The Pardoner's Tale

"Now I have told you shortly, in a clause,/ The rank, the array, the number and the cause/ Of our assembly in this company" (lines 711-14). Geoffrey Chaucer explains to his readers that he has given a full description of each of his fellow pilgrims in his General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Along with naming each character, he provides their profession which classifies each pilgrim into one of three social classes: the religious class, the merchant class, or feudal order. Chaucer provides a social commentary of the major social classes of his day, and though he criticizes characters from each class, he most heavily criticizes the religious class more than any other.

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.

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 Pardoner is a renaissance figure that wanders the lands in hopes of bringing forgiveness to those in need. This Pardoner is a bad pardoner among the other pardoners. The tale that he tells is a moral one that is suppose to bring about the desire from people to ask for forgiveness. Instead the Pardoner uses this tale as a way of contracting money from his fellow pilgrims. The Pardoner is a person that is suppose to practice what he preaches. What that person does affects those that look up to that person. The Pardoner must be able to tell of tales that bring about hope. The way in which that might happen is through example. If the pardoner is unable to produce a tale that convinces the audience of

In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a group of travelers set out on a religious expedition called a pilgrimage. In the prologue of the story, Chaucer gives an eloquent description of each of the 30 characters taking part in this pilgrimage. With each description, a clear and present tone of Chaucer’s attitude of the character becomes apparent. The Yeoman, a character in the book, has a tone of mockery and sarcasm directed to him.

In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, there are various tales with the main purpose of telling a moral story and having something amusing about them. Chaucer created this work composed of many tales with perspectives of different types of people. These tales are told as the pilgrims goes on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Although out of the thirty pilgrims,“The

Geoffrey Chaucer, in his novel The Canterbury Tales, uses both a frame narrative and satire to describe the pilgrimage of thirty pilgrims. The purpose of Chaucer’s use of the frame narrative is to eloquently and easily display to the reader the stories within the novel. These pilgrims, as described in the outer frame of the novel, embark on a great journey to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury, England. Chaucer facilitated a character from each of the classes to ensure that his novel had the characteristics of verisimilitude. Yet, excluded from the motley crue of pilgrims was the highest ranked, royalty, and the absolute lowest, serfs. The pilgrims enter the journey, with Harry Bailly as their host, at the Tabard Inn in Southwark,

Chaucer does an amazing job at bringing out the true nature of people based on their appearances and attitudes. He does this by going into detail about the clothes they wear or the way they present themselves to others. The three pilgrims that he describes in great detail are the Knight, the Merchant, and the Sailor. Their clothes and attitudes greatly express their true inner natures.

Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the most important authors during the Middle Age. His works spread in Europe too, but he’s better known for his masterpiece “The Canterbury Tales”. This work is about a pilgrimage to Canterbury where there are 29 people of different social classes. Chaucer, with the use of his prologue, also gives a description of different personalities of each character in the story.

“the first kind of class disctinction is that denoted by the concpet of ‘rank’ or ‘degree’ familiar enough in outline, though chaucer’s own perception and use of it and his reservatiosn about it are intreresting. at the beginning of centerbury tales, he says he will describe the pilgrims by telling us, among other things, what degree they are; that is, their social locus”(cite) Chaucer made it very clear in his writing which charcaters belonged to which class, and while he never satired or ridiculed any class in particular, his use of irony and choice in vocublary in describing characters that belong to certain groups reveal the bias he has. Primarily, his thoughts on the first and third estate. “On the one hand, Chaucer often shows the institutional practices of the surrounding culture compromising the values they were originally designed to uphold. On the other, he seems to respect those institutions however flawed their practices” (cite) Chaucer’s thinly veiled, but respectful, critique of the church lies primarily in his characters, the friar, the monk, the summoner and the pardoner. The hypocritical nature of these characters is what is most noticeable. More specifically, the Friar would seem to be the most hypocritical of them all in his acts and behavior. Though he never states outright that these characters are hypocrites, his use of irony says enough. “Chaucer was known for his ironic descriptions of various sojourners in the Canterbury Tales . The description given to the Friar in the "General Prologue" does not stray from Chaucer’s trademark. The Friar is described as a "limitour" [begs on the behalf of the poor], yet we see that he is a bachelor on a love hunt, a crooked businessman and does complete his duties

The prologue is told from the point of view of a member of the pilgrimage, depicted by Chaucer himself. He describes the pilgrims as they appear to him, however, he seems to know much more about the pilgrims than

       The characters introduced in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales each represent a stereotype of a kind of person that Chaucer would have been familiar with in 14th Century England. Each character is unique, yet embodies many physical and behavioral traits that would have been common for someone in their profession. In preparing the reader for the tales, Chaucer first sets the mood by providing an overall idea of the type of character who is telling the tale, then allows that character to introduce themselves through a personal prologue and finally, the pilgrim tells their tale. Through providing the reader with insight about the physical and personal traits of

In Chaucer’s famous novel: The Canterbury Tales, he describes many characters in a satirical way, while others he describes with complete admiration. The narrator (a constructed version of Chaucer himself) is staying at the Tabard Inn in London, when a large group of about twenty-nine people enter the inn, preparing to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. After the narrator talks to them, he agrees to join them on their pilgrimage. Although, before the narrator progresses any further in the tale, he describes the circumstances and the social rank of each pilgrim. There are two characters in these tales of the same social class, but Chaucer’s opinion on them vary greatly. These two characters are the beloved Parson, and the loathed Pardoner.

The danger of money and greed was important in chaucer's time because it describes the character and what that character was like.For example “The immoral Pardoner, who, in a sense, sells away his soul for the sake of his own avarice, puzzles many modern readers with his strange logic. Already having laid his considerable guilt upon the table, this corrupted agent of the Church attempts to pawn off his counterfeit relics for a generous price.”Also in the Pardoner's tale the rioters show the dangers on money and greed because they live loose lives and spend time gambling and drinking in pubs,they are also disgusting and hateful.

Geoffrey Chaucer, in his novel Canterbury Tales, characterizes twenty four pilgrims on their journey to Canterbury. Ranging from knights to aristocrats to the trade class , the descriptive passages depict his opinions on each traveller. These characters in turn reflect Chaucer’s criticism and attitude towards medieval society, an example of social commentary. One character specifically used to reflect Chaucer's views on Scottish culture, the lower class, and corrupt businessmen is the Miler. In the general prologue, Chaucer reveals an overall negative opinion towards the Miller’s appearance and actions, reflecting his disappoint with aspects of the Middle Ages.