The Pardoner Preaches In Chaucer's 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.

Both the Pardoner and the Friar are portrayed as quick-thinking charlatans. Chaucer does seem to admire the Pardoner’s skill, and skilled he is, but his actions do not befit a man of the cloth. The Pardoner is spoken of as using bogus relics to con “poor up-country parsons” out of their hard-earned cash. These small hustles netted him “more in a day than the parson in a month or two”. When choosing his occupation, I’m sure the Pardoner did not see the light of the lord but rather, dollar signs. Chaucer goes on to say that yes, the pardoner did preach rather well and his stories were quite splendid, however that might be on account that he could “win money from the crowd”.

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 prologue Chaucer talks about many of the characters. He often tells stories and describes how they act and how they are. From being members in the church to having a good and bad reputation in the town, all the characters are unique in their own way. Chaucer describes the summoner, pardoner, and the friar by using indirect characterization in each of their stories.

One character Chaucer uses to ridicule hypocrisy is the Pardoner. Throughout the description of the pardoner, it is shown that he is corrupt. He uses lies and

To begin, a pardoner is a member of the clergy that is licensed to sell indulgences so the Catholic church can receive funds from the people. The Pardoner, as described in The Canterbury Tales, does such things; however, it is not for the church's gain, but for his own personal gain instead. From the beginning, Chaucer gives him some hideous characteristics, such as long stringy hair that is as yellow as wax, two shiny hare-like eyes, and a voice that is compared to a goat. These traits indicate that this man is an ugly man inside and out. To go along with that he is also said to either have been castrated or is an homosexual, “You would make me kiss your old breech and swear it is a saint's relic, no matter how foul it may be! But by the Holy Cross that St. Helen found, I wish I had your testicles in my hand instead of relics or a sanctuary. Let them be cut off, and I will help you carry them”(Lines 950-953). While he is questionable in his sexuality, it is still an insult to his manliness in the medieval times. His masculinity, as presented by Leann Stubler, is all over the place. In her article “Contradiction of Masculinity” she defines various masculine roles: Christian, courtly, heroic, and intellectual he does not fit into the Christian masculinity definition at all, yet for the courtly lover, heroic, and intellectual categories he will fit to a certain extent. Therefore,this makes the Pardoner an extremely complex character. The Pardoner is a major hypocrite that

During the medieval times corruption in the Catholic Church was prevalent. As corruption was prevalent during Chaucer’s time so was a Pardoner’s practice of selling indulgences, becoming one of deception and greed. Similar to the upper class focusing their time on becoming the richest and most powerful. In many of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer would use satire to criticize different social classes. For example, the middle class, those people who worked for their possessions. He satirizes religious hypocrisy in such tales as the Pardoner, in which a middle class man, showing the corruption of the Pardoner’s job. Through his description of the Pardoner as being a man who is disitful, greedy, and hypocritical, Chaucer uses

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his tales in the middle Ages. This was a time where the church was very highly regarded. People would go on pilgrimages to holy grounds. The main character in The Pardoner works for the church, but even though the Pardoner works for the church he is also corrupt at the same time. Chaucer made a lot of things in his tales connect to his society around him. By reading the tales, you get an understanding of how the way society was. His characters were all apart of society, either they went from knights, to monks. But I am going to tell you more about the way Chaucer used his tales to speak how things were going around him.

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

With his character, the Pardoner, Chaucer uses satire to reveal church hypocrisy to the common people. A majority of the lower class in 1300s England believed everything the church told them, but Chaucer saw friars and priests abusing their powers for their own personal gain. People of the upper class often

It tells in his tale that the Pardoner’s favorite thing to preach against is greed, but what people don’t know is that he is only the pardoner because he likes the money; he is greedy. Chaucer uses this type of satire to help illustrate that the Pardoned is a hypocrite. “Out come the pence, and specially for myself, for my exclusive purpose is to win and not at all to castigate their sin.” When the pardoned says this he is basically saying that I’m only doing this job for the money, and that he could care less about the people he is supposed to help. That is how Chaucer uses satire for the Pardoner.

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. In the Tale itself the pardoner also condemns to people who drink and says, “Witness the Bible, which is most express/That lust is bred of wine and drunkenness”. Each character's tale is started with an introduction to the characters story, followed by their story, and then an epilogue, which wraps the story up… The characters tell the other characters the theme they will be addressing, and then the conclusion they can draw from that theme, Morality is a major theme present in these tales. The characters are introduced in a descending order of morality, where they are also split into three classes: the clergy, the nobility, and the peasants and commoners. The reason Chaucer uses social commentary when describing the characters in the prologue is for example the knights are supposed to be chivalrous and noble, but instead the chaucer describes his knights as such. The reason 29 men are on there way to the Canterbury Cathedral is to visit the Shrine of St. Thomas Becket. During their voyage they all share multiple stories, a bright idea is brought up to make a wager saying they will give a prize to the person who tells the best story.