The Pardoner's Tale Literary Analysis

Author: Geoffrey Chaucer

Biography: known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best loved today for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.

Background: Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and location of his birth remain unknown. His father and grandfather were both London vintners; several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich.

Masterpiece: The Pardoner’s Tale

Theme: Live, death, and sacrifice.     

     

Mood: Tense

Style: Poem

Setting: Bar in Flanders, and a tree in the grove, undertone of Black Death / use of the bar for the sins (gluttony, drunkenness, gambling, etc.) that are usually attributed to such a place. The background of the Black Death adds to the sense of doom.

Characters

Protagonist: The three young man (The three rioters)

Antagonist:  Death

Figurative Language 

Metaphor: The youngest, as he ran towards the town.

Simile:  -His eyes would twinkle in his head as bright, as any star upon a frosty night (lines 271-272)

A dagger and a little purse of silk, Hung at his girdle, white as morning milk (lines 361-362)

Hyperbole: This pardoner had as yellow as wax.

Imagery: The introduction of Death

Death imagery is introduced with the tolling of the hearse bell as a recent corpse is borne to the grave. This simple bell highlights the sombre reality that people in the Middle Ages knew well after successive waves of plague – death was never far away.

Plot

Conflict: It starts as one between the three young man and Death but turns into one between the man who goes to buy provisions and the two who remain behind.

Point of view

Third person (objective): Third person point of view with an intrusive narrator. Lecture, homily, parable, dramatic irony.

Symbolism: The old man, whom the comrades meet on the road. He himself cannot die, but he knows where Death is to be found.