In the estimation of most critics, Geoffrey Chaucer is the most important writer in English literature before Shakespeare, and one of the handfuls of English-speaking authors whose merits are not in dispute. He is known as the "Father of English Literature", as he is the first writer of note to produce substantial works in a form of English that is recognisably the same language that we speak and write today. But Chaucer’s merits are not at all exclusively linguistics, as he, the critics tell us, possessed a genius eminently dramatic and a matchless talent for story-telling. In fact, he is the most prominent figure of the Middle-Aged English literature and perhaps the most interesting poet of all due to his original preoccupation for absorbing literacy into orality.

As Zoe Dumitrescu-Busulenga also states in her study, the work of Chaucer represents an entire world, as at that time preceding the Renaissance, the content of art was getting wider and wider and the cult literature made room for drama and farces, tragic and comic, grotesque and sublime at the same time. These special circumstances, together with the poet’s vast knowledge of life and people from the most diverse social classes gave him the unique possibility of creating a personal sense of life, an original vision of the world, in a work that stands among the few great ones belonging to the dawns of Renaissance.

It is exactly this juxtaposition of contradictory concepts that favoured the engendering of Chaucer’s most remarkable concentration of genres and mentalities: the Canterbury Tales. "A work of the author’s complete writing maturity" in Mrs. Dumitrescu-Busulenga’s opinion or "a work meant to give a totalising view of the entire English society of his times" in the eyes of Mr. Levitchi, a pageant of 14th Century life or an inquiry into the nature of illusion and reality, the book is obviously far more than just a collection of stories. It is a universe, the concentration of an entire world with all its preoccupations and aspirations, with all its authentic colour. Guiding himself after the old Latin saying "Homo sum; nihil humani a me alienum puto", Chaucer leaves none of his time’s features unexploited, as every social class is represented by one of the pilgrims who go to pray at St. Thomas Beckett’s tomb in Canterbury.

The most popular part of the Canterbury Tales is the General Prologue, which has long been admired for the lively, individualized portraits it offers. The pilgrims act their parts in a way that reveals their private lives and habits, their moods and dispositions, their good and bad qualities and their complex character is revealed throughout the entire book: in their portraits, their tales, and their behaviour and remarks along the way.

And among the various pilgrims featured in the poem, the Pardoner is one of the most fully realized characters. It is not accidentally that his portrait is the last one in the General Prologue, as he is clearly the most hardened sinner, the most loathsome of all, as well as the most complex and interesting of them, together with the Wife of Bath.

He is introduced immediately after the Summoner, as "his friend and his compeer" –a relation not as innocent as it looks if we take into account the words of the song they sing together: "Come hither, love, to me", passage visualised by many critics as a proof of the two fellows’ sexual abnormality. And here, the author’s majestical subversive irony is more than obvious in the first epithet attributed to this perfect social parasite: "a gentle pardoner". And it is once again not an accident that he is from Rouncivalle, a London hospital well known for the number of illegal pardons connected with it.

His physical traits perfectly match his hidden, hideous character: a "hair as yellow as wax" and hanging like "a strike of flax", the "shiny eyes" of a hare, a voice that "bleated like a goat" and a smooth face. They all speak about his degraded estate, hypocrisy, sense of treachery and depravity, in a word: the repulsiveness of his entire being. The scientific opinion of the day believed that thin hair represented poor blood, effeminacy, and deception, while glaring eyes like the Pardoner’s indicated folly, gluttony, and drunkenness. Chaucer’s audience would catch the references just as we would instantly see the significance of a villain in a black cape and with a black moustache.

The smoothness of his cheek determines one of the most intriguing statements of the author: "I think he was a gelding or a mare", considered by many critics as an insinuation that the Pardoner is a congenital eunuch or has homosexual inclinations, in any case, a deformed man. After all, it is not in vain that so many animal related words are used in depicting his appearance!

But perhaps more important than his physical sterility is the fact that he is totally spiritually sterile. As all of Chaucer’s churchmen (except the venerable Parson), the Pardoner is a perfect villain, deep drowned in vices and corrupted to the bones. His true nature is falsity and cheating -his fundamental estate. With him he has a wallet with pardons "brought from Rome all hot" –another element of subversive sarcasm- and many other things that "he said" are authentic relics –in fact "a latten cross set full of stones" and "some pig’s bones". But with his tremendous theatrical persuasive skills, which is "with flattery and suchlike japes,/ He made the parson and the rest his apes."

Indeed, we cannot ignore the character’s most impressive ability and perhaps his definitory characteristic, the one that clearly gives him a unique place among all the other Chaucerian churchmen: his exquisite sense of rhetoric and his impressive use of dramatism, as well as his unequalled qualities of story-telling. And towards the end of his description in the Prologue, the author is forced to recognise his preaching skills: "But yet, to tell the whole truth at the last,/ He was in church a fine ecclesiast". Of course, we cannot suspect the Pardoner of suddenly transphorming himself into an exemplary Christian when entering the house of God, but Chaucer’s omnipresent irony makes once again place to a subversive interpretation, as even in the enumeration of his oratorical displays, he subtly introduces discreditable elements: he would "best of all" sing an offertory not because he enjoyed singing, but because he knew that after that followed the preach. And as if not conclusive enough, the poet reinforces the idea: "to win some silver […] he sang so merely and so loud".

However, his hypocrite intentions dunnot diminish the force and the immortal charm of his preaches, declaimed with "polished tongue" and in a breath taking parade of all the rhetorical devices, accounting for the Pardoner’s beyond-doubt qualities of a great actor.

The description of the Pardoner in the General Prologue is entirely and in detail true to the Pardoner's account of himself in his Prologue, where he gives a more extended description of his ways of "affiling" his tongue to win silver, and the tricks by which he gets money out of his simple-minded audiences, particularly with his use of false relics and pardons. The Prologue to the Pardoner’s Tale may be an "apologia", a "literary confession" or "Vice's confession," like the Wife of Bath's Prologue in some interpretations, but with absolutely no ambiguity about the speaker's viciousness, despite his cheerful demeanour. The model for the Pardoner's confession is thought to be the long monologue of "False Semblant," in the Roman de la rose (even though his preferred disguise is that of a friar rather than a pardoner).

The Prologue begins with a Latin moral saying "Radix malorum est cupiditas", actually the one and only theme of the Pardoner’s speeches. In fact, the character introduces us to the unforgettable and well-systemised technique of deluding his auditory. The complex rhetoric process, alias a rote performance, which conforms to his profession –which substitutes a meaningless monetary transaction for penance for sin- is minutely described: he first shows the credentials, secondly, he throws himself in a real oral cavalcade of all his tales, then stirs the crowd with two Latin words and finally begins the parodic display of his indulgences and relics. The latter part is perhaps the dearest one to him, as he finds a ludicrous joy in describing the famous story of the Hebrew’s sheep shoulder bone, which he passes as a miraculous cure for jealousy, even if legitimate. It is a delirious self-dramatization of his ruthless frauds.

The Pardoner is in many senses a warped character, unable to hold to any consistent code of moral behaviour, or "a thorough-paced scoundrel" as George Lyman Kittredge categorises him. It is obvious that even if his bulls of popes and cardinals are genuine, -- it would in any case not do for him to confess to the felony of forging the pope's seal-, his relics are counterfeit, and he has no illusions about the holiness of his mission. Moreover, as Mr. Kittredge also states, he preaches for money, and has no concern for the reformation of morals or for genuineness of repentance on the part of those who offer to his relics, and receive his absolution. However, he is skilful at his business: it has brought him in a hundred marks (almost seven hundred pounds in modern values) a year since he first took it up.

Naturally, like all clever impostors, he is proud of his dexterity, as he doesn’t hesitate to describe his techniques of extorting money in church or to confess his entire ideology of life. The Pardoner is a congenital hypocrite (he gives a cure for jealousy "though he may know the truth of all her lust" or, coming to his own field, "even though she’d taken two priests or three"), a profoundly fake and vindictive man ("For though I mention not his proper name/ Men know whom I refer to/ […] Thus I repay those who do us displeasances."), but most of all an avaricious and fraudulent huckster ("Thus can I preach the self-same vice/ Which I indulge, and that is avarice/ But though myself be guilty of that sin."), a greedy, shameless profit-seeker ("I’ll live of my free will in poverty?/ No, that has never been my policy") and a lustful creature ("I will drink liquor of the vine/ And have a pretty wench in every town" –a line that, in my opinion tends to neutralise the homosexual and eunuch theories).

In addition, the Pardoner has no intention to conceal his real character to the other pilgrims and finds no shame in admitting that although he is "a vicious man", he will "tell a moral tale", and all with the unique purpose of "more gold to win".

Consequently, he begins his Tale by praising his story-telling qualities and launches himself in relating an exemplum on the dramatic consequences of avarice. Undoubtedly, he puts on a brilliant performance, but it is like "that of a marionette, or a clockwork toy, which once wound up goes through its motions mechanically", as Derek Pearsall affirms. This image of automatism is explicitly evoked by the existence of the Tale as a performance within a performance: the Pardoner does not actually tell a tale, but merely reproduces verbatim his habitual performance, even to the extent of including the homily and peroration, which are out of place here. And indeed, after setting the background of the tale in Flanders, choosing his protagonists: three roisterers and putting them in an obscure tavern, right in the middle of a prodigious debauchery, he doesn’t delay to take advantage of the opportunity of inserting some more preaches in his tale, always with the ardent desire to win the prise. Consequently, the tavern becomes the very "devil’s temple" and each of their vicious preoccupations is thoroughly dissected in a suite of vivid sermons condemning drinking, gluttony, gambling, swearing and lechery, garnished with colourful details of these very sins.

7

Next, without any warning, the Pardoner precipitates himself again in the pursuit of his tale, introducing the intrigue: a corpse is carried on the streets of the three roisterers' town. At this point, the three decide to create a fellowship and start a quest in the search of Death, whom they swear to slain. On their way, they meet a strange old man whom they ask where they can find Death. The dialogue between the four is enmeshed with some of Chaucer’s most extraordinary ironies: the young men are eager to live and fated to die –the old man is unable to die, yet sick of life. After a not so amiable exchange of words, the old man indicates the place: "in that grove I left him […]/ Under a tree" and the young men rush to find a pile of golden florins.

The finding of the treasure awakes their avarice, which is to say, the roots of all evil, including crime, whose natural consequence is Death. And so, while the youngest is sent to bring some wine from the town, the two others decide to kill him. The climax of the action occurs when we find out that the future victim is also planning to kill the others and consequently pours poison in the wine. Finally, they all find the long sought Death.

Although the denouement is clearly tragic and moralising, we have no time to reflect upon it, as the Pardoner rushes to draw the conclusion and begins a new preach, the climax of his hypocrite dramatism: "O treacherous homicide! O wickedness!/ O gluttony, lechery and hazardry!/ O blasphemer of Christ with villainy!". It is perhaps the supreme proof of his theatrical abilities, confirming his reputation of Chaucer’s greatest actor, equalled only by the impetuous, determinate Wife of Bath.

After finishing his story, acting from force of habit or from sheer brazenness, or else, perhaps genuinely carried away by the emotions he has generated, tries to do business with relics and pardons. As Nick Smith and Olivia Verma state, "the Pardoner shifts from moments of direct honesty to shameless deceit, openly admitting the tricks of his trade to the travellers but nevertheless attempting to use these various methods on these travellers who are aware of his schemes." And this is indeed one of the character’s most puzzling features, pointing to his unequalled complexity. Therefore, Zoe Dumitrescu-Busulenga’s explanation that the Pardoner is mocking his own job and practices, or George Lyman Kittredge’s more than indulgent, almost over-charged attempt to reabilitate the character are somehow hard to believe. In fact, the Pardoner suggests a traditional Vice character who behaves strictly out of the most impure motives, but where he departs from vice characters, who shamelessly commit misdeeds for their own pleasure, is that he lacks the necessary amoral quality. Or, as Derek Brewer points out, he "enforces the moral lesson inadvertently by the very example of his own shamelessness".

  The smoothness of his performance, which provokes a reluctant admiration of the power of his will, is all the more shocking in relation to his reptilian deadness to all that he says. Derek Pearsall explains that though he may have seemed an unusual portrait in his day and perhaps the suggestions of physical deviancy are intended to explain or rationalize his unusualness -- he is only unusual in being rarely portrayed, for his kind is ubiquitous and immortal.

In conclusion, the Pardoner remains one of Chaucer’s most powerful, complex and gifted characters, perhaps not as popular and funny as the robustly humorous Wife of Bath, but nevertheless prominent and genuinely built, possessing a vivid rhetorical genius, an astonishing sense of dramatism and orality, a bewildering power of seducing his auditory and a deeply satirical structure –the very features of a great actor, perhaps one of the most accomplished in English literature!

1. Leon Levichi –History of English Literature

2. Zoe Dumitrescu-Busulenga –Geoffrey Chaucer and His Work

3. Harvard College –The Geoffrey Chaucer Page (http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/)

4. Andrew Moore –Chaucer’s Life and Work

5. Nick Smith and Olivia Verma –The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale

6. Brother Anthony –Literature in English Society: The Middle Ages

7. Derek Pearsall – Chaucer’s Pardoner: The Death of a Salesman

8. George Lyman Kittredge –Chaucer's Pardoner

9. Dieter Mehl –Chaucer’s Narrator: Troilus and Criseyde and the Canterbury Tales

10. Derek Brewer –Chaucer’s Poetic Style

11. History of English Literature (XIII: The Canterbury Tales)

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