Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES (General Prologue)
One of Chaucer's great character descriptions is of the Pardoner:
a.) What image suggests his lack of manliness and his effeminacy? Why do you think Chaucer would portray the Pardoner this way?
The Pardoner makes his living in an unmanly way, through wit and guile rather than true trade. The pardoner is described as a gelding or a mare, like an animal that cannot reproduce.
b.) A goat is usually considered a lecherous animal. What image associates the Pardoner with a goat? Why does Chaucer depict him thusly?
The Pardoner's goat-like beard, eyes, and hair suggest a man who is still driven by desire, but by a perverted rather than a healthy form of sexual desire -- in the Pardoner's case he is driven by a desire for money and physical satisfactions of good and drink as a replacement for sexuality.
c.) What images does Chaucer use to describe the Pardoner's eyes?
Yellow, pus-encircled, and animalistic all create images that suggest sickness, depravity, and perversion.
d.) What images describe his hair and what do you think is the impression Chaucer wants you to glean from this description?
Wispy and whiskery, again stressing the castrated animal or goat, and implying a lack of healthy levels of normal human 'humors' or desire. Also, it suggests the man's drunkenness and love of rich food.
e.) How do these images, taken all together, make you feel about the Pardoner?
These images combination of revulsion at his hypocrisy, and disgust that people come to the man for spiritual guidance when he can provide them with none -- when he himself is sick and corrupt with a love of rich food and wine.
2.) Chaucer satirizes the Church of his time in the Prologue. Show how this is true in the Pardoner's description.
The Pardoner is a man who exculpates people for their sins -- however he is a mercenary, venial creature himself,...
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