Satire In The Pardoner's Tale

Which one is the better tale “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” or “The Pardoner’s Tale?” The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a very well known story in the medieval time. In The Canterbury Tales during the spring a group gathers and wants to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury where they will find the shrine of Saint Thomas a Beckert. On their journey they stayed at a high class inn called The Tabard, where they found an innkeeper who wanted to join them on their journey to Canterbury. They continued their journey and began a storytelling competition to pass the time. Throughout the storytelling they must not judge any of the other stories or the person who judged will have to pay for the trip. In the end whoever were to have the best story was given a meal. On their

Throughout the journey two tales were told. They held very few similarities, and quite a few differences. These two tales were told by men from two completely different walks of life. One was a noble knight who won battles, put others before himself, and took great pride in his two most impressive horses. The other was a pardoner, who did not believe most of what he taught, conned people for their money, and knew how to put on a show to make the all the poor peasants believe every word he said. Both of their tales were quite interesting, but the knight did in fact tell a better story. The knights story captivated its readers by attaching them to its characters, making every failure, emotion, and success affect the reader personally, and by the end of the tale the reader was able to take away a lesson they would never forget.

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s character, The Pardoner, is a church official who altered the peoples mind by cheating the people into believing any nonsense. “Then I show forth my long glass cases, crammed full of clothes and bones: all the people believe that they are holly relics” (The Pardoner’s Tale, 1). The Pardoner’s avarice and ability to deliver

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) He tells a tale of men sitting around drinking when they hear a death by a servant who says this person was killed by a mysterious death. So the men, being drunk, decide to avenge this man, and so they go to seek him out. Meeting an old man he directs them to an old oak tree in a grove where he says he just left death. On they go, and when they come to the grove they see eight thousand bushels of coins in which greed overtakes and they decide to take the money. The younger one goes into town from bread and wine, but while doing so gets poison for the two others so he can own their share or the money. While the other two men by the money plot to kill the younger when to get his share, he the younger one returns. The two men

Geoffrey Chaucer pushed boundaries and told stories he knew his audience would want to hear. “The Miller’s Tale” as well as “The Reeve’s Tale” has crocodilian humor. Chaucer used bawdy and vulgar scenarios to generate laughter for the audience. His sardonic sense of humor made stories seem larger than life (Brewer, Derek). Both tales feature an elaborate plan for sexual gratification and have components of irony. He also utilized fabliaux to fill his stories with multiple sexual accounts that poke fun at the rules of courtly love. Chaucer’s humor had three main components – mockery, irony, and sadism.

Satire is a genre of literature employed by writers that adopts criticism to expose individuals, governments, or society by using wit and humor. Its main purpose is to make possible the enhancement of humanity and its institutions by employing constructive criticism. Voltaire was a well-known figure of the Enlightenment that often used such satirist in his works, and sought an improvement of humanity and its institutions through his philosophical views.

“Radix malorum est cupiditas” translated from Latin into “Greed is the root of all evil.” (Chaucer 125) Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, this is the story of three men that treat people lower than them and they end up finding a whole pile of gold, but they end up killing each other to get the gold to themselves. The entirety of the three men end up dead and not even one gets the gold. There are many topics involving greed, this essay will involve what it is about, the dangers, and the benefits of controlling the desire to gain.

To sum up, Chaucer has littered irony all throughout “The Pardoner’s Tale”: in the prologue, tale, and epilogue. Chaucer has also use three different types of irony within the story: verbal, situational, and dramatic irony. All in all, the irony used was meant to show how society is deliberately ignorant at times for self gain, this is still occuring today as it did during Chaucer's time. In the words of Palpatine, “it’s ironic”(Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the

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 Pardoner is extremely upfront regarding his greedy motives as seen in the quote “For myn entente is nat but for to wynne,” (117). The sole reason he is in this game is no other reason than to make money. The revelation of this goal results in an ironic situation as his job consists of preaching against greed, while the only reason of his employment is driven by his own greed. “To yeven hir pens; and namely, unto me” is also written as “With offered pence, the which pence come to me” (116). Through this line, the audience can see that the character of the Pardoner, himself, does not see his situation as particularly ironic, instead, to him, is what he has to do in order to support his lifestyle. As one moves through the prologue, one is continuously shown abundant examples of this mistruth, for example as the Pardoner says, “For I wol preche and begge in sondry landes,/ I wol nat do no labour with myne handes,/ Ne make baskettes, and lyve therby,/ By cause I wol nat beggen

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.

The reader should now know Geoffrey Chaucer disapproves of the Church and deems it to almost only be full of hypocrites because of people such as the Friar and the Pardoner being a part of it and doing what sinful deeds they do against God and the followers who they are supposed to be protecting and taking care of. If it was not for the Parson existing, or even clergy members, then the generalization of him believing the entire Catholic Church was a hypocrisy would be entirely true, but that is not the case. Still, maybe Chaucer made such an implication because he had a bad past with the Church, but then again in the story he was traveling to a religious shrine, so he must not have such a bad past when it comes to Catholicism. There must have been a root to his disdain towards the Church as in, he was conned by a pardoner or a friar or even grew up seeing only hypocrisy from the Catholic Church, which could have molded his opinion of it. Instead of making, The Canterbury Tales, a full on attack against the Church, he decided to make it a comical, satirical piece, which was a very intelligent move by him. Satire was used to talk about controversial things, but to be approached indirectly through humor, which made people more comfortable while discussing it because it was not extremely serious. Chaucer knew that and exploited it throughout his story, which made it such a marvel. He truly was able to get his position of most Catholic Church 's clergy members to be deceitful in their deeds and in their vows across to a gigantic network of people, which was

Calling the Church body “his apes” exemplifies the opinion Chaucer holds about the Church, as he believes they are like monkeys, blindly following others, unaware of their own stupidity. In terms of blindly following, the double entendre of the word “apes” comes into play, as it is defined as “imitating another person”. The members of the Church blindly imitate what they see in the Church, leading to a society of corrupted followers. Chaucer continues to present the hypocrisy prevalent in the Church through the character of the Pardoner, as he preaches, “For my intent is only pence to win,” (“Pardoner’s Prologue” 117). Through these lines, the audience receives their first image of the Pardoner’s satirical hypocrisy as, in his sermons, he preaches against greed while, at the same time, uses the guilt of his audience to feed his own. His preaching include encouraging the members of the Church to be giving with their money and make donations. This action would not seem hypocritical at all to those unaware of the fraud that occurs behind the

Of all intelligence and intuition attributed to man, it is not enough to overcome the characteristics that will lead to the downfall of our own kind. Such characteristics take root in man and protrude out of him no matter how hard he tries to deny their presence. Man himself is aware of these characteristics and they play a part on all forms of entertainment, and fuel almost all actions made by man. In “The Pardoner’s Tale” written by Chaucer, the theme of pride and greed leading to demise is prominent.

Satire is the use of humor or ridicule to express the stupidity of an individual, government, or company. Through the use of this literary technique Enlightenment thinkers, or philosophers, composed arts to mock several ideals of the time period. Several philosophers at the time were using satire to write novels, the most famous of which was a thinker named François-Marie Arouet or more commonly known by his nom de plume Voltaire. Voltaire wrote a fictional novel called Candide which follows the main character, Candide, through a difficult journey from nobility to farmer. In this writing, François-Marie Arouet used satire to ridicule several beliefs of his time period including the military and social inequality of women.

Chaucer 's use of satire aided him on revealing the corruption of the church. In his story, “The Canterbury Tales,” he shows that many members of the church use their positions for their own personal gain. During the pilgrimage, the reader starts to realize that, out of all of the pilgrims involved in the church, the Parson is the only one who is honorable. “A holy-minded man of good renown,”