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Chaucer can be seen as a Gothic author, for this tale contains elements of the macabre, a quality of work characterised by a grim or ghastly atmosphere. In Chaucer's work, there is an emphasis on the details and symbols of death, repellent descriptions of the destructive effects of sins, the pardoner's macabre trade in relics, and the mysterious and dark figure of the old man, who contains a supernatural quality.
The character of the Old Man is certainly ominous, for he is a figure almost from the grave, between life and death. He provides mystery and reverence at the moment which is the turning point of the tale.
"To finde Deeth, turne up this croked wey; For in that gr I lafte him, by me fey; Under a tree, and there he wole abide."
There has been much argument about the character of the old man, and his meaning; many explanations have been offered.
The fact that so many explanations have been offered suggests that Chaucer did not intend any one of them to apply exclusively. The Old Man remains mysterious, and he is more effective in the tale because of this.
We can notice how Chaucer has combined touches of concrete vividness with the hint of infinite significance, a contrast between innocent youth and dispirited old age.
"And on the ground... I knoke with my staf" - like the ringing of the funeral bell - brings him vividly present before our eyes, but it is never possible after reading the tale to see an old man with a stick, without thinking of the imagery of knocking for admittance to death. This is endowing a simple human action with a universal, emblematic significance about human life.
Every detail convinces us of his presence, but also has the power to suggest the figure of the Old Man is more significant than any individual old man.
The way that he is wrapped up in his clothes - "Why artow al forwrapped save thy face?" - can suggest both an old man who feels the cold and also a corpse already prepared for burial. The long look which the Old Man gives the reveller - "This olde man gan looke in his visage" - is a realistic gesture. But it also suggests more generally the greater wisdom and reflectiveness of old age compared with youth.
Indeed, the characterisation of the Old Man develops as a series of contrasts with the young rioters. Both old and young are seeking Death; but the old man seeks Death as a release from life. The old man accepts God's will, whereas the young are indifferent to it. The old man uses religious language in order to call down God's blessing; but the young use religious terms only to swear and blaspheme.
It is Chaucer's achievement that he creates such balance between the specific and realistic, and the general, that the events of the story seem both vividly particular and infinitely symbolic. The scene in the tavern illustrates this balance.
It is striking that the three rioters are never given names, even though this can sometimes be awkward. Their anonymity seems part of Chaucer's plan: it gives the story a more general tone.
Similarly, the rioters ask a child to find the corpse's name, and although he already knows before they ask him, the child does not tell the name. This is part of the mysterious quality of the scene.
Yet, on the other hand, there is something very real and vivd about the noise of the funeral bell clanging through the street.
By contrast, the child's speech is so universally applicable, so solemnly general, that it seems more than any particular child would say about death:
"And, maister, er ye come in his presence; Me thinketh that it were necessarie; for to be war of swich an adversarie. Beth ready for to meete him everemoore; Thus taughte me my dame; I sey namoore."
So assured does this seem that some readers have seen the child as symbolic and think he is referring to the Church. Chaucer has prepared the way in the tale so efficiently that its characters can seem to have this symbolic, emblematic identity.
On the other hand, there is nothing more natural and human than the way the innkeeper interrupts support what the child has said: "'By seinte Marie', said this taverner, 'The child seith sooth...'"
It is by this alteration of the concrete and the mysterious that the tale's style gives the work as a whole a both vivid and haunting impression.
The funeral at the beginning sets the mood of something dark and gothic; violent and sudden deaths of the three rioters, due to their wickedness and corruption; the breaking of religious codes and conventional morals.
The story of the three young men's search for Death has this terrifying simplicity in itself. The form and structure of the story are its meaning and leave little more to say. But the story of the search for Death is only part of the total structure of The Pardoner's Tale. Although it does form what the Pardoner himself would call his own tale, it forms only a part of the whole. While the story is the climax which completes the unity of the tale in meaning and form, we also have to consider the larger framework of preaching by the Pardoner within the tale of the search for Death is presented.
The story of the three rioters is consequently being used for the Pardoner's purpose, in order to give tangible narrative form to the dangers of the sins that he attacks, particularly avarice. The form of the Pardoner's preaching, then, is authentic, and this guides the reader's response to his exemplum of the attempt to kill Death, as the sins attacked by the Pardoner can all be seen to be grimly relevant to the story of the three rioters.
This is in character with Chaucer's major poetry: the device of dramatising the character of the teller of the story enables Chaucer not only to tell the story but to offer a perspective on it. He uses stories not only for the value of the stories themselves, but for the way in which the telling of the story becomes part of its meaning. The tale of a search for Death, in which Death is found in money, is striking itself. Its fascination becomes compelling when we watch this story becoming rehearsed by a Pardoner, who uses it to persuade others to save themselves by giving money their money to him., while he himself remains unmoved by the lesson of his own tale in his greed for money.
Once we accept that the tale is founded in a desire to exhibit preaching technique, then much of the structure and style of the tale falls into a much more coherent pattern. The first phase of the tale, in which the Pardoner preaches against various sins of drunkenness, gluttony, gambling and blaspheming, becomes an integral part of the tale. It is by no means a digression from the narrative, once we recognise that one of the unifying factors in the tale is the Pardoner's self-exposure as a preacher. The subject of 'The Pardoner's Tale' is thus in large measure himself, and the Prologue encourages this impression by centering itself in the Pardoner' own experience. His first words plunge us into his life of deceptions, stressing what an effective performer he is:
"Lordinges,' quod he, 'in chirches whan i preche
I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche..."
The Pardoner insists that he only ever preaches out of covetousness, "therefore my theme is yet, and evere was, Radix malorum est Cupiditas." He preaches against the very same sin of which he himself is guilty. His skill as a preacher is such that he can persuade others to repent their avarice sincerely. But this result of his preaching is quite accidental to the Pardoner's own concern with winning the money of his audience.
Even though he is a wicked and corrupted man, he is able to tell them a moral tale which is one he is accustomed to tell as one of his examples when he preaches for his own gain. "For though myself be a ful vicious man, A moral tale yet I yow telle kan."
He gives a picture of his own practice when "I stonde lyk a clerk in my pulpet". He compares himself to a dove the way in the way that he stretches out his neck to nod to people, "as dooth a dowve sittinge on a berne", perhaps making every individual in the congregation feel that he is being personally addressed by the Pardoner. With a kind of professional pride, the Pardoner tells how both his tongue and his hands move busily - "yerne". Clearly he is a persuasive preacher, using both gesture and eloquence.
It is the commitment to energetic performance that draws our imaginations - the rapid, darting movement of the head, like a dove's, the speed of tongue and the hands. Because we have been shown all this outward energy, the Pardoner's inner detachment becomes more shocking by contrast, when he remarks with complete indifference: "I reke nevere, whan that they been buried; though that hir souls goon a-blakeberried!"
As to pick blackberries is essentially a wandering activity, finding the berries here and there, this image represents the Pardoner's complete lack of interest in the fate of the souls of those he exploits.
Rhetoric is the art of writing or speaking persuasively. The Pardoner demonstrates this effectively through the Prologue and his tale. We witness great passion and enthusiasm in his language, for example during the remarks on gluttony, the Pardoner exclaims "cursednesse", "confusion" and "dampnacioun".
"To saffron with my predicacioun" - The Pardoner's imagery is one of the cook spicing and enhancing the taste of food.
The uses of powerful imagery also continue to present the Pardoner as a brilliant persuasive speaker.
Even when the Pardoner confesses - "But though myself be gilty in that sinne" - he shows such confidence and stridency, which convey the powerful express of his greed.
Chaucer's description of the Pardoner's personal appearance is calculated to suggest effeminacy. Medieval man thought that specific features of personal appearance had a scientific relation to the individual's character. The study of physical appearance had consequently developed a tradition of interpretation, and it has been found that the details Chaucer describes in his Pardoner would be taken by the medieval observer as a sign to perceive this character as a fool, one to be mocked..
The pardoner has glaring eyes of a hair, an animal some medieval scientists thought could be a hermaphrodite. Moreover, the Pardoner has a thin voice like a goat's, and he has no beard at all "nor nevere sholde have". After these hints, Chaucer suddenly states his meaning more bluntly. He describes the Pardoner's sexual deficiency in terms of the language of the stable: "I trowe he were a gelding or a mare". But there is the further possibility that Chaucer's account of the Pardoner's physical shortcomings as a man suggests a corresponding spiritual deficiency in him.
It is possible that Chaucer sees in his Pardoner both a physical and a spiritual eunuch. This is in keeping with his perversion of what could have been a spiritually beneficial profession. He could be seen as refusing, in the traditional Christian language, to leave behind the old man' of sin and become the 'new man' in Christ. In this case, the Pardoner's love of the new, of the latest fashions, would be another grimly ironic observation. For when Chaucer describes the Pardoner riding gaily along in the latest fashion, "al of the newe jet", the irrelevant material novelty of his outward appearance contrasts with the dark, unreformed quality of his inward spiritual blindness.
Is the Pardoner attractive? :
What we see is a man who uses rhetoric and fear to raise money and ensure some form of sexual satisfaction. His heavy use of irony can be seen as humour as he wins
over his audience, and only his ill-judged attack on Bailey causes his story to fail. No other pilgrim seems offended.
Some see him as an allegorical figure of Old Age, the harbinger of Death.
Some see him as the 'old man' of Christian teaching, the unreformed aspect of mankind.
Some see him as the traditional representation of the Jew always condemned to wander the earth without a home.
The tone of the tale is immediately determined by the vigorous swearing of the Host which open up the introduction to the tale. Although Chaucer presents the Host as a bluff, essentially masculine character, he also shows him subject to very strong emotional reactions.
The Pardoner's Tale is presented within two frames; a part of the larger unity of The Canterbury Tales, but within that large frame the tale itself must be seen as framed by the character of the Pardoner who is telling it. It exists as part of a performance by the Pardoner in which he demonstrates his preaching skills. The whole structure is designed so that the tale reflects back on its teller.
The change in emphasis and narrative speed in the end of the Pardoner's tale can guide us in what is important Here, it is the words of the three young men that condemn themselves, because Chaucer is more interested in their sinful motives. The murders are dismissed in a line or two. Indeed the Pardoner makes it very conspicuous that he is not interested in the physial deaths; "What needeth it to sermone of it moore?" Chaucer's Pardoner is interested in the spiritual deaths of his three rioters, and spiritual death can only be illustrated while they are still alive and able to destroy themselves by the sins they reveal in their speeches.
The whole story has the power to become an image in the mind, of the two who turned on the third and were themselves killed. Chaucer makes his youngest fetch bread and wine, the form in which Christ is represented in Christian communion, and this suggests that the Pardoner sees this larger pattern behind his tale of three riotous young men. As with the appearance of the Old Man in the story, Chaucer's tale here has the capacity to deal with extraordinary local vigour with details and patterns of plot an character which have universal resonance.