Pardoner's Irony

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the character of The Pardoner tells an ironic tale, while being a masterpiece of irony himself. The story he tells is an allegory, which is a story which teaches a lesson. These were very popular in the time period of The Canterbury Tales. The pardoner makes a living by travelling around and granting ‘pardons,’ which were a document effectively pardoning one of sin. He uses his tale to coerce people to purchase a forged pardon, which exhibits his hypocrisy. In doing so, Chaucer is criticizing the church. The pardoner’s ironic lifestyle becomes his downfall as he fails to get money from his pardons.

The pardoner exhibits multiple forms of irony in his daily actions. In medieval literature, the seven deadly sins were a prominent theme, and the pardoner actually confesses to committing five of them. He commits debauchery, alcoholism, gambling, greed, and avarice. This makes him an immoral man telling a very moral tale. This is an example of situational irony. He regularly commits the sin of avarice, derived from the Latin term avarus, meaning greedy. Avarice is the extreme desire for money or possessions. While on the surface, this may produce a negative image for the pardoner, he has strong motives for his actions. In painting his

elaborate yet ironic picture for his audiences, he is attempting to conceal the fact that he is a eunuch, also known as a castrated male. When Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, he heavily criticized the church. In the complete collection of The Canterbury Tales, all characters related to the church were seen doing controversial things for the time period. The pardoner is another piece to the puzzle.

The tale that the pardoner tells uses irony to teach a lesson to his audiences. The tale is an allegory about three young men who go out seeking death. It tells the story of how committing a sin can lead to a downfall. The pardoner repeatedly states “radix malorum est cupiditas,” or “money is the root of all evil.” Immediately, the reader realizes that this is ironic, as the pardoner has a strong love for money. The story follows three revellers planning to find and kill Death, which they personify. This is an example of dramatic irony, as the audience knows that death is not a person. They swear to protect each other, but they do not believe it as demonstrated by their later actions. The story continues with an example of situational irony, as the three young men cannot find death when they are actively searching for it, but when they stop searching for it, they find it. The audience also knows that the two revellers are planning to kill the youngest, while the two eldest don’t know the youngest is planning on killing them.

Finally, although the pardoner’s tale teaches a moral lesson, it seems to have no effect on the pardoner himself.

First of all, the pardoner says that money is the root of all evil, yet he also claims that he loves nothing more than money. In doing this, he is being verbally ironic. He continues on to say that those men who do not follow Christian morals are sinful, but he does not truly believe this as he does not follow Christian morals himself. This effectively exempts himself from the Christian text he portrays. He is essentially a hypocrite that exploits Christian principles in moral tales to steal money from the people he is supposed to pardon. He does this to fill his need for

money.

In conclusion, the reader sees that the pardoner in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales tells an ironic story, while he is an ironic person. Having read about his multiple forms of irony in his daily life, his self-exemption from the moral text he portrays, his exploitation of Christian principles, and his gluttony, the pardoner is a masterpiece of irony, and what he says should not be believed, as he may not be meaning it.