Structure, Form and Theme in
“The Pardoner’s Tale”
Schools Programme 2013
Dr Stephen Kelly
s.p.kelly@qub.ac.uk
Reading Chaucer at A-level
•analyse the poet’s use of such poetic methods as form,
structure, language and tone; and
•show knowledge of the context of the poems by
drawing on appropriate information from outside the poetry
text
Show knowledge of the context
The Genre of the “Pardoner’s Tale”
• A parodic sermon...
• Sermons more popular than novels
among readers until the end of the
18th century...
• The sermon as an art-form
• Readerly pleasure in appreciating
the intertextuality of a sermon: its
allusions, references, and echoes...
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• Chaucer and medieval “anti-clericalism”
• Anti-clericalism and the demand for reform
• Wycliffism and Lollardy
• The Lollard critique of sacramental theology
• On the powers and authority of priests
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Chaucer and medieval “anti-clericalism”
• Anti-clericalism in context - an attitude, genre of complaint or satire which
emerges in response to the poor education of the clergy
• Anti-clerical texts were just as often written by members of the Church
• These texts increasingly attacked the materialism of the Church, as well as
affective devotional practices
• E.g., pilgrimages, religious processions and plays, which encouraged the
devout to identify emphatically with Christ, the Virgin Mary or saints...
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Anti-clericalism and the demand for reform
• Anti-clericalism a by-product of the Church’s own reformist efforts which
began in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 • A meeting organised by Pope Innocent III of hundreds of bishops and
priests with the aim of reforming Church doctrine
• From the thirteenth century onward there is an effort on the part of the
Church to educate the laity in the basics of the faith, using the vernacular,
art and drama
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Anti-clericalism and the demand for reform
• Pastoral writing and catechesis - based on the catechism: the articles of
the faith
• New holy orders: “mendicants” (friars such as the Franciscans and
Dominicans) and new devotional practices, such as pilgrimage...
• The formalisation of the seven sacraments of the Church is a result of
this reform
• Eucharist - doctrine of transubstantiation: the accidents of bread; the
substance of Christ’s body
Rogier Van Der Weyden,
The Seven Sacraments
Altarpiece, c. 1436
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Wycliffism and Lollardy
• A more radical demand for reform emerges in England in Chaucer’s lifetime
• John Wyclif, an Oxford theologian, begins to criticise the central doctrines of the
Church
• In 1382, London was scandalised by the efforts of its Archbishop, Courtenay, to
condemn Wyclif’s teaching as heresy, at a meeting called the Blackfriars’ Council. • Chaucer was aware of Wycliffite theology and had friends who were later identified
as, or declared themselves to be, followers of the controversial theologian.
• The authorities labelled Wycliffites “Lollards”
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Wycliffism and Lollardy
• Wyclif demanded reform of the ecclesiastical structures of the Church
• He demanded a Bible in English, rather than Latin, so that lay people
could read Scripture for themselves
• He rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation
• He opposed most of the sacraments, particularly confession...
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The Lollard critique of sacramental theology
• “Oure usuel preshod, the qwich began in Rome, feynid of a power
heyere than aungelis, is nout the preshod the qwich Cryst
ordeynede to his apostlis. This conclusion is prouid for the
presthod of Rome is mad of signis, rytis and bisschopis blissingis,
and that is of litel uertu, nowhere ensampled in holi scripture”
- The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards
• Can a corrupt priest administer the sacraments without poisoning
them?
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On the powers and authority of
priests
• Is the Eucharist transformed by the
priest or is the priest merely a
conduit?
• Act or actor?
• Hoc est corpus meum
• “This is my body”
• Hocus pocus?
Of the sacrament of the altere
In sygt and in felyng, thou semest bred,
In byleue, flesch, blod, and bon;
In sygt and felyng thou semest ded,
In byleue, lyfto speke and gon.
In sygt and felyng nother hond ne hed,
In byleve both God and man
- early fifteenth century
Rogier Van Der Weyden,
The Seven Sacraments
Altarpiece, c. 1436
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Questions for the Pardoner’s sermon...
• Is the morality of the tale intact because of its inherent virtue - OR
• Is the morality of the tale compromised because of the Pardoner’s
confession of his corruption - by actor’s lack of virtue?
“If our preaching is in vain, your faith is also vain (1
Corinthians 15:14)... Whoever utters a falsehood in
preaching, so far as he is concerned, makes faith void” - St Thomas Aquinas
Form, structure, language and tone
Chaucer’s knowledge of the
sermon structure
• Theme - Radix malorum est
cupiditas
• Pro-theme - Examples: Lot,
Herod, John the Baptist
• Distinctions - Versions of
greed: eating, drinking,
gambling
• Amplifications - Authorities
cited in support of the
Pardoner’s “argument”
• Exemplum: The Three
Riotours
• Ventriloquism or sermon with
genuine moral insight?
Form, structure, language and tone
Deconstructing the sermon: theme
• The Pardoner envisages greed in all its
forms, with no sense of irony given his own
confessio
• “They daunce and pleyen at dees both day
and nyght” (467)
• “Our blissed Lordes body they totere” (474)
In illustration of his homiletic expertise, the
Pardoner immediately invokes Christ’s
Passion and the Eucharist
Jean Fouquet, Crucifixion,
15th century manuscript illumination
Form, structure, language and tone
Deconstructing the sermon: form vs. substance
Examine the Pardoner’s use of rhetorical techniques such as “apostrophe” and
“amplificatio”:
• “O glotonye, ful of cursednesse
O cause first of oure confusioun
Original of our damnatioun” (498-500)
• “O wombe, O bely, O stinkyng cod
Fulfild of donge and of corrupcioun” (534-35)
• Do these enhance the sermon’s morality or are they merely a performative
addition to enhance the authority of the Pardoner?
Form, structure, language and tone
Parodying Scripture and Eucharistic doctrine
• For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh
damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s Body
(St Paul, I Corinthians 12: 29) • They daunce and pleyen at dees bothe day and night, And eten also and drinken over hir might
Thurgh which they doon the devel sacrifyce
Withinne the develes temple, in cursed wyse (467-70)
• Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne and grinde, And turnen substance into accident (538-39)
Form, structure, language and tone
Distinctions - Versions of
greed: eating, drinking,
gambling
• The Pardoner confuses
homiletic commentary with
confession of his own
experience
• Imagery prefigures the
action of the narrative
exemplum to come
For dronkenesse is verray sepulture
Of mannes wit and his discrecioun,
In whom that drynke hath dominacioun.
He kan no conseil kepe, it is no drede.
Now kepe yow fro the white and fro the rede,
And namely, fro the white wyn of Lepe,
That is to selle in fysshstrete, or in Chepe.
This wyn of Spaigne crepeth subtilly
In othere wynes, growynge faste by,
Of which ther ryseth swich fumositee,
That whan a man hath dronken draughtes thre
And weneth that he be at hoom in Chepe, He is
in Spaigne, right at the toune of Lepe, Nat at the Rochele, ne at Burdeux toun;
And thanne wol he seye "Sampsoun, Sampsoun!"
- 558-572
Form, structure, language and tone
The Exemplum
• Sources and analogues in Sanskrit (Indian), Islamic, Italian, Spanish and
French literature and folk culture
• The Flemish setting - Flanders was the scene of enormous financial
success followed by a “crash” at the end of the century
• Flemish merchants were caricatured as greedy and untrustworthy
• The region had, like most of Europe, been devastated by the Plague of
1349 and following
Form, structure, language and tone
The Exemplum
• Narrative constructed almost entirely in
dialogue
• Allegorical: its surface action is assumed to
signify something else (namely, the exemplum
on the consequences of greed)
• Naturalistic: the description of the tavern, the
apothecary and so on
• Contrasts: the fraternity of drinkers collapses
into murderous competition when they
discover the treasure
Attitudes to death:
a medieval wedding gift... a ‘love chest’...
Form, structure,
language and tone
The Exemplum
• Who is the Old Man?
• The Wandering Jew? (“Hem thoughte that Jewes rente
hym not ynough”)
• A personification of Death?
• Elde, an allegorical figure of old age?
From the Hours of Anne of France,
c. 1470
Form, structure,
language and tone
Elde, an allegorical figure of old age?
This olde man gan looke in his visage,
And seyde thus: "For I ne kan nat fynde
A man, though that I walked into Ynde,
Neither in citee nor in no village,
That wolde chaunge his youthe for myn age;
And therfore mooth I han myn age stille,
As longe tyme as it is Goddes wille.
Ne Deeth, allas, ne wol nat han my lyf.
Thus walke I lyk a restelees kaityf,
And on the ground, which is my moodres gate,
I knokke with my staf bothe erly and late,
And seye, “Leeve mooder, leet me in!
Lo, how I vanysshe, flessh and blood and skyn!
Allas, whan shul my bones been at reste?
Mooder, with yow wolde I chaunge my cheste,
That in my chambre longe tyme hath be,
Ye, for an heyre-clowt to wrappe me."
Form, structure,
language and tone
The Exemplum
• Elde, an allegorical figure of old age?
The thirde was a laythe lede lenyde one his syde, A beryne bownn alle in blake, with bedis in his hande;
Croked and courbede, encrampeschett for elde; Alle disfygured was his face, and fadit his hewe, His berde and browes were blanchede full whitte, And the hare one his hede hewede of the same. He was ballede and blynde, and alle babir lippede, Totheles and tenefull, I tell 3owe forsothe; And euer he momelide and ment and mercy he askede, And cried kenely one Criste and his crede sayde,
With sawtries full sere tymes, to sayntes in heuen; Envyous and angrye, and Elde was his name.
- The Parliament of the Three Ages
Heronymous Bosch,
Death and the Miser, c. 1490
Form, structure, language
and tone
The setting of the treasure
• returns us to the Pardoner’s
preoccupation with the language of
Christ’s passion and the Eucharist
• allegorically, the tree is the site of
mankind’s Fall from Paradise
• and it is Golgotha, the place of skulls
• Christ’s selfless death contrasted with
the thieves’ betrayal of one another
Show knowledge of the context
The Pardoner as subversive of clerical authority
• The Pardoner’s ambiguous sexuality
• A subverted confession - to glorify sin rather than to repudiate sin
• A perverted sermon - a moral tale told for an immoral purpose
• A parodic exemplum - a warning against avarice told out of
avarice
• A perverted benediction - a spiritual blessing given to deceive the
faithful
Form, structure, language and tone
• The epilogue: performance versus belief (act or actor?)
• The Pardoner’s lack of self-knowledge
• sexual ambiguity = moral confusion
• The Pardoner seems to have forgotten his opening
“confession”
• Chaucer implies that the Pardoner’s speech is mere
performance without substance (action without belief)
Form, structure, language and tone
Dilemmas of interpretation
• without the prologue, would the tale be unproblematically
moral?
• Is Chaucer criticising the Church or is he highlighting the
possibility of its institutions being exploited
unscrupulously?
• Can spiritual things be expressed materially?
Recent critical approaches
(email me for relevant
references)
• Re-thinking the role of Pardoners (Alistair Minnis)
• ‘Queering’ the Pardoner (Monica McAlpine; Carolyn Dinshaw; Glenn
Burger)
• Deconstructing the self in the Pardoner’s Prologue (H. Marshall
Leicester)
• The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, economic production, ‘material
culture’ (Lee Patterson; Sarah Stanbury; Caroline Walker Bynum)
• Recommended: Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches, eds. Suzanna
Fein and David Raybin (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011)