How Does Chaucer Use Irony In The Pardoner's Tale

“Radix malorum est cupiditas.” A quote that sets the tone for the entire story greed is the root of all evil. Geoffrey Chaucer so perfectly illustrates verbal irony in the prologue making it easy for you to place yourself in his mind. As the Pardoner being a priest for him to stand in the pulpit and look down upon the congregation referring to them as yokels and turn around and lie to the people whose souls you are there to save is irony as clear as it gets. The prologue gives us insight on who the Pardoner is as he blatantly states that he preaches for nothing but for the greed of gain he shows how corrupt he is.

And finally in Wife of Bath's Tale, he attacks the class. Chaucer will use satire to address three different sacred institutions, the critique of the church, the patriarchy and the attack on the class. To begin, Chaucer will critique the church. Chaucer’s creation to show the hypocrisy of the church begins to be the main plot in the Pardoner’s Tale. He goes on to say that preaching is a game, where the purpose

The Canterbury Tales all have the same common factor of depicting a common social issue or truth. However, the Pardoner’s Tale depicts an important, universal and timeless message of greed. Greed is the intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food. It is a common factor in the chaotic history of humanity because, as the Pardoner’s Tale describes it, greed is the root of all evil. This tale is timeless and universal because of no matter when or where greed will always be the source of chaos and depravity.

Each tale reveals moral lessons that attempt to prevent the reader from performing the same mistakes as the character. “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” possess similar themes, distinct differences arise in the topics presented in each passage. “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” illustrates how greed corrupts men, how sin leads to more sin, and how revenge drives men to undertake foolish feats. The differences between Chaucer’s tales allows for a humorous yet insightful

Canterbury Tale is a collection of stories in a story frame. It is a story about thirteen pilgrims traveling together to Canterbury, and they would tell two stories each on the way to the Canterbury and on the way back. Chaucer uses irony, paradox, and hyperbole to provide humor in the story, but he also use these literary devices to illustrate the society during his time period. His use of irony and paradox exposes the weakness of humanity such as their greediness and their foolishness. Ironically, the Pardoner tells a moral story about greedy is the root of evil when everyone knows he is the greediest man of all.

Chaucer delineated his Friar as a carefree playboy, which is an unexpected dissimilarity from the normal picture of ministers as devout and self-restrained. As opposed to carrying on with his life among poor people, just like his promise, the Friar "knew the tavernes wel in each toun," and delighted in singing and moving while at the same time taking liberal gifts of silver from blame ridden penitents. By delineating the Friar along these lines, Chaucer in all likelihood made his perusers snicker. People in general face of fourteenth century religious communities was of sheltered prudence and strict train. In truth, numerous religious requests of the day had become monstrously rich from blame offerings and tithes gathered from pioneers.

Chaucer while describing the characters deliberately leaves the pardoner to last he places him at the very bottom of humanity because he uses the church and his so called holy relics to profit personally. The Pardoner's 'hair as yellow as wax, hanging down smoothly like a hank of flax,' (general prologue 693) implies his lack of man hood and impotence. This is further emphasized through the description of him having a high pitched goat like voice,

To fully appreciate the layers of irony in “The Pardoner’s Tale,” you must consider all types of irony. There are three types of irony: verbal irony is when something is said that contradicts the truth, or is the opposite of how the person speaking truly feels, situational irony is when events have an affect on a situation to make the outcome the opposite of what was expected, and dramatic irony is when the significance of actions and doings of the characters in a story are obvious but the characters within the story remain oblivious. Within “The Pardoner's Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, all types of irony are used throughout the story in order to show society uses deliberate ignorance to justify its wrong doings. Particularly,

The presence of greed utilized by Chaucer in the Pardoner’s tale presents satire as his character is meant to be honorable, yet, behind the scenes is actually the most unethical one. The first example the audience is shown of this fraud is as the pardoner explains his motives, when he states, “Of avarice and of swich cursednesse/ Is al my prechyng, for to make hem free/ To yeven hir pens; and namely, unto me!/ For myn entente is nat but for to wynne,/ And no thyng for correccioun of synne” (114 – 118).

The two stories have a main focus of explaining morals in a hidden way. Both stories express more than one moral and it gives the reader a sense of what Chaucer is trying to express. “The Pardoners’s Tale” Is a better story because of its relatible moral that focuses on greed, and its multiple uses of figurative language and irony. The medieval period was mostly about staying true to god and making sure you didn’t commit any of the seven deadly sins.

In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer utilizes the immoral character of the Pardoner to tell the utmost moral tale through satirical devices, presenting the true greed and hypocrisy that runs throughout the Church, regardless of it attempt to cover it. Chaucer introduces the hypocrisy within the Church through the characterization of the Pardoner, as he is explained to be a man with, “flattery and equal japes./He made the parson and the rest his apes” (“General Prologue” 607-608). “Japes” are tricks, alluding to the Pardoner’s relics, as they are fake; yet, the Pardoner still sells these relics to the Church members as genuine treasures. This creates dramatic irony, because the character of the Church body is unaware of the situation bestowed

Throughout the Pardoner's tale, the Pardoner tells a story about the love of money and its consequences. However, instead of applying these lessons to his life, he completely neglects the morals of the story and continues down a path of

This is because the Pardoner himself is a very greedy person. He chooses to steal from the church, make money off of things that are not worth anything, and chooses to cheat society. He was supposed to be the one who was pardoning people from their sins that they committed, but instead he was worried about himself and what he had. b.) In making this tale, Chaucer had a point that he wanted to make overall.

Geoffrey Chaucer was an author, known as the father of English poetry for his recognition in all his literary works. He wrote the Canterbury Tales, which are multiple stories composed into one to create a form of poetry. "The Pardoners Tale" is the most recognized work of art he put together out of these multiple stories. The story is told in first person, which makes use of the story to lecture against the individuals who are ignorant, and profane. In this short tale about eagerness, but also death, Chaucer uses three forms of figurative language such as irony, personification, and symbolism to tell a story of three rioters.

Chaucer wrote the book: The Canterbury Tales, in which a group of men going on a journey all tell a tale. Within each tale is a moral lesson as well as each tale consists of a corrupt action committed within the church and is conveyed by those kind of characters within the story. One of the tales that Chaucer tells in his book is called: The pardoner 's tale. Within this tale the pardoner (who is telling the tale) is a preacher who often gives sermons but admits that he does is solely for money and not to condemn people of their sins. (Greed)