Chaucer's Pardoner: Hypocrisy and Irony in Canterbury Tales

Introduction: Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written between 1347 and 1400, is widely considered his masterpiece. The work is organized as a collection of stories told by a group of travelers on pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury. It reflects the diversity of fourteenth-century English life and captures the full range of medieval society, with pilgrims sharing tales that span the medieval literary spectrum. Critics concur that Chaucer brings each character to life and creates truly memorable individuals. Within the framework of The Canterbury Tales are ten parts that appear in different order in different manuscripts. Critics believe that Chaucer's final plan for this work was never realized because he either stopped working on the piece or died before he could place the sections in sequence. This paper focuses on the character of the Pardoner.

The Pardoner's Hypocrisy and Greed

Chaucer portrays the Pardoner's character in an ironic manner, presenting him as outwardly very Christian and churchlike. Yet the Pardoner takes advantage of innocent poor people by selling them fraudulent holy relics. His hypocrisy in preaching sets an ironic tone against cupidity, even as his own motives are purely avaricious (Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, 736, 1987). He enjoys telling tales filled with morality; however, his way of living is often deeply questionable. One of the Pardoner's favorite sayings is "Love of money is the root of all evil." Yet his greed is evident in how he exploits people's religious ignorance.

He befriends people and earns their trust by displaying his official certificates, then adds color to his sermons by saying a few words in Latin. He easily impresses laypeople and inspires them to feel closer to God. His counterfeit religious relics are then put on display so that he might earn money from the devout people he claims to serve. The Pardoner warns that he will not sell his relics to sinners, insisting that only good people can be absolved by making an offering to him. He then admits that this method has earned him a hundred marks in a year. He maintains that his sermons preach against greed and materialism, and this message encourages people to freely give him their money. Plainly, profit is his motivation, and he cares nothing for helping sinners become pure again. This character preaches against sin while acknowledging that he indulges in various vices and begs from the poor to make a profitable living.

Physical Description and Symbolic Deformity

The Pardoner's physical appearance is unattractive and carries symbolic weight. He is described as a beardless man with a thin, goat-like voice. Chaucer describes his hair as waxy and yellow, hanging from his head like strands of flax. His songs are repulsive, and Chaucer suggests in the "General Prologue" that the Pardoner is a eunuch. Yet somehow this corrupt figure still manages to hold a congregation captive while delivering a moral tale — which is itself profoundly ironic.

As scholars have noted, Chaucer portrays the Pardoner as totally corrupt, and to emphasize this point he parallels the Pardoner's moral depravity with physical deformity, presenting him in an unmistakably unmasculine light. In the "General Prologue," he is described as "a geldyng or a mare" (691). Detail after detail reinforces this lack of manhood: his high voice "as smal has hath a goot" (699), his lack of a beard (689–690), and his long, womanly hair with locks that "his shuldres overspradde" (678). One should also note the image of the castrated rooster, which suggests that the Pardoner may be sterile or incapable of producing children (686–689). These unmanly qualities reveal a deformity that the Pardoner desperately tries to cover up by singing bawdy songs. All of these performances are hollow, however, for the Pardoner is a eunuch — a man defined by absence and concealment.