-loathing of the emasculated Pardoner. In particular, Chaucer concentrates on the Pardoner's references to the evils of alcohol, gambling, blasphemy, and money, which aim not only to condemn his listeners and unbuckle their purses, but to elicit their wrath and expose his eunuchism.

Everyone has a story. Certainly Chaucer believes so as he weaves together tales of twenty nine different people on their common journey to Canterbury. Through their time on the road, these characters explore the diverse lives of those traveling together, narrated by the host of the group. Each character in the ensemble is entitled to a prologue, explaining his or her life and the reasons for the tale, as well as the actual story, meant to have moral implications or simply to entertain. One narrative in particular, that of the Wife of Bath, serves both purposes: to teach and to amuse. She renounces the submissive roles of a woman and reveals the moral to her story while portraying women as sex seeking, powerful creatures, an amusing thought

In the story the pardoner tells, it says “these three, to live and die for one another as brother- born might swear to his born brother.” (100-101) Sadly, greed can break the bond between the strongest of bonds. The three didn’t realize that their bond was about to be put to the test with how greedy oneself can get with money and riches compared to each other lives. The pardoner mention in the story that greed comes in all shapes and sizes but don’t be fooled for it might cause oneself own life. The old man, which is mention in the pardoner’s story, represent Death by persuading the three rioters that “death” was going to be under the tree. Unfortunately, Death comes after greediness begins. In the pardoner’s story, the old man says “…if it be your design to find out death, turn up this crooked way towards that grove, I left him there today under a tree, and there you’ll find him waiting.” (159-163) Remember the three rioters were like brothers with a strong bond, but under the tree was an unfortunate surprise. there was Gold under the tree which cause a break in the friend’s bond, yet that cause is called greediness. The strong message that Geoffrey Chaucer is telling is that don’t be fooled by the people around oneself for everyone can change at any minute for the love of greed and riches. During the separation of one of

“The Pardoner’s Tale” suggests a profile of the Pardoner as a moral man, a man of God. The narrator is viewed as a wise, gentle, and truthful man who wants to share his story in a respectful tone. His story reveals his message, which is that greed leads to destruction and the corruption of all things good. The Pardoner

the Wife of Bath says that "thus the apostle Paul has told it me, and bade

The Canterbury Tales is a story that incorporates a multitude of stories told by a multitude of characters. Written by Geoffrey Chaucer, he devises a novel in which each character has to narrate a total of four stories as part of a competition; on their way to visit Saint Thomas Becket, the characters would tell two stories going and two stories returning from the journey. The perspective changes through each story, and each story is introduced by a general, opening, third person prologue. Though many of the characters got to share some ideas, Chaucer unfortunately passed away before his story’s entirety. As a result, a winner was never officially clarified. Needless to say, it is evident that the clear winner would be the Miller’s Tale.