The Rich Diversity of Meanings of the Pardoner's Tale

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.