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Discuss the use of irony in Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tales
The prologue to the canterbury tales
The prologue to the canterbury tales
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The Rich Diversity of Meanings of the Pardoner's Tale
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, ...
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...University of California Press, 1988.
Lochrie, Karma; McCracken, Peggy; Schultz, James A. Editors. Constructing Medieval Sexuality. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
McAlpine, Monica E. “The Pardoner’s Homosexuality and How It Matters.” Geoffrey Chaucer’s The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Ed. by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. pp. 103-124.
Nevo, Ruth. “Chaucer: Motive and Mask in the General Prologue.” Geoffrey Chaucer’s The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Ed. by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. pp. 9-20.
Ross, Thomas W. Chaucer’s Bawdy. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1972.
Sedgewick, G. G. “The Progress of Chaucer’s Pardoner, 1880-1940.” Chaucer: Modern Essays in Criticism. Ed. by Edward Wagnknecht. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. pp. 126-158.
As Jensen points out, farming and industry accounts for the vast majority of total water usage in the world (477). The increasingly scarce resource is a necessary ingredient when growing food. Technology continuously improves to make it easier for farmers to grow crops while using less water. Scientists at the University of Georgia utilize what they term “variable rate irrigation” to let farmers automate the current systems of irrigation to water only the crops that need it (Gies). This is an example of retrofitting current farms, but there is a new way of farming coming to cities that reuses practically all of its water and stakes claim much less acreage in the process. The future of agriculture belongs to vertical and urban farming. These types of farms reduce the use of water, chemicals (such as pesticides, herbicides and fungicides), soil and space (The Economist). These farms are so cutting edge that they are mostly in the experimental stages. Firms like Famgro farms are testing “stackable” farming systems that can scale with demand, even further reducing waste. Famgro’s stackable farms are ideal for cityscapes where land is at a premium; furthermore, reaping the added benefit of being in close proximity to the customers that they serve. Customers will enjoy high quality, fresh produce at only a slightly
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.
The Pardoner is the best representation of an allegorical character in “The Prologue” of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The Pardoner is the perfect personification of fraudulence. He shows this in three basic ways: his appearance, speech, and actions. If one just glances through the reading of the Pardoner than one will think that he is a good religious man, but if one look further into it than he will find the small double meanings that he is the exact opposite. Chaucer likes to use an allegorical style to add some comedy and sophistication to his writings.
Toswell, M.J. "Chaucer's Pardoner, Chaucer's World, Chaucer's Style: Three Approaches to Medieval Literature." College Literature 28.3 (2001): 155. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Feb. 2011.
The structure Geoffrey Chaucer chose for his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, of utilizing a melange of narrative voices to tell separate tales allows him to explore and comment on subjects in a multitude of ways. Because of this structure of separate tales, the reader must regard as extremely significant when tales structurally overlap, for while the reader may find it difficult to render an accurate interpretation through one tale, comparing tales enables him to lessen the ambiguity of Chaucer’s meaning. The Clerk’s Tale and The Merchant’s Tale both take on the institution of marriage, but comment on it in entirely different manner, but both contain an indictment of patriarchal narcissism and conceit.
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
The Cold War displayed political tension and hostility between countries, which were characterized by threats of propaganda and other measures short of open warfare. In the period of 1945 – 1989, this was the situation that existed greatly between the two great post war superpowers, the United States and USSR. The construction of the Berlin wall in Germany between the 13th of August 1961 – 1989 increased tensions to a significant extent as it was a sign of dominance portrayed by the USSR, was a follow up from the Bay of pigs and U2 spy plane crisis and the US were trying to combat the USSR by setting up the Berlin Airlift and demanding freedom in East Germany.
Even after the Soviets created the blockade to Berlin, the US defiantly held onto West Berlin and responded with the Berlin airlift. Before the wall, people in either section of Berlin could freely travel back and forth but these freedoms began to diminish as the Soviets got more uneasy with the large flow of East Berliners that were emigrating out. The Soviets saw West Germany as America’s attempt to undermine Soviet control in the area. West Berlin was a bleeding wound for the USSR because it allowed Germans from all across the communist controlled area, not only just in eastern Berlin, to escape the East and emigrate west. The border between East and West Germany was closed, but people fleeing communist rule could simply enter West Berlin and then fly out of the city freely to other areas of Europe or to Western Germany. In many ways Berlin really had no huge value for the west. It was a landlocked city, deep in communist territory that was expensive to support but yet America held onto it. Like a Medieval Castle holding onto it was deemed important because of what it symbolized for the West. It was a game of ego on both sides by the Soviets and the Americans, both superpowers defiantly faced down each other there with a series of political moves and bluffs, all in an effort to outdo the
From The Riverside Chaucer, Third Edition. Ed. Larry D. Benson, Ph.D. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Chaucer, Geoffrey. A. The Canterbury Tales.
The road toward the blockade became shorter in February of 1948 when the London Conference occurred. France, Britain, and the United States attended the...
The Canterbury Tales is a literary masterpiece in which the brilliant author Geoffrey Chaucer sought out to accomplish various goals. Chaucer wrote his tales during the late 1300’s. This puts him right at the beginning of the decline of the Middle Ages. Historically, we know that a middle class was just starting to take shape at this time, due to the emerging commerce industry. Chaucer was able to see the importance and future success of the middle class, and wrote his work with them in mind. Knowing that the middle class was not interested in lofty philosophical literature, Chaucer wrote his work as an extremely comical and entertaining piece that would be more interesting to his audience. Also, Chaucer tried to reach the middle class by writing The Canterbury Tales in English, the language of the middle class rather than French, the language of the educated upper class. The most impressive aspect of Chaucer’s writing is how he incorporated into his piece some of his own controversial views of society, but yet kept it very entertaining and light on the surface level. One of the most prevalent of these ideas was his view that certain aspects of the church had become corrupt. This idea sharply contrasted previous Middle Age thought, which excepted the church’s absolute power and goodness unquestionably. He used corrupt church officials in his tales to illustrate to his audience that certain aspects of the church needed to be reformed. The most intriguing of these characters was the Pardoner. Chaucer’s satirical account of the Pardoner is written in a very matter-of-fact manner that made it even more unsettling with his audience. Chaucer uses his straightforwardness regarding the hypocrisy of the Pardoner, suggestive physiognomy of the character, and an interesting scene at the conclusion of the Pardoner’s Tale to inculcate his views of the church to his audience. The way that Chaucer used these literary devices to subtly make his views known to an audience while hooking them with entertainment, shows that Chaucer was truly a literary genius.
New York: Washington Square Press, 1971. Print. Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Prologue.”
The Canterbury Tales is a very popular and well known set of stories, written by Geoffrey Chaucer. This collection of stories is great entertainment and some even provide very good moral lessons; most of these stories show the contempt Chaucer had for the Church of England which had control at the time over most of England. Chaucer’s bias towards the corruption of the Church is best demonstrated in the Pardoner’s Prologue, in contradiction with the Parson’s Tale, and the level of power within the Church structure. These are two of the stories of the many that are in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer uses the Pardoner as a high level leader who is corrupt and yet enables him to convert the sinners even if he does it for personal gain. While the Parson is of lower standing in the Church, he is not corrupt, and gives the message to the pilgrims so that they might be forgiven.
Mitchell, J. Allan. (2005). Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and the Question of Ethical Monstrosity. Studies in Philology. Chapel Hill: Winter 2005. Vol.102, Iss. 1; pg. 1, 26 pgs
The Church is the first institution that Chaucer attacks using satire in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer wants to attack the church’s hypocrisy. Chaucer decides to create the character of the pardoner to prove his point. Cawthorne conveys, “His Canterbury Tales collects together 24 narratives with a General Prologue and an epilogue or Retraction.” Chaucer describes the character before telling their tale. The Pardoner is a man who steals from the poor. Chaucer says on page 127 line 77, “For though I am a wholly vicious man don’t think I can’t tell moral tales.” The pardoner knows what he does is wrong, but he continues to do it anyway.