Summary: The Wife of Bath’s Tale

In the days of King Arthur, the Wife of Bath begins, the isle of Britain was full of fairies
and elves. Now, those creatures are gone because their spots have been taken by the
friars and other mendicants that seem to fill every nook and cranny of the isle. And
though the friars rape women, just as the incubi did in the days of the fairies, the friars
only cause women dishonor—the incubi always got them pregnant.

In Arthur’s court, however, a young, lusty knight comes across a beautiful young maiden
one day. Overcome by lust and his sense of his own power, he rapes her. The court is
scandalized by the crime and decrees that the knight should be put to death by
decapitation. However, Arthur’s queen and other ladies of the court intercede on his
behalf and ask the king to give him one chance to save his own life. Arthur, wisely
obedient to wifely counsel, grants their request. The queen presents the knight with the
following challenge: if, within one year, he can discover what women want most in the
world and report his findings back to the court, he will keep his life. If he cannot find the
answer to the queen’s question, or if his answer is wrong, he will lose his head.

The knight sets forth in sorrow. He roams throughout the country, posing the question to
every woman he meets. To the knight’s dismay, nearly every one of them answers
differently. Some claim that women love money best, some honor, some jolliness, some
looks, some sex, some remarriage, some flattery, and some say that women most want
to be free to do as they wish. Finally, says the Wife, some say that women most want to
be considered discreet and secretive, although she argues that such an answer is
clearly untrue, since no woman can keep a secret. As proof, she retells Ovid’s story of
Midas. Midas had two ass’s ears growing under his hair, which he concealed from
everybody except his wife, whom he begged not to disclose his secret. She swore she
would not, but the secret burned so much inside her that she ran down to a marsh and
whispered her husband’s secret to the water. The Wife then says that if her listeners
would like to hear how the tale ends, they should read Ovid.

She returns to her story of the knight. When his day of judgment draws near, the knight
sorrowfully heads for home. As he rides near a forest, he sees a large group of women
dancing and decides to approach them to ask his question. But as he approaches, the
group vanishes, and all he can see is an ugly old woman. The woman asks if she can
be of help, and the knight explains his predicament and promises to reward her if she
can help him. The woman tells the knight that he must pledge himself to her in return for
her help, and the knight, having no options left, gladly consents. She then guarantees
that his life will be saved.

The knight and the old woman travel together to the court, where, in front of a large
audience, the knight tells the queen the answer with which the old woman supplied him:
what women most desire is to be in charge of their husbands and lovers. The women
agree resoundingly that this is the answer, and the queen spares the knight’s life. The
old hag comes forth and publicly asks the knight to marry her. The knight cries out in
horror. He begs her to take his material possessions rather than his body, but she
refuses to yield, and in the end he is forced to consent. The two are married in a small,
private wedding and go to bed together the same night. Throughout the entire ordeal,
the knight remains miserable.

While in bed, the loathsome hag asks the knight why he is so sad. He replies that he
could hardly bear the shame of having such an ugly, lowborn wife. She does not take
offense at the insult, but calmly asks him whether real “gentillesse,” or noble character,
can be hereditary (1109). There have been sons of noble fathers, she argues, who were
shameful and villainous, though they shared the same blood. Her family may be poor,
but real poverty lies in covetousness, and real riches lie in having little and wanting
nothing. She offers the knight a choice: either he can have her be ugly but loyal and
good, or he can have her young and fair but also coquettish and unfaithful. The knight
ponders in silence. Finally, he replies that he would rather trust her judgment, and he
asks her to choose whatever she thinks best. Because the knight’s answer gave the
woman what she most desired, the authority to choose for herself, she becomes both
beautiful and good. The two have a long, happy marriage, and the woman becomes
completely obedient to her husband. The Wife of Bath concludes with a plea that Jesus
Christ send all women husbands who are young, meek, and fresh in bed, and the grace
to outlive their husbands.

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue

Summary  The Wife of Bath’s Prologue

From the beginning through the Wife of Bath’s description of her first three husbands Fragment
3, lines 1–451

Summary: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue

The Wife of Bath begins the Prologue to her tale by establishing herself as an authority on
marriage, due to her extensive personal experience with the institution. Since her first marriage at
the tender age of twelve, she has had five husbands. She says that many people have criticized
her for her numerous marriages, most of them on the basis that Christ went only once to a
wedding, at Cana in Galilee. The Wife of Bath has her own views of Scripture and God’s plan.
She says that men can only guess and interpret what Jesus meant when he told a Samaritan
woman that her fifth husband was not her husband. With or without this bit of Scripture, no man
has ever been able to give her an exact reply when she asks to know how many husbands a
woman may have in her lifetime. God bade us to wax fruitful and multiply, she says, and that is
the text that she wholeheartedly endorses. After all, great Old Testament figures, like Abraham,
Jacob, and Solomon, enjoyed multiple wives at once. She admits that many great Fathers of the
Church have proclaimed the importance of virginity, such as the Apostle Paul. But, she reasons,
even if virginity is important, someone must be procreating so that virgins can be created. Leave
virginity to the perfect, she says, and let the rest of us use our gifts as best we may—and her gift,
doubtless, is her sexual power. She uses this power as an “instrument” to control her husbands.

At this point, the Pardoner interrupts. He is planning to marry soon and worries that his wife will
control his body, as the Wife of Bath describes. The Wife of Bath tells him to have patience and
to listen to the whole tale to see if it reveals the truth about marriage. Of her five husbands, three
have been “good” and two have been “bad.” The first three were good, she admits, mostly
because they were rich, old, and submissive. She laughs to recall the torments that she put these
men through and recounts a typical conversation that she had with her older husbands. She
would accuse her -husband of having an affair, launching into a tirade in which she would charge
him with a bewildering array of accusations. If one of her husbands got drunk, she would claim
he said that every wife is out to destroy her husband. He would then feel guilty and give her what
she wanted. All of this, the Wife of Bath tells the rest of the pilgrims, was a pack of lies—her
husbands never held these opinions, but she made these claims to give them grief. Worse, she
would tease her husbands in bed, refusing to give them full satisfaction until they promised her
money. She admits proudly to using her verbal and sexual power to bring her husbands to total
submission.

Read a translation of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue →

Analysis
In her lengthy Prologue, the Wife of Bath recites her autobiography, announcing in her very first
word that “experience” will be her guide. Yet, despite her claim that experience is her sole
authority, the Wife of Bath apparently feels the need to establish her authority in a more
scholarly way. She imitates the ways of churchmen and scholars by backing up her claims with
quotations from Scripture and works of antiquity. The Wife carelessly flings around references
as textual evidence to buttress her argument, most of which don’t really correspond to her points.
Her reference to Ptolemy’s Almageste, for instance, is completely erroneous—the phrase she
attributes to that book appears nowhere in the work. Although her many errors display her lack
of real scholarship, they also convey Chaucer’s mockery of the churchmen present, who often
misused Scripture to justify their devious actions.
The text of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue is based in the medieval genre of allegorical
“confession.” In a morality play, a personified vice such as Gluttony or Lust “confesses” his or
her sins to the audience in a life story. The Wife is exactly what the medieval Church saw as a
“wicked woman,” and she is proud of it—from the very beginning, her speech has undertones of
conflict with her patriarchal society. Because the statements that the Wife of Bath attributes to
her husbands were taken from a number of satires published in Chaucer’s time, which half-
comically portrayed women as unfaithful, superficial, evil creatures, always out to undermine
their husbands, feminist critics have often tried to portray the Wife as one of the first feminist
characters in literature.

This interpretation is weakened by the fact that the Wife of Bath herself conforms to a number of
these misogynist and misogamist (antimarriage) stereotypes. For example, she describes herself
as sexually voracious but at the same time as someone who only has sex to get money, thereby
combining two contradictory stereotypes. She also describes how she dominated her husband,
playing on a fear that was common to men, as the Pardoner’s nervous interjection reveals.
Despite their contradictions, all of these ideas about women were used by men to support a
hierarchy in which men dominated women.

Summary and Analysis The Wife of Bath's Prologue and

Tale
Summary

Before the Wife begins her tale, she shares information about her life and her
experiences in a prologue. The Wife of Bath begins her lengthy prologue by
announcing that she has always followed the rule of experience rather than authority.
Having already had five husbands "at the church door," she has experience enough to
make her an expert. She sees nothing wrong with having had five husbands and
cannot understand Jesus' rebuke to the woman at the well who also had five husbands.
Instead, she prefers the biblical command to go forth and multiply.

To defend her position, the Wife refers to King Solomon, who had many wives, and to
St. Paul's admonishment that it is better to marry than to burn. Having shown a
knowledge of the Bible, she challenges anyone to show her that
God commanded virginity. Furthermore, sexual organs are made both for functional
purposes and for pleasure. And unlike many cold women, she has always been willing
to have sex whenever her man wants to.

The Wife of Bath then relates tales about her former husbands and reveals how she
was able to gain the upper hand ("sovereignty") over them. Unfortunately, just at the
time she gains complete mastery over one of her husbands, he dies. Then she explains
how she gained control over her fifth husband.

At her fourth husband's funeral, she could hardly keep her eyes off a young clerk
named Jankyn, whom she had already admired. At the month's end, she and Jankyn
were married, even though she was twice his age. As soon as the honeymoon was
over, she was disturbed to find that Jankyn spent all his time reading, especially from
a collection of books that disparaged women. One night, he began to read aloud from
this collection, beginning with the story of Eve, and he read about all the unfaithful
women, murderesses, prostitutes, and so on, that he could find. Unable to tolerate
these stories any longer, the Wife of Bath grabbed the book and hit Jankyn so hard
that he fell over backwards into the fire. He jumped up and hit her with his fist. She
fell to the floor and pretended to be dead. When he bent over her, she hit him once
more and again pretended to die. He was so upset that he promised her anything if she
would live. And this is how she gained "sovereignty" over her fifth husband. From
that day until the day he died, she was a true and faithful wife for him. Her tale, which
follows, reiterates her belief that a happy match is one in which the wife has control.

A lusty young knight in King Arthur's court rapes a beautiful young maiden. The
people are repulsed by the knight's behavior and demand justice. Although the law
demands that the knight be beheaded, the queen and ladies of the court beg to be
allowed to determine the knight's fate. The queen then gives the knight a year to
discover what women most desire.

The year passes quickly. As the knight rides dejectedly back to the court knowing that
he will lose his life, he suddenly sees 24 young maidens dancing and singing. As he
approaches them, the maidens disappear, and the only living creature is a foul old
woman, who approaches him and asks what he seeks. The knight explains his quest,
and the old woman promises him the right answer if he will do what she demands for
saving his life. The knight agrees. When the queen bids the knight to speak, he
responds correctly that women most desire sovereignty over their husbands.

Having supplied him with the right answer, the old crone demands that she be his wife
and his love. The knight, in agony, agrees. On their wedding night, the knight pays no
attention to the foul woman next to him. When she questions him, he confesses that
her age, ugliness, and low breeding are repulsive to him. The old hag reminds him that
true gentility is not a matter of appearances but of virtue. She tells him that her looks
can be viewed as an asset. If she were beautiful, many men would be after her; in her
present state, however, he can be assured that he has a virtuous wife. She offers him a
choice: an old ugly hag such as she, but still a loyal, true, and virtuous wife, or a
beautiful woman with whom he must take his chances. The knight says the choice is
hers. And because she has "won the mastery," she tells him, "'Kiss me . . . and you
shall find me both . . . fair and faithful as a wife." Indeed, she had become a lovely
young woman, and they lived happily ever after.

Analysis

The Wife's prologue is unique in that it is longer than the tale itself. The Wife of Bath
uses the prologue to explain the basis of her theories about experience versus
authority and to introduce the point that she illustrates in her tale: The thing women
most desire is complete control ("sovereignty") over their husbands. Because she has
had five husbands, the Wife feels that she can speak with authority from this
experience, and, in the prologue, she tells how she got the upper hand with each of
them.

In Chaucer's time, the antifeminism of the church was a strong controlling factor.
Women were frequently characterized as almost monsters; they were sexually
insatiable, lecherous, and shrewish, and they were patronized by the church
authorities. Women were not allowed to participate in church doctrine in any way.
Likewise, in Chaucer's time, a second marriage was considered suspect, so the Wife of
Bath carefully reviews the words of God as revealed in scripture. And her knowledge
of scripture (although confused at times) reveals that she is not simply an empty-
minded woman. Nowhere, she confesses, can she find a stricture against more than
one marriage, save the rebuke Jesus gave to the woman at the well about her five
husbands. But this, she confesses, she cannot understand. Furthermore, in Chaucer's
time, perpetual virginity received considerable praise; some of the saints were
canonized because they preferred death to the loss of their virginity, or some struggled
so fiercely to retain their virginity that they were considered martyrs and were
canonized.

After the Wife of Bath departs from the holy scriptures, she appeals to common sense
— if everyone remained a virgin, she offers, who would be left to give birth to more
virgins? Even more basic, she maintains that the sex organs are to be used for pleasure
as well as for procreation: She admits that she is a boisterous woman who enjoys sex
and is not ashamed of it — a violation of the medieval view that saw sex as justified
only for procreation. She also denies the popular belief that women should be
submissive, especially in matters of sex.

The reader should remember that the Wife's arguments, in all cases, go against the
authorities of the church and that she is a woman who prefers her own experiences to
scholarly arguments. The truly remarkable aspect of the Wife of Bath's prologue is not
her argument with the mores of her time or with the strictures of the church, but the
very wonderful portrait of a human being. She is a woman of great vitality, a woman
who is wonderfully alive and responsive. And after five husbands and hardships —
she has lost her beauty and her youth — she has survived. She has the power to enjoy
life with a zest denied the other dour pilgrims, and she has the will to enjoy what she
cannot change.

The Wife of Bath's Tale is referred to technically as an exemplum, a story told to

illustrate an intellectual idea. In this case, the tale is to provide an answer to the
question "What do women most desire?" Even though Chaucer had some of the ideas
from other sources (the Roman de las Rose as elaborated by Jean de Meun, and St.
Jerome's comments on celibacy in Hieronymous contra Jovinianum), he reshaped the
tale to fit in with the Wife of Bath's introduction and her basic thesis that women most
desire "sovereignty." For example, Chaucer uses an older shrew — the Wife of Bath
who has just married a man twenty years younger than she is — as the narrator telling
a story about an old hag who gains sovereignty over her youthful husband and the
result being that the couple live a contented and a long, happy life.

Throughout the Wife's tale, traditional values and headships, that is leadership and

supremacy, are reversed or overthrown. At the beginning of the tale, King Arthur
submits to the rule of Guinevere (thus abandoning both his headship of the state and
his headship of the family); the ladies of the court, instead of the men, serve as
justices; and the authority of books and scriptures gives way to experience.
Furthermore, the knight, a rapist who has violated the sanctity of a young girl's
chastity, is redeemed by another woman, albeit a hag. Finally, in the choice the hag
offers the knight, both choices are intolerable. Thus, when he lets her make the
decision, he has abandoned the male's sovereignty in favor of the woman's rule, thus
turning the medieval world-picture "up-so-doun."

The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale Summary

By Geoffrey Chaucer
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The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale Summary

In a land populated by fairies and elves, in the days of King Arthur, a young knight
rapes a maiden he sees walking from the river one day. For his offense, Queen
Guinevere and her ladies rule that his punishment is to find out within one year what
women most desire, or else he'll be beheaded.

The knight departs on his quest to find the answer to this question, but despite
questioning women all over the land and receiving numerous answers, he cannot find
two women who agree on what women most desire.

After a year, the knight returns to King Arthur's court with a heavy heart, no closer to
knowing what women most desire. On the way, he comes across a ring of 24 fairy
ladies dancing. The fairies quickly disappear, only to be replaced by an ugly old hag.
Upon learning of his quest, the hag agrees to tell the knight what women most desire
if he promises to grant her anything she desires. The knight agrees.

The hag tells the knight what women most desire – to have sovereignty over their
husbands and lovers. The queen and all the ladies assemble agree that he is correct. As
the court is adjourning, the hag petitions the queen to force the knight to fulfill his
promise to her: she wants the knight to marry her. Despite the knight's reluctance, the
queen insists that he must do so, and the knight and hag are married.

On their wedding knight, the knight doesn't want to consummate the marriage. The
hag asks what ails him, and he tells her that she is so ugly, old, and low-class that it's
no wonder he does not desire her. This prompts a long speech from the hag on the true
origins of gentility, and the advantages of poverty and old age. The hag concludes her
speech by offering the knight a choice: either he can have her old and ugly, but a good
and faithful wife, or he can have her young and beautiful, but with no guarantee of
these other good qualities. The knight turns the decision over to his wife, asking her to
make the choice.

Once the hag has confirmed that her husband has yielded sovereignty to her, she tells
him that she will be both: young and beautiful, and a faithful, good wife to him. The
knight takes his young, beautiful wife in his arms and they live happily ever after. The
wife is not only faithful and good, but also obedient to her husband for the rest of their
lives together.

The Wife concludes her story by praying Jesus to send women "housbondes meke,
yonge, and fresshe a-bedde / and grace to'overbyde hem that we wedde" (1265-1266).
She also calls down a curse on husbands who refuse to be ruled by their wives.

The Canterbury Tales: The Pardoner's Tale Summary

Pardoner's Prologue
After the Physician's depressing tale, the Host asks the Pardoner to tell a funny story to cheer
everyone up. The pilgrims, knowing the Pardoner, make him promise that the story can't be
raunchy; they want a tale with moral virtue.

The Pardoner begins by describing all of his tricks of the trade in his work. He explains to the
pilgrims that he always uses "greed is the root of all evil" as his theme when preaching, the better
to loosen the purse strings of his audience. Demonstrating the hard sell he gives when he arrives
in a town, the Pardoner describes some of his relics and their curative properties. All the relics
are fake, he admits, but he doesn't care a bit. He also makes sure the pilgrims understand that he
only preaches to earn money, so much so that he doesn't hesitate to take it from even a poor
widow with starving children. He's says he's a great speaker, tossing in some Latin phrases to
punch things up a bit, and citing the Bible and philosophy to sound serious.

He makes the point that many good sermons come from evil intentions, so his love of money
shouldn't make any difference. He can still inspire repentance in his audiences, even if he's only
doing it to get rich.

The Pardoner's Tale

Three friends in Flanders are the worst guys you could imagine. They drink and party all night
and day, love to gamble, drink, binge-eat, flirt, swear, and generally debauch themselves. At this
point, the Pardoner digresses from his story to detail the evil of all these vices. He delivers mini-
sermons on drunkenness, gluttony, gambling, and oath swearing, using biblical and historical
examples and showing how all of these sins are interrelated.

After the mini-sermons, the Pardoner returns to the story of the three revelers. While at a pub one
morning (before Mass—gasp!), the rioters see a corpse carried by. A young servant tells them
the corpse is a friend of theirs, killed by someone named Death who's been going around killing
everybody. Enraged, the three swear a pact of brotherhood and declare their intention to work
together to kill this Death, who's been having a field day during the plague. When the bartender
tells them they can find Death in a nearby village, off they go to look for him.

After traveling about a mile, the young men meet with a withered old man, bent over and just
wasting away. They rudely ask him why he's so old. He explains that no one wants to trade their
youth for his age, and although he's pleaded with the earth to accept his body, she's refused to do
so. He reproaches the young men for their rudeness. (Kids these days…) They respond even
more rudely, threatening to hurt the old man if he doesn't tell them where to find Death; they
suspect he might even be Death's spy. He tells them they can find Death under a tree around the
corner.

Under a tree—get it? The "root" of all evil?

When they reach the tree, Death isn't there. Instead, there are 8 bushels of gold coins. They can't
believe their good luck and forget about finding Death in about two seconds. They decide to wait
until nightfall to carry the gold to one of their homes so that no one will accuse them of stealing
it. Being gamblers, they draw straws to decide who will go to town to bring snacks and drinks,
since it's gonna be a long night.

The youngest draws the short straw. After he leaves, the other two buddies decide kill him when
he gets back. Why split the gold three ways when you can do it two ways? The other young man
has a similar plan; if he can kill the others, he has all the gold for himself. In town, he buys food
and wine, and goes to a drugstore claiming to need poison to kill rats. Dosing two of the wine
bottles with the poison, he returns to the grove intending to kill his friends. Instead, they kill him
and sit down for a drink. They immediately die a painful and miserable death. We get the moral
of the story: with friends like these, who needs enemies? Or actually, we mean "greed is bad."

So that's his tale, and by the way, it's an honor and advantage for the pilgrims to have a Pardoner
on the pilgrimage, for he can absolve them of their sins in the event that anyone meets with an
untimely death, like falling off their horse. They wouldn't want to die in a state of sin, right? So
the Pardoner invites the pilgrims to step up and buy his relics or purchase a pardon or two to use
along the way. He suggests that the Host is the most in need of penitence, so he should be the
first to buy something. He can even kiss his relics.

The Host is not amused. He tells the Pardoner he'd like to cut his balls off and use them for
relics. But instead of putting them in a fancy reliquary he'd enshrine them in pig turds. Before the
two come to blows, the Knight steps in and tells them to calm down, make up, and get on with
their journey.

The Canterbury Tales Summary and Analysis of The

Pardoner's Tale
The Introduction to the Pardoner's Tale
Following the Physician’s Tale, the Host began to swear as if he were mad, wishing a shameful
death on the judge and his advocates, and concluding that the cause of the maiden’s death was
her “beautee”. The Host pronounced the tale a piteous one to listen to, and prayed to God that
he protect the Physician’s body.
The Host, concluding that he has almost “caught a cardynacle” (had a heart attack) after the
brutality of the Physician’s Tale, decides that he must have medicine in the form of a merry tale,
in order to restore his heart. Turning to the Pardoner, he asks for some “myrthe or japes right
anon”, and the Pardoner agrees, though, before he begins, he stops at an alehouse to “drynke and
eten of a cake”. The company protests that the Pardoner not be allowed to tell them a ribald tale,
but insists instead on “som moral thyng” - a request which the Pardoner also grants.

The Pardoner’s Prologue

Radix malorum est Cupiditas (Greed is the root of all evil)
The Pardoner begins by addressing the company, explaining to them that, when he preaches in
churches, his voice booms out impressively like a bell, and his theme is always that greed is the
root of all evil. First, the Pardoner says, he explains where has come from, and shows his papal
bulls, indulgences, and glass cases crammed full of rags and bones, which he claims (to the
congregation, at least) are holy relics with magical properties.

Then, the Pardoner invites anyone who has sinned to come and offer money to his relics, and
therefore to be absolved by the Pardoner’s power. This trick, the Pardoner says, has earned him
at least a hundred marks since he was made a pardoner - and when the “lewd peple” are seated,
he continues to tell them false trickeries and lies. His intention, he says, is simply “for to wynne”
(to profit), and “nothyng for correccioun of synne” (and nothing to do with the correction of sin);
the Pardoner doesn’t care whether, after burial, his congregation’s souls go blackberry picking.
Thus, the Pardoner says, he spits out his venom under the pretense of holiness, seeming holy,
pious, and “trewe”. “Greed is the root of all evils”, the Pardoner quotes again, explaining that he
preaches against the same vice which he himself is guilty of. Yet, although he knows he is guilty
of the sin, he can still make other people turn away from it.

Next, the Pardoner tells the company how he tells his congregation “olde stories” from long ago,
“for lewed peple loven tales olde”. He will not, he says, work with hands and make baskets, but
get money, wool, cheese and wheat for himself, even if it is from the poorest page or poorest
widow in a village. He will drink “licour of the vyne”, and have a “joly wenche” in every town.
“Now hold your pees!” he shouts to the company, and begins his tale.

The Pardoner's Tale

There once lived in Flanders a company of three rioters who did nothing but engage in
irresponsible and sinful behavior. At this point, the narrator interrupts the tale itself to launch a
lengthy diatribe against drunkenness - mentioning Herod, Seneca, Adam, Sampson, Attila the
Hun and St. Paul as either sources or famed drunkards. This in turn oddly becomes a diatribe
against people whose stomachs are their gods (their end, we are told, is death), and then a
diatribe against the stomach, called, at one point a “stynkyng cod, fulfilled of dong and of
corrupcioun” (a stinking bag, full of dung and decayed matter). This distraction from the story
itself ends with an attack on dice-playing (dice here called “bicched bones”, or cursed dice).

The three drunkards were in a tavern one night, and, hearing a bell ring, looked outside to see
men carrying a corpse to its grave. One of them called to his slave to go and ask who the corpse
was: he was told by a boy that the corpse was an old fellow whose heart was smashed in two by
a secret thief called Death. This drunkard agreed, and discussed with his companions how this
“Death” had indeed slain many people, of all ranks, of both sexes, that very year. The three then
made a vow (by “Goddes digne bones”) to find Death and slay him.

When they had gone not even half a mile, they met an old, poor man at a style, who greeted them
courteously. The proudest of the drunkards responded rudely, asking the man why he was still
alive at such a ripe age. The old man answered that he was alive, because he could not find
anyone who would exchange their youth for his age - and, although he knocked on the ground,
begging it to let him in, he still did not die. Moreover, the old man added, it was not courteous of
the drunkards to speak so rudely to an old man.

One of the other drunkards responded still more rudely that the old man was to tell them where
Death was, or regret not telling them dearly. The old man, still polite, told the drunkards they
could find Death up the crooked way and underneath an oak tree.
The drunkards ran until they came to the tree, and, underneath it, they found eight bushels of
gold coins. The worst one of them spoke first, arguing that Fortune had given them the treasure
to live their life in happiness - but realizing that they could not carry the gold home without
people seeing them and thinking them thieves. Therefore, he suggested, they should draw lots,
and one of them should run back to the town to fetch bread and wine, while the other two
protected the treasure. Then, at night, they could agree where to take the treasure and carry it
safety. This was agreed, and lots were drawn: the youngest of them was picked to go to the town.

However, as soon as he had gone to the town, the two remaining drunkards plotted amongst
themselves to stab him upon his return, and then split the gold between them. While he was in
the town, the youngest thought of the beauty of the gold coins, and decided to buy some poison
in order to kill the other two, keeping the gold for himself. Thus, he went to an apothecary,
bought some “strong and violent” poison, poured it into two of three wine bottles (the third was
for him to drink from), topped them up with wine, and returned to his fellows.

Exactly as the other two had planned it, it befell. They killed him on his return, and sat down to
enjoy the wine before burying his body – and, as it happened, drank the poison and died. The tale
ends with a short sermon against sin, asking God to forgive the trespass of good men, and
warning them against the sin of avarice, before (this, we can presume narrated in the Pardoner’s
voice) inviting the congregation to “come up” and offer their wool in return for pardons.

The tale finished, the Pardoner suddenly remembers that he has forgotten one thing - that he is
carrying relics and pardons in his “male” (pouch, bag) and begins to invite the pilgrims forward
to receive pardon, inciting the Host to be the first to receive his pardon. “Unbokele anon thy
purs”, he says to the Host, who responds that the Pardoner is trying to make him kiss “thyn old
breech” (your old pants), swearing it is a relic, when actually it is just painted with his shit. I
wish, the Host says, I had your “coillons” (testicles) in my hand, to shrine them in a hog’s turd.

The Pardoner is so angry with this response, he cannot speak a word, and, just in time, the
Knight steps in, bringing the Pardoner and the Host together and making them again friends.
This done, the company continues on its way.

Analysis

The Pardoner has – in recent years – become one of the most critically discussed of the
Canterbury pilgrims. His tale is in many ways the exemplar of the contradiction which the
structure of the Tales themselves can so easily exploit, and a good touchstone for highlighting
precisely how Chaucer can complicate an issue without ever giving his own opinion.

Thus the Pardoner embodies precisely the textual conundrum of the Tales themselves - he utters
words which have absolutely no correlation with his actions. His voice, in other words, is
entirely at odds with his behavior. The Pardoner’s voice, at the beginning of his tale, rings out
"as round as gooth a belle", summoning his congregation: and yet his church is one of extreme
bad faith. There is a genuine issue here about whether the Pardoner’s tale, being told by the
Pardoner, can actually be the "moral" (325) tale it claims to be. For, while the tale does indeed
demonstrate that money is the root of all evil, does it still count when he is preaching "agayn that
same vice / Which that I use, and that is avarice" (against the very vice I commit: avarice"). How
far, in other words, can the teller negate his own moral?

Yet the real problem is that the Pardoner is a successful preacher, and his profits point to several
people who do learn from his speeches and repent their sin. His Tale too is an accurate
demonstration of the way greed and avarice lead to evil. Hollow execution nevertheless, the
Pardoner is an excellent preacher against greed. His voice, in short, operates regardless of his
actions. Hollow sentiments produce real results.

This is also reflected in the imagery of the tale itself. The Pardoner hates full stomachs,
preferring empty vessels, and, though his “wallet” may well be “bretful of pardoun comen from
Rome” (687) but the moral worth of this paper is nil: the wallet, therefore, is full and empty at
the same time – exactly like the Pardoner’s sermon.

In just the same way Chaucer himself in the Tales can ventriloquize the sentiments of the pilgrim
– the Reeve, the Pardoner, the Merchant – and so on, without actually committing to it. Because
the Tales themselves, in supposedly reproducing the “telling” of a certain pilgrim, actually do
enact precisely the disembodied voice which the Pardoner represents. The moral paradox of the
Pardoner himself is precisely the paradox of the Tales and their series of Chaucer-ventriloquized
disembodied voices.

There is a doubleness, a shifting evasiveness, about the Pardoner’s double audience: the
imaginary congregation he describes, and the assembled company to whom he preaches, and
tells his “lewed tales”, even calling them forth to pardon at the end. The point is clear: even
though they know it is insincere, the Pardoner’s shtick might still work on the assembled
company.

The imagery of the Pardoner’s Tale also reflects this fundamental hollowness. The tale itself is
strewn with bones, whether in the oath sworn “by Goddes digne bones”, whether in the word for
cursed dice (“bones”) or whether in the bones which the Pardoner stuffs into his glass cases,
pretending they are relics. The literary landscape is strewn with body parts, and missing, absent
bodies: beginning with the anonymous corpse carried past at the beginning of his tale. Bones,
stomachs, coillons – words for body parts cover the page, almost as a grim reminder of the
omnipresence of death in this tale.

The General Prologue, suggesting that the Pardoner resembles a “gelding or a mare”, hints that
the Pardoner may be a congenital eunuch or, taken less literally, a homosexual, and, as the Host
seems to suggest at the end, might well be without his “coillons”, a Middle English word
meaning both “relics” and “testicles”. All of the “relics” in this Tale, including the Pardoner’s,
evade the grasp of the hand. The Pardoner thus can be categorized along with the other bizarrely
feminized males in the Tales, including Absolon, Sir Thopas, and, if we believe the Host,
Chaucer (the character).
And of course, at the center of the tale, there is a search for somebody called “Death” which,
naturally, does not find the person “Death”, but death itself. It is a successful – but ultimately
unsuccessful – search. All that is left over at the center of the Tales is the bushels of gold, sitting
under a tree unclaimed. The root of the tale, as its moral similarly suggests about the root of evil,
is money: and money was, to a medieval reader, known to be a spiritual "death". Notably,
moreover, in the tale, both “gold” and “death” shift from metaphor to reality and back again; a
neat reminder of the ability of the Tales to evade our grasp, raising difficult questions without
ever answering them.

Summary and Analysis The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale

Summary

Apparently deeply affected by the Physician's sad and gruesome tale of Virginia, the
Host praises the Physician by using as many medical terms as he can muster.
However, he rejects the Physician's moral to the tale and substitutes one of his own:
Thus the gifts of fortune and nature are not always good ("The gifts of Fortune and
Nature have been the cause of the death of many a person"). Thinking that the pilgrims
need a merry tale to follow, the Host turns to the Pardoner. The more genteel members
of the company, fearing that the Pardoner will tell a vulgar story, ask the Pardoner for a
tale with a moral.

The Pardoner then explains to the pilgrims the methods he uses in preaching. His text is
always "Radix malorum est cupidatis" ("Love of money is the root of all evil"). Always
employing an array of documents and objects, he constantly announces that he can do
nothing for the really bad sinners and invites the good people forward to buy his relics
and, thus, absolve themselves from sins. Then he stands in the pulpit and preaches
very rapidly about the sin of avarice so as to intimidate the members into donating
money.

He repeats that his theme is always "Money is the root of all evil" because, with this
text, he can denounce the very vice that he practices: greed. And even though he is
guilty of the same sins he preaches against, he can still make other people repent. The
Pardoner admits that he likes money, rich food, and fine living. And even if he is not a
moral man, he can tell a good moral tale, which follows.

In Flanders, at the height of a black plague, three young men sit in an inn, eating and
drinking far beyond their power and swearing oaths that are worthy of damnation. The
revelers mark the passing of a coffin and ask who has died. A servant tells them that the
dead man was a friend who was stabbed in the back the night before by a thief called
Death. The young revelers, thinking that Death might still be in the next town, decide to
seek him out and slay him.

On the way, the three men meet an old man who explains that he must wander the
earth until he can find someone willing to exchange youth for old age. He says that not
even Death will take his life. Hearing him speak of Death, the revelers ask where they
can find Death, and the old man directs them to a tree at the end of the lane. The
revelers rush to the tree and find eight bushels of gold coins, which they decide to keep.
They decide to wait for night to move the gold and draw straws to see which one will go
into town to get food and wine. The youngest of the three draws the shortest straw.
When he leaves, the two others decide to kill him and divide his money. The youngest,
however, wanting the treasure to himself, buys poison, which he adds to two of the
bottles of wine he purchases. When the youngest reveler approaches the tree, the two
others stab him and then sit down to drink the wine before they dispose of his body.
Thus, all three indeed find Death.

Analysis

From the Pardoner's perspective, the Physician told a cheaply pious story and the Host,
a sanctimonious fool, reacts to the tale with what seems high praise. Then, after
praising the Physician, the Host turns to the Pardoner and asks for a merry tale or jokes
("som myrthe or japes"), even though preaching is the Pardoner's profession.

The Pardoner agrees by mockingly echoing the same oath the Host has just used —
"By Saint Ronyon." The echo of the Host indicates, if anything at all, the Pardoner's
irritation at hearing the Physician praised as being "like a Prelate" ("lyk a prelat"). The
Pardoner is further insulted when some members of the company cry with one voice,
"No, don't let him tell dirty jokes!" ("Nay, lat hym telle us of no ribaudye"). The Pardoner
will have his revenge on all the complacent, self-righteous critics, and he resolves to
think his revenge out carefully.

The ironic relationship between The Physician's Tale and The Pardoner's Tale — and

therefore the Physician and Pardoner — is that both men are self-loving dissemblers.
However, one of the two, the Pardoner, possesses enough self-knowledge to know
what he is; the other, the Physician, being self-satisfied and affected, does not.

The function of a pardoner in Chaucer's time was to collect moneys for charitable
purposes and to be the Pope's special agent in dispensing or rewarding contributors
with certain pardons as a remission for sins. By canon law, a pardoner was required to
remain in a certain area; within this area, he could visit churches, receive contributions,
and, in the Pope's name, dispense indulgences. An honest pardoner was entitled to a
percentage of the take; however, most pardoners were dishonest and took much more
than their share and, in many cases, would take all the contributions. Thus, as he
boasts, Chaucer's Pardoner belongs to the latter class — that is, he speaks of how
much he collects by refusing to give indulgences to anyone except the very good
people.

In his prologue, the Pardoner frankly confesses that he is a fraud motivated by greed
and avarice and that he is guilty of all seven sins. Even though he is essentially a
hypocrite in his profession, he is at least being honest as he makes his confession. But
then, ironically, at the end of his tale, he requests that the pilgrims make a contribution.
Thus, for many reasons, the Pardoner is the most complex figure in the entire
pilgrimage. He is certainly an intellectual figure; his references and knowledge
demonstrated in the tale and his use of psychology in getting only the good people to
come forward attest to his intellect. But in making his confessions to the pilgrims about
his hypocrisy, he seems to be saying that he wishes he could be more sincere in his
ways, except that he is too fond of money, good food and wine, and power.

The Pardoner takes as his text that "Love of money is the root of all evil," yet he
emphasizes how each relic will bring the purchaser more money; in emphasizing this,
he sells more and gains more money for himself. Thus, his text contains a double irony:
His love for money is the root of his evil, yet his sales depend upon the purchaser's love
of money. Furthermore, his technique of relying upon basic psychology by selling only
to the good people brings him more money. His sermon on avarice is given because the
Pardoner is filled with avarice and this sermon fills his purse with money.

Scholars, critics, and readers in general consider The Pardoner's Tale to be one of the
finest "short stories" ever written. Even though this is poetry, the narration fits all the
qualifications of a perfect short story: brevity, a theme aptly illustrated, brief
characterizations, the inclusion of the symbolic old man, rapid narration, and a quick
twist of an ending. The entire tale is an exemplum, a story told to illustrate an intellectual
point. The subject is "Money (greed) is the root of all evil."

The Pardoner's Tale ends with the Pardoner trying to sell a relic to the Host and the
Host attacking the Pardoner viciously. At this point, the Knight who, both by his
character and the nature of the tale he told, stands as Chaucer's symbol of natural
balance and proportion, steps between the Host and the Pardoner and directs them to
kiss and be reconciled. In the conflict between the Host and the Pardoner, the Pardoner
— whose official role is to get men to call on God for forgiveness of their sins — is
unmerciful in his wrath; that is, the Pardoner is unwilling to pardon, and the pardon is
effected only when the noble Knight steps in.

The Pardoner’s Introduction, Prologue, and Tale

Summary  The Pardoner’s Introduction, Prologue, and Tale

Page 1Page 2

Fragment 6, lines 287–968

Summary: Introduction to the Pardoner’s Tale

The Host reacts to the Physician’s Tale, which has just been told. He is shocked at the death of
the young Roman girl in the tale, and mourns the fact that her beauty ultimately caused the chain
of events that led her father to kill her. Wanting to cheer up, the Host asks the Pardoner to tell the
group a merrier, farcical tale. The Pardoner agrees, but will continue only after he has food and
drink in his stomach. Other pilgrims interject that they would prefer to hear a moral story, and
the Pardoner again agrees.

Summary: Prologue to the Pardoner’s Tale

My theme is alwey oon, and evere was—
Radix malorum est Cupiditas.
After getting a drink, the Pardoner begins his Prologue. He tells the company about his
occupation—a combination of itinerant preaching and selling promises of salvation. His sermon
topic always remains the same: Radix malorum est Cupiditas, or “greed is the root of all evil.”
He gives a similar sermon to every congregation and then breaks out his bag of “relics”—which,
he readily admits to the listening pilgrims, are fake. He will take a sheep’s bone and claim it has
miraculous healing powers for all kinds of ailments. The parishioners always believe him and
make their offerings to the relics, which the Pardoner quickly pockets.

 
X

QUIZ: How Would Shakespeare Describe Your Love Life? | The SparkNotes Blog

QUIZ: How Would Shakespeare Describe Your Love Life? | The SparkNotes Blog
The Pardoner admits that he preaches solely to get money, not to correct sin. He argues that
many sermons are the product of evil intentions. By preaching, the Pardoner can get back at
anyone who has offended him or his brethren. In his sermon, he always preaches about
covetousness, the very vice that he himself is gripped by. His one and only interest is to fill his
ever-deepening pockets. He would rather take the last penny from a widow and her starving
family than give up his money, and the good cheeses, breads, and wines that such income brings
him. Speaking of alcohol, he notes, he has now finished his drink of “corny ale” and is ready to
begin his tale.

Read a translation of Prologue to the Pardoner’s Tale →

Summary: The Pardoner’s Tale

The Pardoner describes a group of young Flemish people who spend their time drinking and
reveling, indulging in all forms of excess. After commenting on their lifestyle of debauchery, the
Pardoner enters into a tirade against the vices that they practice. First and foremost is gluttony,
which he identifies as the sin that first caused the fall of mankind in Eden. Next, he attacks
drunkenness, which makes a man seem mad and witless. Next is gambling, the temptation that
ruins men of power and wealth. Finally, he denounces swearing. He argues that it so offends God
that he forbade swearing in the Second Commandment—placing it higher up on the list than
homicide. After almost two hundred lines of sermonizing, the Pardoner finally returns to his
story of the lecherous Flemish youngsters.

As three of these rioters sit drinking, they hear a funeral knell. One of the revelers’ servants tells
the group that an old friend of theirs was slain that very night by a mysterious figure named
Death. The rioters are outraged and, in their drunkenness, decide to find and kill Death to avenge
their friend. Traveling down the road, they meet an old man who appears sorrowful. He says his
sorrow stems from old age—he has been waiting for Death to come and take him for some time,
and he has wandered all over the world. The youths, hearing the name of Death, demand to know
where they can find him. The old man directs them into a grove, where he says he just left Death
under an oak tree. The rioters rush to the tree, underneath which they find not Death but eight
bushels of gold coins with no owner in sight.

At first, they are speechless, but, then, the slyest of the three reminds them that if they carry the
gold into town in daylight, they will be taken for thieves. They must transport the gold under
cover of night, and so someone must run into town to fetch bread and wine in the meantime.
They draw lots, and the youngest of the three loses and runs off toward town. As soon as he is
gone, the sly plotter turns to his friend and divulges his plan: when their friend returns from
town, they will kill him and therefore receive greater shares of the wealth. The second rioter
agrees, and they prepare their trap. Back in town, the youngest vagrant is having similar
thoughts. He could easily be the richest man in town, he realizes, if he could have all the gold to
himself. He goes to the apothecary and buys the strongest poison available, then puts the poison
into two bottles of wine, leaving a third bottle pure for himself. He returns to the tree, but the
other two rioters leap out and kill him.