How Does Chaucer Use Satire In The Pardoner's Tale

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a frame narrative--a main narrative containing a set of shorter stories--containing a General Prologue and twenty four tales. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses satire--the use of humor to criticize and expose people’s foolishness and behavior to effect change--in the description of the pilgrims in the General Prologue to reveal the corruption in fourteenth-century England. The outer frame of tale is the pilgrimage of thirty pilgrims, including Chaucer the Pilgrim, to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. The Canterbury Tales presents a cross-section of fourteenth-century England, omitting only royalty and serfs. For the pilgrimage, the pilgrims meet at the Tabard Inn, Southwark--outside London.

The inner frame of this poetic narrative is the tales that the individual pilgrims share for a tale-telling contest. In hopes to prevent boredom among the pilgrims, the Host, Harry Bailly, proposes and judges a contest in which each pilgrim will share two tales in each direction--a total of four for each pilgrim . The winner of the contest, who shares the most moral and entertaining tale, will enjoy a dinner courtesy of the “losers” at journey’s end at the Tabard Inn. The original scheme of the contest was to have four tales for each pilgrim--one hundred twenty in total; however, the proposed one hundred twenty tales became twenty four, two of which are fragments. One of the pilgrims, the Pardoner, a shameless, immoral man, is intensely self-loathing yet devoted to his task of defrauding people of their money by making them believe that they have sinned and need to buy pardons. Although Chaucer uses satire throughout this frame narrative, he has the uncanny ability to match the Pardoner’s Tale to the Pardoner himself.
As characterized in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner has “hair as yellow as wax” (Chaucer 21), “bulging eye-balls, like a hare” (21), and “the same small voice a goat has got” (21). In addition, these features lead to the narrator’s presumption, “I judge that he was a gelding or a mare” (21). This specific reference suggests that the Pardoner is either castrated or homosexual and acts as womanly figure in the relationship he has with the Summoner--the pilgrim with whom he travels (Rossignol 2). In the Middle Ages, homosexuality was believed to be a criminal offense which could lead to prosecution (2). The Pardoner “wore no hood upon his head, for fun” (Chaucer, GP 21), and “but for a little cap his head was bare” (21). His long hair and attire also suggest his opposition to the rules of the clergy’s uniform attire. Following the portrait of the Summoner, Chaucer presents the Pardoner as a man who has benefited from his occupation (Howard 1).
The most shocking thing about the Pardoner is his openness to his own hypocrisy and greed (1).

He delights in his skill and success, and he is pleased with the personal business he has created for himself (1). The Pardoner is a condescending man, who deceives poor folk for his own benefit (1). In the General Prologue, Chaucer states, “In church he was a noble ecclesiast. / How well he read a lesson or told a story!” (22). The Pardoner is able to hold an audience because he is very bold in his behavior, and is introduced by Chaucer as a man of intelligence (Howard 2). In addition, the Pardoner serves the lowest rank of the clergymen of this Medieval society. Chaucer talks of the Pardoner,

saying,
“In one short day, in money down, he drew / more than a parson in a month or two, / and by his flatteries and prevarication / made monkeys of the priest and congregation” (GP 22).
The irony and the satire in this statement imply the unjust placement of the pilgrim, for he is greedy and an opposite to the ideal clergyman. His position as a clergy member illustrates the corruption of the church during the medieval period. The Pardoner’s job in medieval society
was selling papal indulgences, which pardoned people of their sins; but his pardons are not legitimately from Rome and are forged. By selling his illegitimate pardons he “makes more money in a day than the Parson obtains in two months” (20). Like the persuasive man he is, he shares a few moral stories to attempt to win money from the contest and begins to do so in his Prologue and his Tale.
The Pardoner’s Prologue is about his life and how he makes his living by going from town to town selling fake relics and documents.

The sinful life that the Pardoner lives, however, is typical because of the corruption throughout the Catholic Church. Greed is a main theme throughout his prologue. He is a very charming and smooth man, which gives him the talent of making less-educated people believe everything he says . His charm allows him to make his money by deceiving people blindsided to his corruption (Hacht 1). However, the Pardoner’s sin of greed takes no toll on him because he fully understands and accepts his corrupt state. Greed also plays a direct role in the Pardoner’s preaching. The Pardoner continues to inform the pilgrims of his tactics and admits that the sin and greed about which he preaches embody himself (Bloom 91). The Pardoner’s Prologue is very appropriate for his character because his prologue introduces information that proves the Pardoner is a hypocritical drunk (Hacht 1). While he is one of the most immoral pilgrims on the pilgrimage, he proves himself to be the most moral tale-teller on the pilgrimage.

The Pardoner’s tale is characterized as an exemplum, “a sermon that illustrates a known moral lesson.” The Pardoner’s main characters, three rioters, filled with pride, believe they are capable of finding Death and killing him (Swisher 60). The rioters, similar to the Pardoner when telling his Tale, are drunk and greedy; they do find Death, when they

all meet their end in accordance with greed (Hoy 175). Chaucer’s use of the Old Man is one of the key elements of the rioters finding Death. The wise Old Man directs them to the death they seek, saying,
Well sirs, he said, if it be your design / To find out Death, turn up his crooked way / Towards that grove, I left him there today / Under a tree, and there you’ll find him waiting. (Chaucer 252).
The rioters find Death in the form of money, leading to the true development of their greed.
Chaucer connects the Pardoner’s Tale to the Pardoner through his use of irony. The Pardoner condemns the sins of gluttony, drunkenness, swearing and gambling. The utter irony of the Pardoner condemning these acts is that he is guilty of engaging in them in his everyday life. His first hypocritical act is that he is talking about drinking and being drunk and how sinful it is, while being drunk himself. In the opening of his tale, the Pardoner says, “To eat and drink far more than they can hold, / Doing thereby the devil sacrifice / Within that devil’s temple of cursed vice, . . .” (Chaucer 245), condemning the rioters for their gluttonous behavior. Although he has admitted to the pilgrims that he is a truly greedy and lousy excuse for a member of the clergy, he continues to talk of greed in his tale as if he is not guilty of it himself. He preaches these types of sermons in order to earn money from the crowds, connecting the aspect of greed to himself (Hacht 1). The appropriateness of the Pardoner’s Tale to the Pardoner himself is exemplified through the corruption of the clergy. The definition of a pardoner, “a person licensed to sell papal pardons or indulgences,” is the exact opposite of Chaucer’s Pardoner because he is not licensed and his pardons are fake. The clergy at the time was very corrupt, however the Pardoner knows how to tell a very moral sermon. After he concludes his Tale, the pilgrims are shocked by the moral lesson presented by the Pardoner. nce, who already know of his tricks, to donate and to buy or pay to touch his relics (Bloom 92). The Pardoner also accuses the Host of being the most sinful, leading to a long argument between the two. The Knight interjects and helps the two men to make peace, thus ending the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale (258).