October 11

The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale

The Official Profession of the Pardoner

• Medieval Catholics believed that souls not destined for hell would spend a certain
  amount of time in Purgatory, being painfully cleansed of sin before being admitted
  to heaven.
• Catholic doctrine also included the notion of the "treasury of merit"--a potential
  source of grace and mercy created through the virtuous deeds of the saints.
• The church claimed that if ordinary believers freely confessed their sins, asked for
  forgiveness, and of their own free will carried out acts which showed their contrition
  and repentance, a certain measure of special grace could be released from this treasury,
  which would remit some of the time they might have spent in purgatory.
• One manifestation of one's repentance might be a significant monetary contribution
  to a charitable institution. To this end, the church licensed pardoners--often attached
  to charity hospitals--to collect such contributions and in return to distribute their
  indulgences.
• This was supposed to represent a free gift in return for a free gift; if you were seeking to
  show contrition for your sins, and were spontaneously moved to give money to a par-
  doner, he could freely respond with the official documentation of indulgence. He was
  officially allowed to keep a small proportion of the monies given to him. But the system
  was widely abused--pardoners would in effect sell indulgences & would keep most of
  the money they gained.

Games and Fiction-Making in The Canterbury Tales:

Fictions as Verbal Games

• Recall the official agenda is the quest for tales of best sentence AND solas.
• Also note the game of verisimilitude: the links between the tales which suggest that
  the frame narrative is direct reportage.
• Lastly, don't forget the games the pilgrims play with one another.

The Pardoner's Game

• There's an ambiguous boundary between "game and earnest" in the Pardoner's game--or
  games--as set forth in his Prologue.
• Note: The Pardoner is asked by Host to tell of "mirth and japes" and by the "gentil" pilgrims
  to tell of "some moral thing."
• The Pardoner explains that the "false japes" he uses in the pulpit frame his performance
  of a performance, namely his re-enactment of his own sermonizing.
• The Pardoner plays a controlled (?) game of self-revelation, inviting a kind of complicity
  from his audience? Is this self-disclosure as a tactic to create intimacy?

Tale and Teller

• The Pardoner's favorite text: radix malorum est cupiditas. His tale is the exemplum that heusually uses in his preaching. Story exemplifies his favorite theme: that avarice is the
  root of all evil.
• His characters, like him, are spiritually blind, and in this case fatally literalistic (the letter killeth); they "materialize" Death as the "false traitour" and "thief" who can be sought out and killed. (As opposed to exercising the faith which promises that the virtuous soul enjoys eternal life after death, and thus defeating death.)
• The material wealth that apparently substitutes for death (the gold coins found under the tree) turns out to represent death after all...
• The Pardoner's final move­his attempt to get offerings from the audience to whom he's
  exposed his practices. Is he carried away by his own performance? Convinced by the powerof his own exemplum? Hubristically going for the biggest sting of all?

Last But Not Least...

Note lines 627-30, the Pardoner's sudden appeal to the figure who in a Christian context
is the supreme Pardoner, the one true source of all mercy, Christ himself.

• Who is speaking here?
• What are the implications of the Pardoner's admitting this?
• Is this part of his usual performance?
• Has the Pardoner briefly become the vessel for the transmission of the logos, the
  divine Word, despite himself?
• Who is the "I" who "will not deceive" his audience--that is, who speaks at this moment?

Consider the Pardoner's Prologue, Tale and Epilogue as a multi-layered piece of fiction
making. Within the embracing fiction of The Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner tells the truth
about his lies, but in the very process of revealing his lies, he nevertheless manages to offer
a potentially moving fiction--the tale of the revelers--which invites the listener to recognize
a scriptural truth.

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