The Pardoner's Tale is arguably the finest short narrative in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The tale of three men that attempt to kill Death, but instead die themselves is a story of exceptional intellect, moral, and humour. These three qualities are quite unsurprising considering the actual author of these tales. What is surprising though is that the character that tells this fantastic story is the Pardoner. There have been many studies on Chaucer's characterisation of the Pardoner, most of which have concentrated on his amoral attitude or on his sexuality. However, in this essay a different side of the Pardoner will be explored, his humour, his intellect, his skills, and even his morals.
One work in particular stands out above from others in both its completeness and in the time of its publication. Chaucer's Pardoner by George Lyman Kittredge, published in 1893, precludes the current outspoken, post-modernist academic paradigm in which much of the study on the character of the Pardoner has centered on him as a eunuch and a homosexual. Instead Kittredge examines the Pardoner as an intelligent scoundrel that experiences a internal moral dilemma during the prologue, tale and epilogue.
Kittredge's work focuses on the consistency of the character of the Pardoner. First, the Pardoner as a hustler is examined.
For myn entente is nat but for to winne,
And no thing for correction of sinne:
I rekke nevere whan that they been beried
Though that hir soules goon a-blakeberied.
That is, as Kittredge makes note, the Pardoner is only concerned with his personal financial gain. He has no concern for the reformation of morals or for the truthfulness genuineness of those people attempting to repent. Further evidence of the Pardoner as an immoral swindler is exemplified in his lack of concern for stealing from the poor and starving.
Al were it yiven of the poorest page,
Or of the pooreste widwe in a village-
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