The Ironyy : The Irony In 'The Canterbury Tales'

In Canterbury Tales, Chaucer reveals hypocritical qualities in the Pardoner through vivid characterization, tone, and morality. The Pardoner's total lack of respect for the Church's expectations and the congregation allows Chaucer to display flaws in society. Chaucer is able to demonstrate scams and illustrate hypocrisy in the Church, and society in general through the techniques he uses in Canterbury Tales.

The Pardoner use deceit and lies to pray on the poor and innocent, his characterization represents the churches misuse of its vast power. Chaucer fortifies this idea when he describes the Pardoner as “And thus I preach against the very vice/I make my

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.

By analyzing “The Canterbury Tales”, one can conclude that Chaucer did see the merits of the church, but by no means regarded it in a wholly positive light. Whereas some of the clergy are viewed as devout and God-fearing, others are viewed as con- men and charlatans. One can even venture to say that Chaucer was using this story as somewhat of a criticism of the church, showing the flaws of its leaders and the greed that permeated it at the time.

Based on the Canterbury tales, Chaucer's point of view of the Church was that he thinks highly of the priests who pastor their congregations because they follow the commandments of Jesus Christ. The Summoner, the Pardoner, the Monk and the Prioress are full-time servants of the Church, but they tend to be selfish and care more for themselves than for God's work. The students Nicholas and Absalom are interested in promiscuous behaviors more than the Church. Nick' a misled God-fearing man is similar to the tale of Noah's Ark. He is swindled to cheat on his wife, and Abby is also lustful of his wife. The Church doctrine really doesn't help, by taking advantage of the men's situation for their own

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.

In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer introduces a variety of characters with a multitude of personalities. From the despicable Summoner to the abrasive Miller, these characters are created with their own personalities and their own human failings. One common fault that characters share is hypocrisy. From pretending to be wealthy to cheating the poor out of money, hypocritical tendencies are abundant in the Canterbury Tales. Throughout the story, Chaucer ridicules the human criticizes the human failing of hypocrisy through the examples of the Pardoner, the Merchant, and the Friar.

Chaucer is known as the father of English poetry. He was a shrewd storyteller and could project a story to an audience with eloquence. In the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer published The Canterbury Tales. In these tales he tells the stories of a group of people going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. While on this pilgrimage, all the travelers have to tell stories, and we begin to see insights on their lives, jobs, and the scandals within these. Chaucer uses satire (the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices) when writing these stories. Chaucer’s use of satire is present in his critique of the Catholic Church, the patriarchy, as well as class and nobility.

Written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century, The Canterbury Tales is a poetic masterpiece. This work is rather unique because of its format and use of satire. The story is a framed narrative, a story within a story. The outer frame is a pilgrimage to the shine of Saint Thomas Becket, the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury. This journey is made by thirty pilgrims, including Chaucer the Pilgrim, who vary in social standing, ranging from aristocrat to peasant but excluding royalty and serfs. Chaucer often utilizes satire to draw attention to how well or how poorly suited a pilgrim is to his or her social status. The pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, England, outside London. Harry Bailly, the owner of the Inn, proposes a story-telling contest among the pilgrims to keep them entertained along the pilgrimage. He offers to accompany the pilgrims at his own expense in order to judge the contest. The plan is for each of the thirty pilgrims to tell four tales, two on the ay to the shrine and two on the journey home. The individual tales comprise the inner frame. Of the proposed 120 tales, the story that is considered most entertaining and most moral will be selected as the winner. The teller of that story will receive a dinner at the Inn upon his or her return at the expense of the other pilgrims. Despite the planned 120 tales, only twenty-two full tales and two fragments exist. One completed tale, told by the Wife of Bath, epitomizes Chaucer’s uncanny ability to match each tale to its teller.

Chaucer at the beginning of the confession creates a illusion of the pardoner being smart and witty however as the tale and confession continues Chaucer starts to undermine his intelligence this is done by repetition suggesting that the Pardoner actually only has limited knowledge. Nevertheless, The Pardoner is a good public speaker so people would probably not have noticed it as he is very good at revolving his words on the topic he wants which will favour him. The Pardoner makes references to the bible through his prologue and the tale making people feel like they have sinned and uses “Saint John” for reference most of the time suggesting that he does not know the other preaches well enough or he does not know them at all. This shows that the Pardoner know “Saint John” preach well and will use it to make money which is his sole purpose “as long as I can preach and get their silver for things I teach” this implies that the pardoner is not preaching for the better meant of others by for “silver” which does not make him very moral. The fact that he preaches for “silver” suggests that he is greedy and yet is preaching how it’s sinful. The Pardoner is a character who is fully conscious of his immorality but preaches other of their sin and how he can redeem them making him a hypocrite. Chaucer illustrates irony by the Pardoners hypocritical nature “ I

It is up to the reader to see these themes and take them to heart as they read on in the tales, since Chaucer isn't afraid of using his satire of the times and people in order to tell a real tale on the realities of how society functioned during the medieval times. While this is fiction, Chaucer intended to put in as many subtle or or obvious views and ideals as possible with as little censoring as he could. Thankfully, he succeeded in such a controversial book, but while still being amusing and deep for fiction of the time.

Let’s start with Chaucer’s attack against the hierarchy. The hierarchy is the church and its maltreatment was trying to get the people to give the people running the church more money with false advertising. What would happen is that the people from the church would go out and tell people that they have sinned and needed to be blessed. The people would go to the church, give the church’s people money, and then be “blessed.” It was obvious which churches were pulling this stunt. Chaucer made two (three technically, but two only need to be pointed out.) characters that are from churches. There is the pardoner, that basically confess to pulling this stunt, and the monk, which was actually giving up the

is suggested, by Chaucer, that he might have an ongoing affair with the Summoner. The

The Knight, for example, is chosen to narrate the first tale. He is in the highest position from a social standpoint and displays the most admiring virtues for a medieval Christian man-at-arms: bravery, prudence, and honor. In contrast, belonging to the clergy, the Pardoner serves the author’s purpose of criticizing the church, as the character is exceptionally good at faking relics and collecting profits in his own benefit. Chaucer portrays in this tale the disagreement with the excess wealth and the spread corruption in Church at that

Chaucer’s first attack strikes the Catholic Church and its backward doctrines. Many-a-time throughout the entirety of The Canterbury Tales Chaucer uses characters to prove how much he hates how the Church is parading itself. Now, Chaucer does not hate the Catholic denomination, nor the Christian Church, but instead loathes what the supposed ‘people of the Church’ and the Church itself stand for. Hypocrisy of Church’s attendants is found in The General Prologue, the tale and prologue and tale of the Summoner, the Pardoner, and the Fryer. The Summoner and the Pardoner an unarguably the worst characters in the lot. Terrible men with terrible games and terrible tricks for money. The Pardoner is quoted as saying, “But shortly myn entente I wol devyse: I preche of no thing but for coveityse. Therfore my theme is yet, and evere was, Radix malorum est Cupiditas.” (Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Pardoner’s Prolouge) This roughly translates to the Pardoner saying that what he is telling the people who comes to him for advice is garbage and