Essay on Verbal and Situational Irony in The Pardoner’s Tale of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
analytical Essay
752 words
The Pardoner’s Tale: Use of Verbal and Situational Irony
In “The Pardoner’s Tale,” Geoffrey Chaucer masterfully frames an informal homily. Through the use of verbal and situational irony, Chaucer is able to accentuate the moral characteristics of the Pardoner. The essence of the story is exemplified by the blatant discrepancy between the character of the storyteller and the message of his story. By analyzing this contrast, the reader can place himself in the mind of the Pardoner in order to account for his psychology.
In the Prologue of the tale, the Pardoner clearly admits that he preaches for nothing but for the greed of gain. His sermons revolve around the biblical idea that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). Ironically, however, the Pardoner condemns the very same vice that he lives by, as he proclaims “avarice is the theme that I employ in all my sermons, to make the people free in giving pennies—especially to me”. Thus, covetousness is both the substance of his sermons as well as the mechanism upon which he thrives. He clearly states that repentance is not the central aim of his preaching, by mentioning “my mind is fixed on what I stand to win and not upon correcting sin”. Rather, his foremost intention is to acquire as many shillings as he can in exchange for his meaningless pardons. In this regard, one can argue that although the Pardoner is evil, he is not a dissembler. His psychology is clearly not guided by hypocrisy because he does not conceal his intentions under false pretences.
Chaucer clouds the genuine nature of the Pardoner’s psychology in ambiguity. Upon r...
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...nations of his thought processes, it is clear that the Pardoner does not practice what he preaches. It is ambiguous, however, as to whether the Pardoner believes what he preaches, but just doesn’t follow his preaches or whether he doesn’t believe what he preaches at all. It is evident, though, that the Pardoner has an astute mind. He is highly effective in what he does. Although he exploits the church for his own personal designs, he succeeds at obtaining that which he pursues. The efficacy of his strategy is confirmed by Chaucer’s description of the Pardoner as being a “noble ecclesiastic” and as being unmatched in his trade . Thus amidst all of his flatteries, there exists a spark of genius that complements his minimal level of ethics. This intellectual finesse is the riverbed from which all of the products of his mind flow.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes chaucer's use of verbal and situational irony to accentuate the moral characteristics of the pardoner.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's sermons revolve around the biblical idea that the love of money is the root of all evil.
- Analyzes how chaucer clouds the genuine nature of the pardoner's psychology in ambiguity.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's psychology is directed by immoral habits. he envelops his sermon on avarice around a subliminal message urging his audience to purchase his indulgences.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's psychology is defined by his unyielding love of money. his impurity isn't a result of his sins, but his reluctance to change his ways.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's mind is replete with subtle, contradictory nuances. he is highly effective in what he does.
Related
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- The Pardoner's Tale And The Wife Of Bath Satire Analysisanalytical essayChaucer’s Use of Satire (An in depth analysis into the General Prologue, Pardoner 's Tale, and the Wife of Bath) What does it mean for literature to be characterized as a type of satire? According to Oxford Dictionaries, “Satire, is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.” There are countless examples of how satire has enabled great writers a way to achieve their ultimate goals.
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes the general prologue, pardoner's tale, and the wife of bath.
- Explains that satire is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
- Analyzes chaucer's general prologue to understand his use of satire throughout the canterbury tales.
- Explains that the pardoner's prologue/tale is an example of a story that is often used by preachers to emphasize moral points to their audience.
- Analyzes how chaucer used the story of the wife of bath to display a sense of satire.
1115 wordsRead More - Chaucer's Portrayal Of The Pardoner In The Canterbury Talesanalytical essayThe portrayal of the Pardoner in the Canterbury Tales gives Chaucer a chance to satirize religious men in their deceitful, lying ways. The Pardoner is a liar. He persuades people to purchase certificates of forgiveness by preaching his moral stories. Chaucer creates the Pardoner to be a very greedy and deceitful preacher when he writes, "'And thus I preach against the very vice/ I make my living out of--avarice,'" (Chaucer 24-25). The Pardoner is telling his crowd that he preaches certain stories to make a living rooted in greed. He is so obssesed with greed, and want for money, the Pardoner will blatantly lie every day of his life. Chaucer is satirizing religious men in the story to make fun of them, and try to improve their behavior in the
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes chaucer's portrayal of the pardoner in the canterbury tales to satirize religious men in their deceitful, lying ways.
131 wordsRead More - The Rich Diversity of Meanings of the Pardoner's Taleanalytical essayChaucer’s innovation in the Pardoner’s performance tests our concept of dramatic irony by suggesting information regarding the Pardoner’s sexuality, gender identity, and spirituality, major categories in the politics of identity, without confirming that information. Our presumed understanding of the Pardoner as a character lacks substantiation. As we learn about the Pardoner through the narrator’s eyes and ears, we look to fit the "noble ecclesiaste" (l. 708) into the figure shaped by our own prejudices and perceptions, as any active reader must do. But the Pardoner, ever aware of his audience, does not offer clear clues to his personality. This break between what the other characters say about the Pardoner and what the Pardoner says about himself has been a major source of tension for all readers of the Tales and especially critics who search for substantiation of their views beyond the Chaucer’s own language. The general tone of the Canterbury Tales is comic. After all, the pilgrims are traveling to the shrine St. Thomas Beckett in a public act of holy reverence, but the Tales take a darker turn when the Pardoner is brought to the foreground. The whole Canterbury Tales is a collected set of performances, stories told about telling stories. As Joseph Ganim has written, theatricality, by which he means "a governing sense of performance, an interplay among the author’s voice, his fictional characters, and his immediate audience," is "a paradigm for the Chaucerian poetic" (5). This paper shall endeavor to show that the major effect of the Pardoner’s presence in the Tales is to focus the reader’s attention to questions of performance and performativity, literary perception, ...
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how chaucer's innovation in the pardoner’s performance tests our concept of dramatic irony by suggesting information regarding his sexuality, gender identity, and spirituality.
- Analyzes how the general prologue offers a first impression of the pardoner, which has affected his interpreted characterization to this day.
- Analyzes the narrator's use of animal imagery in his portrait of the pardoner.
- Argues that critics have accepted their comments as indicative of the pardoner's sexual deviance, either physical or social. the phrase "beel amy" of line 318 is regularly regarded as a homophobic jibe.
- Argues that the text conveys some sense of sexual abnormality about the pardoner.
- Argues that effeminacy connotes rambunctious heterosexuality in men, an excessive interest in and desire for women in medieval times.
- Analyzes how chaucer's pardoner joins a list of fictional persons throughout western literature, whose vivacity and power lie in the tense relation of sexuality and morality that forms their characters.
- Analyzes carolyn dinshaw's interpretation of the pardoner’s fashion consciousness as a critical trope for his deceptive appearance.
- Analyzes how chaucer makes clear the nature of the pardoner's tale as a performance, not only as one of fifty-eight tales the pilgrims will tell on their journey to and from canterbury.
- Analyzes how critics like harold bloom locate chaucer's strength as a poet in his vivid creation of character who create themselves through language.
- Analyzes the dispute between linguistically-oriented interpretations of the characters as rhetorical effects of chaucer’s conscious manipulation of language and psychologically-oriened studies that treat the pilgrims as dramatic characters.
- Argues that the pardoner's prologue and tale are melodramatic lamentations that icing the simple, yet effective story of the three rioters.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's presentation lacks the substance necessary to achieve his desired results, so he turns to the delivery of the presentation itself.
- Analyzes how the pardoner concludes the tale with the much-cited claim "i wol yow nat deceyve" (918), a deliberately ambiguous statement that perfectly fits his character and performance.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's sermon and exemplum is manipulating the sermon tradition to cheat the "lewed" audience out of their money.
- Analyzes how the tale is a vehicle for the pardoner's self-revelation and the evasion of identity through performance.
- Analyzes how the pardoner makes his living by his ability to perform. he is a professional magician of words who suffers muted outrage when the truth of his conjuring is discovered.
- Analyzes how the pardoner concludes the tale with the much-cited claim "i wol yow nat deceyve" (918), a deliberately ambiguous statement that perfectly fits his character and performance.
- Analyzes how chaucer blesses the pardoner with a distinct performative style and technique. his abject, spectacular life offer the raw material for the emotional force of his tale.
- Analyzes how the pardoner is a practical rhetorician, mastering diverse ways of persuading an audience to act as he wishes.
- Analyzes how the pardoner adapts his presentation with each re-reading to the benefit of his audience.
- Analyzes how the pardoner, his prologue, and his tale are evocative emotionally, spiritually, morally and aesthetically. chaucer's fictive power is his powerful hold over our imaginations as readers.
- Explains benson, c. david, chaucer's drama of style: poetic variety and contrast in the canterbury tales.
- Introduces harold bloom to geoffrey chaucer's the general prologue to the canterbury tales.
- Describes bronson, bertrand h., "the pardoner's confession." twentieth century interpretations of the pargiver’s tale.
- Introduces dewey r. faulkner in twentieth century interpretations of the pardoner’s tale: a collection of critical essays.
- Explains that ginsberg, warren, and harold bloom have written geoffrey chaucer's the general prologue to the canterbury tales.
- Explains green, richard firth, and lisa j. kiser's "the pardoner’s pants (and why they matter)."
- Describes harrington, david v., "narrative speed in the pardoner's tale." twentieth century interpretations.
- Explains that huppé, bernard f. a reading of the canterbury tales. albany: state university of new york, 1967.
- Explains jordan, chaucer's poetics and the modern reader, berkeley: university of california press, 1987.
- Explains koff, leonard michael. chaucer and the art of storytelling. berkeley: university of california press, 1988.
- Describes lochrie, mccracken, and schultz, in constructing medieval sexuality.
- Explains mcalpine, monica e., and bloom's the general prologue to the canterbury tales.
- Describes geoffrey chaucer's the general prologue to the canterbury tales.
- Explains sedgewick, g. g, and wagnknecht's chaucer: modern essays in criticism.
5601 wordsRead More - An Analysis Of Pardoner's Prologue And Taleanalytical essayChaucer first begins his sly jab at the Church’s motives through the description of the Pardoner’s physical appearance and attitude in his “Canterbury Tales.” Chaucer uses the Pardoner as a representation of the Church as a whole, and by describing the Pardoner and his defects, is able to show what he thinks of the Roman Catholic Church. All people present in the “Canterbury Tales” must tell a tale as a part of story-telling contest, and the pilgrim Chaucer, the character in the story Chaucer uses to portray himself, writes down the tales as they are told, as well as the story teller. The description of the Pardoner hints at the relationship and similarity between the Pardoner and the Church as a whole, as well as marks the beginning of the irony to be observed throughout the “Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale.” The narrator describes the Pardoner as an extremely over confident, arrogant, and unattractive man, noting that his hair is “as yellow as wex,” lying thin and fl...
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how chaucer explores the idea of hypocrisy in his "pardoner's prologue and tale" and the introduction to the tale.
- Analyzes how chaucer uses the pardoner as a representation of the roman catholic church in his "canterbury tales."
- Analyzes how the pardoner's appearance and attitude introduce the idea that he and his overall character are full of ironic discrepancies.
- Analyzes how chaucer points out that pardoner is not a strange case, or someone who is fraud at his job, as he has all the appropriate paperwork and is clearly supported by the church.
- Analyzes how chaucer criticizes the church through the irony between what the pardoner says is right and how he actually acts and speaks.
- Analyzes chaucer's belief that the pardoner represents the church as a whole by being one of their spokesmen.
- Analyzes chaucer's portrayal of the pardoner as a self-absorbed, greedy man that mirrors what thinks about the church.
1340 wordsRead More - The Pardoner of The Canterbury Talesanalytical essayIn The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer indirectly depicts the characters through the stories they tell. The tale is a window upon the person that tells it. However, the Pardoner’s tale seems to contradict this situation. The Pardoner, an immoral man, tells a moral story because he believes that doing this will further his ultimate objective – revenge upon God for his anomalous physical attributes. “He had the same small voice a goat has got. / His chin no beard had harboured, nor would harbour, / smoother than ever chin was left by barber. / I judge he was a gelding, or a mare” (21).
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how chaucer indirectly depicts the characters through the stories they tell. the pardoner, an immoral man, tells a moral story because he believes that doing this will further his ultimate objective — revenge upon god for his anomalous physical attributes.
- Analyzes how the pardoner often offers his pardons and relics for sale after delivering a sermon, but he readily admits to his companions that they are not real.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's tale has an important theme, "radix malorum est cupiditas," but his vocation, which involves selling false pardons and relics, is a contradiction to his theme.
- Narrates how three young rioters mistakenly believe their friend was killed by a man named death and pledge that they will find him.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's dysfunction motivates him to get revenge on god by turning people away from the church. he admits that he is sinful and immoral but is capable of telling a moral tale.
- Analyzes how the people are influenced by the pardoner's sermon, implying that he is a fraud. if people were suspicious of his integrity, they may become suspicious about all ecclesiastics.
696 wordsRead More - The Pardoner In The Canterbury Talesanalytical essayGreed, the most interpreted characteristic of the Pardoner began to be weaved in to the story beginning in his prologue through to the text after his story. The Pardoner discloses another trait that is displayed by himself and the characters in his tale concluded to be hypocrisy. The reader was able to divulge in another characteristic of the Pardoner including arrogance. The Pardoner himself was the ideal representation of the characters Chaucer wrote
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how chaucer made it easy for the reader to divulge oneself in the characteristics of just one character. the pardoner allegoric tale conveys many personal traits including greed, hypocrisy, and arrogance.
- Analyzes how the pardoner of greed began to be weaved into the story, beginning in the prologue and continuing through his story.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's character displays hypocrisy. he is a greedy person who insists that money is the root of all evil.
- Analyzes the character's arrogance in the first part of the prologue. the characters' plan of "brotherhood" began to deteriate as soon as the split up.
- Analyzes how the pardoners allegoric tale conveys many personal traits including greed, hypocrisy, and arrogance.
664 wordsRead More - Greed Depicted in Chaucer's The Pardoner’s Taleanalytical essaybut. "Chaucer: The Pardoner's Tale." Washington State University - Pullman, Washington . N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2011. .
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how the pardoner in the pardoners tale is hypocritical, his scare tactics prove this. he says that greed over things like money is evil, and his audience should give him large amounts of money.
- Analyzes how the pardoner tries to use his story to get the audience to give him money for their greedy sins.
- Analyzes how the pardoner is acutely greedy. he wants people with not much money to pay him with silver.
- Narrates chaucer's canterbury tales study guide : summary and analysis of the pardoner’s tale.
775 wordsRead More - The forms of literary evilanalytical essayChaucer, Geoffrey. "The Pardoner's Tale." Chaucer's Works. Ed. Walter W. Skeat. Vol. 4. London: U of Oxford, 2007. N. pag. Web. 24 Apr. 2014
In this essay, the author
- Explains that in literature, evil can take many different forms, including physical, inner, and a combination of the two.
- Analyzes how the anglo-saxon heroic story, beowulf, is influenced by physical evil, which takes the form of many things from the grim reaper to monsters.
- Analyzes the inner evil within the characters in chaucer's pardoner’s tale from the canterbury tales.
- Analyzes how macbeth's internal and physical evils are equally important and directly lead to death.
- Opines that no matter what type of evil these stories contain, it is still influential in the plot of the story.
- Opines that chaucer, geoffrey, "the pardoner's tale" is a work of walter w. skeat.
- Describes the shmoop editorial team's macbeth themes.
808 wordsRead More - Corruption and Greed in The Canterbury Talesanalytical essayThe 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 being greedy. The crooked pardoner and the honest reeve have different purposes for telling their tales, but their stories have the same major theme; sins deserve punishment.
In this essay, the author
- Describes chaucer's canterbury tales as a collection of stories by pilgrims who are heading to canterbury cathedral. the pardoner and the reeve show antipodal characters in many ways.
- Analyzes how the pardoner tells the readers that money and greed is root of all evil throughout the tale.
- Analyzes how the miller, symkyn, is well known for stealing other people's properties. john and aleyn have their corn stolen from him and decided to revenge him.
- Analyzes how the pardoner's tale depicts that the seven deadly sins inflict human with harsh punishment. the three drunken men are punished by it through the sin of gluttony and envy.
- Analyzes how the miller is envy and greedy for wealth in the reeve's tale. he is also guilty of sloth due to aversion to make money by his own hands.
- Compares the pardoner and the reeve's tales, arguing that corruption and avarice will be abused on different purposes.
1044 wordsRead More - religionanalytical essayIn the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale written by George Chaucer, we can see how the pardoner turns to his advantage the need of people to seek forgiveness from God. To forgive was the pardoner’s job and he would do so for a price, he would give people the absolution needed in order to feel at peace with God and all the people that listened to him had to do was pay a price. The pardoner was very aware of the importance that absolution had for people and during his many presentations he would use his knowledge of the bible because of his religion to make them bel...
In this essay, the author
- Analyzes how the pardoner's prologue and tale, hamlet and the wife of bath make religion a major part of the story line.
- Analyzes how the pardoner uses his knowledge of the bible to convince his audience that he would not swear in vain.
- Analyzes how hamlet's religious views are what impulse him to seek revenge of the dead of his father.
- Analyzes how chaucer's the wife of bath prologue and tale shows how religion and the need to be absolved prompted the wife to use the bible to prove that she was not a sinful but woman.
- Analyzes how the need to explain and to have people follow a good christian example inspired s to write about topics that affected the people of their time.
852 wordsRead More