The Pardoner of The Canterbury Tales

Canterbury Tales Essay Tales written in Canterbury Tales divulge the characteristics of 31 characters, each one particularly refined in their own unique way. Geoffrey Chaucer made it easy for the reader to divulge oneself in the characteristics of just one character. One of these characters includes the Pardoner.

Canterbury Tales - The Greed of the Pardoner Throughout literature, relationships can often be found between the author of a story and the story that he writes.   In Geoffrey Chaucer's frame story, Canterbury Tales, many of the characters make this idea evident with the tales that they tell.   A distinct relationship can be made between the character of the Pardoner and the tale that he tells. Through the Prologue to the Pardoner's tale, the character of the Pardoner is revealed.   Although the Pardoner displays many important traits, the most prevalent is his greed.

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.

A pardoner is a person that could relieve someone from their sins. In the case of the Pardoners Tale, the Pardoner expects money for relieving sinners from their sins and for telling a story. The pardoner in this tale is hypocritical, his scare tactics prove this. He says that greed over things like money is an evil thing, and his audience should give him large amounts of money so he can pardon them from their sins.

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 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.

The direct characterization of this selection involves stating exactly how the character is and what they do. However, when he follows his pattern of indirect characterization by revealing who the characters actually are through expressing the actions or thoughts. In his section "The Pardoner 's Prologue," Chaucer doesn 't say everything about the Pardoner; he lets people figure it out for themselves as they read the selection and realize that the Pardoner is actually a con man who trades money for the "gift of forgiveness" as he, ironically, preaches tales of greed and how it can ruin lives. Chaucer characterizes the individuals both directly and indirectly, giving the reader both the idea and the chance to figure out how each character lives and makes it through their

The 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

Chaucer’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, ...

Chaucer, 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

Chaucer 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...