Pearsall, pgs The Pardoner leads a sinister life and is consumed with cupiditas. He is depicted as smooth, delicate, lady-like and honey-tongued, duplicitous in his supposedly holy dealings, extremely rich from his deceitful profession and as a man whose very being is totally incongruous with his career as a servant of the Church. By exploiting his congregants' desires to find salvation and lead good lives, he cynically sells them fake reliquaries as good luck charms and miracle cures and in doing so he bastardizes the Christian doctrine he preaches into a lucrative money making operation.
From this we understand that earthy and manly obscenities, while not entirely socially acceptable, are at least tolerable when compared to the risk of being confronted with a tale of potentially unspeakable depravity that might issue forth should the Pardoner be given the freedom to speak his mind.
Duino, pgs This censorious action of the pilgrims is concordant with the account of the Pardoner in the General Prologue. Instead the pilgrims ask the Pardoner for a moral tale. Tellingly, he initially struggles to come up with a suitable exemplum for his travel companions. Eventually he falls back on a sermon which comes out as well practiced and rote delivered, but not before confirming his arrogance by forcing the pilgrims to wait while he indulges his gluttony with ales and cakes.
Directly after this confirmation that the pilgrims are cognisant of his unsavoury and repellent nature, the Pardoner makes the most extraordinary confessions.
The Pardoner here, self represented, is proud of his hypocrisy, self congratulatory in his tone and appears to be advertising his astute cleverness and meliority over the commoners to whom he preaches and subsequently swindles.
Khinoy, pg In the description of the Pardoner and later in his tale, we confront dichotomies with implied hierarchies—body and soul, fakes and relics, rhetoric and truth.
With his body and his words, the Pardoner takes these reductive dichotomies and flips them, entwines them, and implicates his audiences with uncomfortable truths. He describes at length his skill and ease at persuading the gullible to be moved by his sermons and inspiring them to desire—and pay for his own profit—indulgences and sham relics.
Relics, being mere bones and such ubiquitous matter, do not seem inherently impressive, but Robyn Malo points out that there are two ways to convey their value: either with costly ornamental structures that convey the value of the unseen contents or the way the Pardoner rhetorically ornaments his fake relics to make them seem sacred. Bychowski has argued. He boasts of fleecing his listeners but frames his own body as meek yet attacked—a hypocritical stance, yet haunting in light of his sex and sexuality.
His rhetorical skill underscores the age-old suspicion that rhetoric is ornamental but false and divided from philosophical truth. He seems pure, but. Why is he telling us all this, though—why so truthful about his falseness? Is rhetoric undermining truth or revealing it? Received knowledge since Cicero is that an orator must be a wise and good man, or else his eloquent words are compromised and severed from virtue.
Three revelers, angered at Death, go in search of him after an old man tells them that Death can be found under a certain tree. No mere secondary character helping the murder plot to move forward, the old man seems to hold the emotional heart of the story.
Just us. Yet in a fashion, the Pardoner unwittingly stumbles upon shame, violence, and marginalization when he calls upon his pilgrim audience to repent of their sins and, while on their knees, receive the benefits of the fake relics in his male or pouch.
And if it is such an invitation, does it bear upon the tale he has just told—is he seeking the thing that will undo him? Because one cannot defeat Death anymore than the Pardoner can expect the Host to kiss his relics: it is a quest that can only end one way. The Host would rather castrate the Pardoner:. Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie; They shul be shryned in an hogges toord!
His parody perpetuates the possible erotic undertones, and the only way he dodges complicity with homosexuality is through the aggressive violence of his threat to castrate his road trip companion. True, the Knight stages a reconciliatory kiss between the Host and Pardoner, which suggests a positive reintegration of the Pardoner back into the fold of the pilgrims, yet the Pardoner does not speak another word but only gives the kiss required of him.
Benson, C. Burger, Glenn. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Bychowski, M. Copeland, Rita. New Haven: Yale University Press, , Curry, Walter Clyde. Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Davis, Georgiann. Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld and Helene Cooper. Dinshaw, Carolyn. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, , Berkeley: University of California Press, Kruger, Steven F. Leicester, H. Marshall Jr. They are barren of Christian good works and working against God's order by putting their own financial gain first, ahead of their duty as representatives of the Church Their personal coarseness and lack of sober responsibility underlines the extent to which they simply don't care about other people or God The elements of outward display, show-off singing and even the desire to be fashionable in the Pardoner's portrait perhaps suggest how much he relies hypocritically on empty words and outward show.
Chaucer wants us to understand that he is a moral outcast and perhaps a sexual one too: His description comes bottom of the list in The General Prologue His profession was itinerant i. This bellowing - louder than a trumpet - suggests an irritating, inconsiderate and loutish manner The words of the song, and the fact that the Summoner sings a harmony to it, suggest a same-sex attraction. In the Middle Ages , long hair lying on the shoulders would normally be the hairstyle of unmarried girls.
His inability to grow a beard would also be seen as suspect Regarding dress, he is said to avoid wearing his hood part of the normal rules for the dress of ecclesiastical officials because he wanted to appear fashionable. This is a tiny detail that is typical of the way he plays fast and loose with his duties and role. A duplicitous man The Pardoner's General Prologue portrait also describes his greed, avarice and deceptions.
More on priests : A priest in the medieval church was a man ordained by the bishop and given the authority to celebrate mass , administer the sacraments , and give absolution of sins. Most priests served in a parish , caring for the local community, but monks and friars based in a monastery could also be priests.
Chaucer's wider frame of reference Chaucer's original audience would have been more alert than we can be today to comments about topical events. Investigating the Pardoner's portrait in The General Prologue Write a list of the different elements brought out in the portrait of the Pardoner. Divide the list into those aspects which: Rely on similes, visual images, hints and associations Directly and explicitly expose the Pardoner as a villain Find examples of how the portrait uses humour, absurdity and irony as weapons in condemning the deceptive use of relics and pardons Is the writing clear or ambiguous about: Its allusions to Rome and Rouncivale?
Whether the pardons are genuinely from the Pope or forgeries? Whether the Pardoner honestly gives all the donations back to Rouncivale hospital? Is the writing clear or ambiguous? If you feel Chaucer leaves you without a firm, explicit statement, then what is the effect of that? Person who dispensed indulgences in return for contributions of alms in the Middle Ages. Frequently guilty of promoting abuses of the system.
Someone who undertakes a journey to a holy place such as a biblical site or the shrines of the saints to seek God's help, to give thanks or as an act of penance.
A Christian journeying through life towards heaven. Term for a worshipping community of Christians. The building in which Christians traditionally meet for worship. The worldwide community of Christian believers. Commonly used of a religious believer or believers who are not clergy, that is, have not been ordained. Opposed to the power and influence of the clergy or the Church, especially in the realm of politics and public life. A genre which ridicules some one or something.
It can be poetry, drama or fiction. Someone who tries to improve laws or institutions by instigating changes. English philosopher, theologian and reformer.
A group of his followers translated the Bible into English.
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