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Geoffrey Chaucer's writings help to literature
Satire in everyday use
Geoffrey Chaucer's writings help to literature
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In Geoffrey Chaucer’s exert, The Pardoner’s Tale, from Canterbury Tales, he uses satire to make fun of and mock the religious leaders of his time. Most religious leaders back in Chaucer’s day were corrupt and bad examples for the many people they stood before. The corrupt leaders pursued lust, envy, fraud, gluttony, avarice, and in this particular case with the Pardoner: hypocrisy. Chaucer makes many connections between the Pardoner and the three men in the Pardoner’s tale to prove the hypocrisy of the Pardoner. The Pardoner was a man who sold pardons, little slips of paper that exempted someone of punishment for their bad actions, to people who have just committed a sin or are fixing to commit a sin. As a member of the clergy class, the Pardoner goes around preaching, specifically on the dangers of greed, the very thing he struggles the most with. “And thus I preach against the very vice I make my living out of -- avarice.” (Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue) To be a man full of lust, pride, gluttony, sloth, and avarice, preaching on these subjects make the Pardoner hypocritical. …show more content…
In the Pardoner’s Tale, the Pardoner tells of three drunk men who set out to find Death because Death had killed one of their friends.
On this journey they come upon a hill where they find lots of wealth and gold. Getting sidetracked on the gold and trying to kill each other over the wealth, they end up forgetting about death. Instead, Death found the three men when two were poisoned and one was brutally murdered. Chaucer’s depiction of this story and the Pardoner’s lifestyle is very ironic. Normally one who hears a story like this one would not want that to happen to them so a lifestyle change would be made, but Chaucer characterizes the Pardoner as not trying to make any change, and he is the preacher. “But let me briefly make my purpose plain; I preach for nothing but for greed of gain… ” (Chaucer, The Pardoner’s
Tale) In The Pardoner’s Prologue, Chaucer describes the Pardoner’s sins in a satirical way. “I mean to have money, wool and cheese and wheat though it were given me by the poorest lad Or poorest village widow, though she had A string of starving children, all agape.” (Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue) Knowing the story from The Pardoner’s Tale and the descriptions of the Pardoner Chaucer creates in The Pardoner’s Prologue, the reader can conclude that the Pardoner is hypocritical. Chaucer also proves that the Pardoner, along with most religious leaders of his time were, in fact, corrupt.
The man claims he is waiting for Death to take him for some time, and the angered men are enraged by the name Death. The rioters ask where to find Death, and the old man says they can find death under a certain oak tree. The rioters rush to the tree and find gold coins. The men do not want to be taken as thieves, as discover a plan to transport the gold at night. The men direct the youngest to retreat back to town and grab wine. While the youngest is away, the two remaining men design a plan to kill the third to increase their profits. The man in town is also consumed by greed, and he decides to poison the wine. Retreating with the poison wine, the youngest man is killed by the other two rioters. To celebrate, the two men drink the wine. Within minutes, all three of the greedy rioters are dead. After his tale, the Pardoner asked the group for
Through the Prologue to the Pardoner's tale, the character of the Pardoner is revealed. Although the Pardoner displays many important traits, the most prevalent is his greed. Throughout the prologue, the Pardoner displays his greed and even admits that the only thing he cares about is money: "I preach nothing except for gain" ("Pardoner's Tale", Line 105). This avarice is seen strongly in the Pardoner's tale as well. In the Pardoner's tale, three friends begin a journey in order to murder Death. On their journey, though, an old man leads them to a great deal of treasure. At this point, all three of the friends in the tale display a greed similar to the Pardoner's. The three friends decide that someone should bring bread and wine for a celebration. As the youngest of the friends leaves to go buy wine, the other two greedily plot to kill him so they can split the treasure only two ways. Even the youngest decides to "put it in his mind to buy poison / With which he might kill his two companions" (383, 384). The greed, which is evident in the character of the Pardoner, is also clearly seen in the tale.
In the Prologue of the tale, the Pardoner clearly admits that he preaches for nothing but for the greed of gain. His sermons revolve around the biblical idea that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). Ironically, however, the Pardoner condemns the very same vice that he lives by, as he proclaims “avarice is the theme that I employ in all my sermons, to make the people free in giving pennies—especially to me”. Thus, covetousness is both the substance of his sermons as well as the mechanism upon which he thrives. He clearly states that repentance is not the central aim of his preaching, by mentioning “my mind is fixed on what I stand to win and not upon correcting sin”. Rather, his foremost intention is to acquire as many shillings as he can in exchange for his meaningless pardons. In this regard, one can argue that although the Pardoner is evil, he is not a dissembler. His psychology is clearly not guided by hypocrisy because he does not conceal his intentions under false pretences.
This first quote displaying one of the three men's greed is, “This cursed fellow grabbed into his hand the box of poison and away he ran into a neighboring street, and found a man who lent him three large bottles. He withdrew and deftly poured the poison into two.” (Chaucer 178). This second quote also displays just how bad greed affected these three men, “Why make a sermon of it? Why waste breath? Exactly in the way they'd planned his death.” (Chaucer 179). This quote from the wife of bath chaucer writes, “There was a knight who was a lusty liver. One day as he came riding from the river.” (Chaucer 186). The pardoner's tale creates much from a moral aspect from the deadly sin of greed. As you can see the wife of bath does feature the sin lust but does not revolve the tale around it as a whole. While the pardoner's tale does a fantastic job at doing
A pardoner is a person that could relieve someone from their sins. In the case of the Pardoners Tale, the Pardoner expects money for relieving sinners from their sins and for telling a story. The pardoner in this tale is hypocritical, his scare tactics prove this. He says that greed over things like money is an evil thing, and his audience should give him large amounts of money so he can pardon them from their sins.
“The Pardoner’s Tale” is a short story in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. In the short story, the Pardoner tells a gruesome, shocking tale, and then offers pardons, or forgiveness, to the aghast audience (Chaucer 132-4). In The Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner does grant pardons, however, he grants them with greed (112). The Pardoner’s morals and characteristics are similar, but also different, than lawyers’ beliefs and personalities. The Pardoner and lawyers work in two very different ways, yet they both are terribly greedy and deceiving.
In some pieces of literature, an author may use satire. Satire is a type of writing that ridicules human weakness, vice, or folly in order to bring social reform. In order to portray personal beliefs through satire, the use of literary devices, elements, and techniques can include subtle hints regarding a much larger and/or serious matter. The Canterbury Tales, is an example of satire as it comments and makes fun of the Seven Deadly Sins, specifically avarice and lust during the Middle Ages. The author, Geoffrey Chaucer, uses verbal irony, situational irony, and characterization to satirize numerous aspects of medieval society, revealing corruption. This corruption is most evident in the Prologue, the Pardoner’s Tale, as well as the Wife
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,
In the Canterbury Tales Chaucer presents a story involved a malicious man. Chaucer uses the character and story of the Pardoner as a representative of a clergyman of the time and often of the church itself. There is irony in that he is only named as a pardoner with the power of a poena, the absolution of punishment, as he is the one in need of repentance. In his prologue and tale Chaucer presents the Pardoner as a blasphemous and dishonest man who freely admits to being a fraud to highlight the corruption of the workers of the church and to allude to the corruption in the Church itself.
During the medieval times corruption in the Catholic Church were prevalent. As corruption became more prevalent during Chaucer’s time, the Pardoner’s practice of selling indulgences was becoming one of deception and greed, similar to the upper class focusing on becoming the richest and most powerful. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer would use satire to criticize different social classes. For example, Chaucer satirizes religious hypocrisy by representing it as the Pardoner while he unveils the corruption of the Pardoner’s job through a middle class man. The people who work for their possessions. Through his description of the Pardoner being a man who is disitful, greedy, and hypocritical, Chaucer uses satire to comment on
First and foremost, the Pardoner should not be condoned from the sin of sloth because he is too lethargic to care about others. For instance, within Chaucer’s work, the Pardoner himself recognizes that he only cares about himself and gaining money: “I preach for nothing but for greed of gain” (243). Moreover, the Pardoner utilizes his convicting sermons to guilt trip others to buy a pardon. Specifically, his corruption is represented on page 257, after the Pardoner's moral
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
“A hypocrite is a person who- but who isn’t?” asked Don Marquis. By definition, a hypocrite is described as one whose actions contradict his stated or internal beliefs. Hypocrisy has been relevant in society for decades; one of the most prominent examples that personifies hypocrisy is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. This piece of literature, which originates from the early thirteen hundreds, embodies characters that possess hypocrisy. Amongst these characters is the Pardoner, who is a member of the clergy. Chaucer illustrates the hypocrisy of the Pardoner in The Pardoner’s Tale through the use of satire and irony. Hypocrisy continues to be a part of society and will always exist due to people wanting to appear as better people than
The two stories, “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” both written by Geoffrey Chaucer, were two unique tales with astonishing morals. However, when a reader reads two or more narratives, he/she tends to find one story best due to certain aspects of it. There are certain aspects of a story that makes it better or worse. After reading the two stories from the Canterbury Tales, “The Pardoner’s Tale” was a better anecdote because of its lucid morals, tightly structured plot events and symbolic figures.
The Pardoner is a greedy individual because he undermines his job in order for the accumulation of wealth. In the church a Pardoner is a clergy member who has the authority from the pope to grant indulgences to people who showed charity, however sometimes this was not the case. In the Pardoner's prologue the Pardoner speaks of his occupation and his the tale he is about to present. He states: