Pardoner's Manipulation of Audience

Pardoner's Manipulation of Audience

The Pardoner has had a graduate education in the rhetoric of

confession. Chaucer might

intend it to be merely cutely ironic that this confessor confesses --

as in "isn't that a turning of the tables, la!" On the other hand, it

may well be that the Pardoner is practicing his rhetorical prowess on

the other pilgrims, and on us, with the extreme skill of a cynical and

perceptive man who's heard every villainy and mastered every

deception. His intention, in his "confession" to the pilgrims, is

obviously not to manipulate them into pity, forgiveness and

acceptance, any more than it is to get them to actually pay to touch

his "holy relics"; it is a confession, but one entirely without

contrition. His objective, however, is not to garner sympathy; it is

to showcase his manipulative talents, to expose the gullibility and

selfish depravity which underlie many displays of religious belief,

and to shock, mock and violently strip his listeners of their

illusions. In the Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner is the cynical but

authoritative voice of truth at its most foul.

If a man is clever and perceptive -- if he is not prone to

self-delusion, if he has keen insight into himself, into others and

into human nature -- then that man will have an ability to manipulate

and exploit others -- that is, a consequent temptation to be

villainous - that dimmer bulbs will lack. In blunt terms: knowledge is

power, and power corrupts. The converse is also true: if a man is

willing to commit himself to villainy, he will be more likely to

discover, through exploiting them, the weaknesses, depravities and

delusions with wh...

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...lieve it. If he does, he

clearly doesn't care: after his tale is over, he proceeds to the

height of audacious mockery -- of himself and of the pilgrims -- by

hocking his relics to the pilgrims to whom he has just revealed the

entire cynical fraud.

But does Chaucer believe that the moral of the tale applies to the

Pardoner? He must. As

critical as he was of ecclesiastical abuse, Chaucer was, nevertheless,

Christian. As impressive and complex as it is, even the Pardoner's

self-awareness has its limits. If the relationship between the teller

and his tale is consistent with the other tellers and their tales, we

can assume that Chaucer is suggesting that the Pardoner quite

definitely has a blind spot: the wages of his sin will be his own

death, and his lack of contrition indicates that he does not perceive

this.