Book Review – Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales – The Pardoners Tale

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The Pardoner’s Prologue The devious Pardoner is proud and pompous, about his questionable sermonising and preaching skills, use of Latin, and his tendency to cite fake Papal Bulls easily. He also sells quack remedies and fake religious relics. He peddles a sheep’s shoulder bone that he claims, if dipped in well water, makes that water capable of curing poisonous snakebites. He is a shameless charlatan. He frequently chastises his congregations for avarice, so that they give him their money to relieve their burdens, and he then spends their money on himself. He is an immoral man who knows all the right moral tales and fables for playing on the minds and hearts of his people. Being drunk, he freely boasts of this to the listening pilgrims, as an introduction to his story, which he knows well as it is one of his favourite ones for use on his flock. The Pardoner’s Tale A group of three lazy French students live the high life in drink and debauchery. They are shocked to hear that Death is active in the region, and has claimed many lives through plague. They decide to go out, find Death, and kill him off, once and for all. They meet an old man on the road. He looks close to death, and he wants to die, but Death has told him that he is not yet ready to go. The students insist that he tells them where he last saw Death (oblivious that he may actually be Death). He tells them that he last saw Death resting under a tree in a nearby meadow, The students go there, and don’t find Death, but they do find a pile of golden coins. They immediately abandon their mission to find Death and decide how to divide the unexpected money between them. One student breaks away from the team to go and buy some wine, with which to celebrate their good fortune, as he travels the other two plots his murder to be able to keep the money between himself. The other student also has murder in mind, and not only buys wine, but also a supply of poison, which he uses to spike the wine he plans to offer his colleagues. He returns with the wine, and his friends immediately butcher him. Seeing the wine, they open it and drink it, and therefore they also die. His story told, the Pardoner tries to get the listeners to pay for their salvation too, oblivious that he has already revealed that he is a charlatan. The furious Host threatens to remove his testicles, and it looks as if a fight will break out betwenthem, but the Knight intervenes and makes the men kiss and make up as friends again. The listeners are now ready for the next story. Arthur Chappell.