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The Pardoner In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

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Chaucer’s The Pardoner manages to be a much debated and highly controversial character of The Canterbury Tales, criticized by Chaucer himself in the way he was described. From his ambiguous sexuality and fluid gender representation to his questionable lifestyle of abusing the name of the Church for his own purposes as well as his overall defiance of the social norms of his time, the Pardoner is one character that can be explored from various angles.
The Pardoner is first introduced to be travelling with The Summoner, a corrupt officer of the Church like The Pardoner himself. Where subtle doubts about The Summoner were underhandedly raised, The Pardoner’s ambiguous sexuality is continuously brought into question or comment by Chaucer, as well …show more content…

The uncertainties surrounding this particular aspect of the character were likely intentional on Chaucer’s part – particularly considering his comparisons to “a gelding or a mare”, the insinuation behind the two not exactly contradictory yet not compatible either – but I believe the main focus of The Pardoner was meant to be his corruption within his position, not his social …show more content…

He seems to lack any sort of belief in the legitimacy of his work and the Church as a whole, but does appear to love the work. He is a wordsmith and a fraud with his abuse of his ecclesiastic position, and he enjoys being one so much as to boast and pride himself on his skills, finding no shame in what he does. “He hadde a crois of laton, ful of stones,/And in a glas he hadde pigges bones”. The tools of The Pardoner’s trade are falsified papal pardons, fake relics and deception. He traded pigs’ bones as saints’ bones, loaded a brass cross with stones to equate its weight to that of gold, and basically failed to carry out an honest day’s work a single day of his life, if the portrait painted of him is anything to go by. He is slyly corrupt, which earns him the most criticism on Chaucer’s part. Where most all corrupt members of the Church on the pilgrimage have either justified or denied their corruption, The Pardoner relishes in his. He recognizes the hypocrisy of preaching against the very sins he practices, yet does not

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