How Does The Canterbury Tales The Pardoner Compare To Other Pilgrims?

2025-09-03 16:48:06 133

3 Answers

Lila
Lila
2025-09-04 17:04:32
Diving into 'The Canterbury Tales' always makes me grin, and the Pardoner is one of those characters I love to gossip about with friends. He’s flashy: thin, hair like wax, a smooth face, and that whole showy kit of relics and poppycock. What hooks me is how Chaucer gives him a kind of theatrical confidence — he preaches against avarice but pockets the collection. That contradiction makes him pop off the page in a way the Knight or Parson never do.

Compared with noble figures like the Knight or quietly moral types like the Parson, the Pardoner feels almost performative. The Knight speaks from experience and honor; the Parson preaches from sincerity. The Pardoner, by contrast, sells salvation as if it were a trinket, and he’s brutally honest about it in his prologue. Compared to the bawdy Miller or the swaggering Wife of Bath, he’s less earthy and more unnervingly manipulative — his weapon is rhetoric rather than brawn or personal history. Even among corrupt clergy — think Friar or Summoner — the Pardoner’s shamelessness is special because he openly confesses his fraud to the other pilgrims, which flips the usual dramatic reveal into an awkward, almost comic confession.

I find him fascinating because he’s both a target of satire and one of Chaucer’s sharpest observers: he exposes how words can be used to twist faith into income. Reading him, I always end up debating whether he’s a critique of a specific social illness or a study of human contradiction — probably both — and that ambiguity is why his scenes stick with me long after I close 'The Canterbury Tales'.
Zoe
Zoe
2025-09-06 23:50:09
The Pardoner always feels like the wild card to me when I read 'The Canterbury Tales'. He's less a simple villain and more a study in contradictions: slick talker and spiritual swindler, openly confessing his greed yet preaching morality. Compared to straight-up virtuous figures like the Parson or the noble Knight, his motivations are mercenary. Compared to bawdy pilgrims like the Miller or the Wife of Bath, he lacks earthy warmth; his tools are cunning and language rather than story or physical force. I also notice how Chaucer uses him to indict institutional corruption — the Pardoner's false relics and crafted sermons expose a commerce of salvation that sits uneasily beside sincere faith. Reading his prologue and 'The Pardoner's Tale', I usually end up torn between indignation and a grudging respect for his rhetorical skill — it's unsettling, and that's exactly the point, which keeps me thinking about the text long after the pilgrimage ends.
Zion
Zion
2025-09-08 01:39:21
When I'm in a more thoughtful mood I like to slow down and watch how Chaucer stages the Pardoner against the other pilgrims. In 'The Canterbury Tales' the Pardoner functions almost like a mirror: he reflects the failings of the Church and the ways rhetoric can be weaponized. The Parson stands at the opposite pole — humble, pastoral, genuinely Christian — and that contrast is instructive. The Knight's lived virtue, the Wife of Bath's autobiographical bravado, the Miller's crude humor — none of those have the Pardoner's paradoxical mix of eloquence and moral bankruptcy.

Structurally, the Pardoner is also interesting because his prologue is a private confession in public. Where characters like the Merchant spin tales to bolster their personas, the Pardoner strips his façade and admits motive: money. Compared to other clerical figures like the Friar or Summoner, whose corruption is shown indirectly through behavior and gossip, the Pardoner's self-disclosure gives Chaucer a sharper satirical tool. It’s almost modern — he’s the character who admits he’s selling snake oil while simultaneously proving he can sell it. That theatrical honesty makes me think about how narrative voice can indict or humanize a character at the same time, and why Chaucer’s portraits still feel so alive today.
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