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Comparison Essay

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It was believed that Boccaccio’s Decameron heavily influenced the English poet, Chaucer. There are unique similarities between Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s Decameron. Each story told had their views of society, but yet they were able to keep it very entertaining and light on the surface area. The most extraordinary aspect of Boccaccio and Chaucer’s writing was how they were able to incorporate so many similar controversial themes and characters in their stories. The first theme that showed similarities in each story was greed. Chaucer hoped that he could show the readers or the audience that there was corruption among church officials and pardoners. The Pardoner is very open with his hypocrisy and greed and showed no hint of …show more content…

For example lets talk about a very evil man that Boccaccio told about. In Decameron, First Day, First Tale, Ser Cepparello uses the church to forgive his sins. He gets very ill and needs forgiveness. “Since his sins are so many and so horrible, no friar or priest will be willing or able to absolve him” (1802), and if this were to happen, “ if he dies without confession, no church will want to receive his body” (1802). The two brothers, who were taking care of him, had no hope in Ser Cepparello. They corrupted the church and were able to obtain a friar that would be willing to listen to Ser Cepparello’s sins. In doing so he got his way and lied to the priest to obtain a proper burial. He corrupted the church because his lies were told to the people and he became a saint, which he was far from that. “As long as you give, and always renew, Nobles or pence, which are both good and true”(1913), states the pardoner meaning the people would receive pardons as long as he receives his pay. He had no reason to take the peoples money because a person that works for god only accepts the word of the lord back. He corrupts the church by making people pay for pardons. At this period in time corruption of the church was big and people that worked for the church were able to get away with

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Chaucer wrote The Pardoner's Tale with the ideas of hypocrisy in mind. He attacks this subject with a thorough use of personification and irony in his story telling. Chaucer captivates these rhetorical techniques multiple times throughout the piece. He brilliantly personifies the ideas of greed and death, as a walking man. He also displays irony throughout the story with also the ideas of greed and death.

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[attention getter]. Geoffrey Chaucer, in his novel The Canterbury Tales, deals with many tales of medieval life and morals. The writing follows a large group of pilgrims who have all been challenged to tell their best tale, one that teaches a valuable lesson, on the journey to Canterbury. Two of the stories told, “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, make their points in very notable ways. The Pardoner tells a story of three men who come to pay for indulging in the sin of greed, while the Wife of Bath recounts a story of questionable morality involving a knight struggling for redemption after breaking his code of honor.

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The indirect characterization of the Pardoner, in consideration of his objective stance towards his own wrongdoings, reveals him to be a man with conscious partial to his intents and basic motivation. The Pardoner explicitly states his reason for sermonizing as his “exclusive purpose is to win and not at all to castigate their sin” (p. 243). With brutal honesty and in meticulous fashion, the Pardoner embraces his love for profit and monetary gains in spite of his pious occupation. Though the actions and impressions of the Pardoner are both distasteful and lacking in morals, it is the same hypocritical disposition that highlights the depth and good of the character. While not righteous or honorable in any traditional sense, the Pardoner argues that he is appropriate to preach against his personal vice of greed due to his understanding of the sin and that in the process he is able to truly assist others in the relinquishment of their faults.

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