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Unit 15: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Discussion and Analysis-VII

receive pardon, inciting the Host to be the first to receive his pardon. “Unbokele anon thy purs”, he Notes
says to the Host, who responds that the Pardoner is trying to make him kiss “thyn old breech” (your
old pants), swearing it is a relic, when actually it is just painted with his shit. I wish, the Host says,
I had your “coillons” (testicles) in my hand, to shrine them in a hog’s turd.

The Pardoner is so angry with this response, he cannot speak a word, and, just in time,
the Knight steps in, bringing the Pardoner and the Host together and making them
again friends. This done, the company continues on its way.

Analysis

The Pardoner has–in recent years–become one of the most critically discussed of the Canterbury
pilgrims. His tale is in many ways the exemplar of the contradiction which the structure of the Tales
themselves can so easily exploit, and a good touchstone for highlighting precisely how Chaucer can
complicate an issue without ever giving his own opinion.
Thus the Pardoner embodies precisely the textual conundrum of the Tales themselves-he utters
words which have absolutely no correlation with his actions. His voice, in other words, is entirely
at odds with his behavior. The Pardoner’s voice, at the beginning of his tale, rings out “as round as
gooth a belle”, summoning his congregation: and yet his church is one of extreme bad faith. There
is a genuine issue here about whether the Pardoner’s tale, being told by the Pardoner, can actually
be the “moral” tale it claims to be. For, while the tale does indeed demonstrate that money is the
root of all evil, does it still count when he is preaching “agayn that same vice / Which that I use, and
that is avarice” (against the very vice I commit: avarice”). How far, in other words, can the teller
negate his own moral?
Yet the real problem is that the Pardoner is a successful preacher, and his profits point to several
people who do learn from his speeches and repent their sin. His Tale too is an accurate demonstration
of the way greed and avarice lead to evil. Hollow execution nevertheless, the Pardoner is an excellent
preacher against greed. His voice, in short, operates regardless of his actions. Hollow sentiments
produce real results.
This is also reflected in the imagery of the tale itself. The Pardoner hates full stomachs, preferring
empty vessels, and, though his “wallet” may well be “bretful of pardoun comen from Rome” but
the moral worth of this paper is nil: the wallet, therefore, is full and empty at the same time–exactly
like the Pardoner’s sermon.
In just the same way Chaucer himself in the Tales can ventriloquize the sentiments of the pilgrim–
the Reeve, the Pardoner, and the Merchant–and so on, without actually committing to it. Because
the Tales themselves, in supposedly reproducing the “telling” of a certain pilgrim, actually do enact
precisely the disembodied voice which the Pardoner represents. The moral paradox of the Pardoner
himself is precisely the paradox of the Tales and their series of Chaucer-ventriloquized disembodied
voices.
There is a doubleness, a shifting evasiveness, about the Pardoner’s double audience: the imaginary
congregation he describes, and the assembled company to whom he preaches, and tells his “lewed
tales”, even calling them forth to pardon at the end. The point is clear: even though they know it is
insincere, the Pardoner’s shtick might still work on the assembled company.
The imagery of the Pardoner’s Tale also reflects this fundamental hollowness. The tale itself is strewn
with bones, whether in the oath sworn “by Goddes digne bones”, whether in the word for cursed
dice (“bones”) or whether in the bones which the Pardoner stuffs into his glass cases, pretending

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