Duality of Meaning in The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale
A prominent feature in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is the play upon duality -- seeming contradictions -- of meaning in the words, actions, and motives of the characters, whether it be the main narrator pilgrim-Chaucer, the Canterbury tale-tellers, or the tales’ characters. In the tales Chaucer juxtaposes many instances of dualities in which, on the surface, each member of the duality excludes each other. Such examples as the male and female in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, the nominal and the real in the Franklin’s Tale, and the court and the barnyard in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale are only scant glimpses of conflicting multi-layered dualities. Of these tales, the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale best demonstrates the different kinds of dualities which Chaucer presents and which he plays upon the reader to seek a resolution to such opposing dualities.
The reader first sees the Pardoner as agreeing to two kinds of story requests, first from the Host and then the rest of the pilgrims:
“Telle us som myrthe or japes right anon.”
“It shall be doon,” quod he, “by Seint Ronyon!...”
....But right anon thise gentils gonne to crye,
“Nay, lat hym telle us of no ribaudye!
Telle us som moral thyng, that we may leere
Som wit, and thanne wol we gladly heere.”
“I graunt, ywis,” qoud he, “but I moot thynke
Upon som honest thyng while that I drynke.” (320-28)
The duality is thus japes vs. morality in regards to tale-telling, and the Host and pilgrims imply in the above quotation that each excludes the other. But the Pardoner seems to agree to both requests, i.e. to tell a tale that is both of japes and of morality, as seen in the above quote. One can easily resolve this duality by equating japes with solaas, moral with sentence, which are the two components of a tale, according to the rules set up by the Host in the General Prologue (798).
The Pardoner himself, however, provides the resolution to this duality: “I preche so as ye han herd bifoore / And telle an hundred false japes moore” (393-94). The Pardoner speaks moral tales all the time to believers; after all, he is a clergyman. But he sees his sermons as japes, or tricks on these “lewed peple” (392) because he is a hypocrite who does not follow what he preaches and who only strives to gain money (390). Thus, in the Pardoner’s eyes, any moral tale that he tells will only be a jape upon listeners so as to get money from them. Says critic Gregory Gross in an e-mail discussion about his article Trade Secrets: Chaucer’s Sodomitic Indulgences:
I think Chaucer carefully foreshadows the doubleness of the Pardoner’s rhetoric (immoral teller / good moral tale). Look back at the exchange between the Pardoner and the Host at the beginning of the Prologue: the Host wants to hear “some mirth or japes” but the gentil pilgrims want to hear “some moral tale.” What the Pardoner provides is BOTH at once: the Tale is a kind of “jape” (although not the sort that the Host has in mind) but is also a moral story on the avoidance of sin. (Gross, e-mail discussion, Southern Methodist Univ, 11/7/94)
So the Pardoner himself resolves the duality of japes vs. morality in tale-telling by creating a non-relation between words and “entente” (403), or motive, which brings us to another duality.
The duality of words and entente is more complex than japes vs. morality. Although the Pardoner creates a non-relation between words and entente, it only resolves his words and his entente. But the reader is not even certain about that non-relation, for the Pardoner seems to overly stress his entente: “For myn entente is nat but for to wynne, / And nothyng for correccioun of synne” (403-4), “But shortly myn entente I wol devyse: / I preche of no thyng but for coveityse” (423-24), “But that is nat my principal entente; / I preche nothyng but for coveitise” (432-33). Doth the Pardoner protest too much in his assertion of his entente? Perhaps he does, and if so, some critics like Paul C. Bauschatz, may interpret the Pardoner’s words as ironic, seeing a truly good entente underneath his words of evil entente; in Bauschatz’ words, “He [Pardoner] asserts as a matter of faith the forthrightness and singleness of his purpose: through sin he saves” (Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Beneficent Lie, 27).
This interpretation, however, does not explain why the Pardoner continues to assert that his entente does not follow his moral preaching, i.e. his entente for saying that his entente is evil in preaching moral tales, although his true entente is good... ad nauseum. Such an argument into the Pardoner’s entente easily leads to overreading and does not resolve the duality of words and entente. What one does read in the Prologue is a man who performs his public job, a pardoner, very well -- he is an excellent channel for God’s grace towards believers, based upon the pardoner’s yearly income from the sales of his indulgences and relics to these believers (390). His personal intention is base -- he is only doing his job for the money -- and so he is a hypocrite. But this vicious motive does not take away from the power of his moral teaching, “For though myself be a ful vicious man, / A moral tale yet I yow telle kan,” (459-60).
Wherein is the source of this rhetorical power? Critic Alan J. Fletcher suggests the Pardoner’s own religious hypocrisy, which may be a concealment of heresy (The Topical Hypocrisy of Chaucer’s Pardoner, 117), especially on consideration of the Pardoner’s assertion, “Thus spitte I out my venym under hewe / Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and trewe” (421-22). Again, the question of the Pardoner’s entente comes to the forefront in Fletcher’s reading: The Pardoner’s rhetorical power to seem virtuous while in reality being vicious is a Satanic one with a Satanic entente, bent upon leading believers astray. But even a cursory reading of the Prologue and Tale reveals that such an interpretation is wrong. Says the Pardoner:
...my theme is yet, and evere was,
Radix malorum est Cupiditas.
Thus kan I preche agayn that same vice
Which that I use, and that is avarice.
But though myself be gilty in that synne,
Yet kan I maken oother folk to twynne
From avarice and soore repente. (425-31)
The Pardoner’s entente is not as lofty and as public as the heretic, to lead believers away from orthodoxy, i.e. moral teaching. His entente, greed, is due to his own personal and moral corruption, but this vice, whether it be the moral fault of avarice or the rhetorical fault of a salesman’s hypocritical words -- the “sodomitic use of rhetoric,” to use Gross’ phrase (Trade, e-mail print-out) -- does not lessen the moral truth which he preaches. One must emphasize “truth” in the former sentence because although the Pardoner claims that he “spitte venym” to seem holy, the moral words that he “spitte” are not venomous nor false; they may indeed steer his believers away from sin, and these people believe in the sermon which he preaches. This faith in the truth of words from a false man is the key to the resolution of the duality of words and entente and also provides the source of the Pardoner’s rhetorical power.
As mentioned earlier, the Pardoner asserts a non-relation between his entente and the moral words which he speaks; if there were not a non-relation, he would not be able to tell “japes” and “som moral thyng” at the same time, and he would not be able to preach against vice while living viciously. In the case of the audience’s entente and the Pardoner’s words, however, there is a direct relation: The audience must have the entente to believe the Pardoner’s words, or else his rhetoric is truly false and heretical, i.e. devoid of any meaning and spiritually sterile, because no one believes in the words. The audience’s faith, the entente to believe, resolves the duality between words and entente, a resolution which the Pardoner implies throughout the Prologue.
The Pardoner states twice in the Prologue that his moral theme is “Radix malorum est Cupiditas” (334, 426): Cupidity is the root of evils. The sin “cupidity” is a broad one; it means more than avarice, which implies an inordinate desire for wealth, and means more than greed, which is an excessive desire for wealth, and means more than greed, which is an excessive desire for things which one already has enough. Cupidity is undirected desire, based upon an awareness of insatiable lack, and believers avoid this sin by directing their desire to believe in God, “Jhesu Crist, that is oure soules leche,” (916) represented by God’s mouthpiece, the clergy, i.e. the Pardoner. Just as the Pardoner has no spiritual power inherent in himself to effect miracles and pardons without God, he also has no rhetorical power inherent in his words without the believing entente of the faithful.
The Pardoner himself even implies his reliance upon the audience for his rhetorical power. The trappings of his trade -- the official papal bulls with the bishop’s seal (334), his moral tales sprinkled with “Latin... / To saffron” his speech (344-45), his fake relics with his claims of their miracles (349-76) -- have no effect if his believers do not have faith in, i.e. “taak,” his words: “‘Goode men,’ I seye, ‘taak of my wordes keep;” (352) and “Taak kep eek what I telle:” (360). He also adds in his sermonizing sales’ pitch:
If any wight be in this chirche now
That hath doon synne horrible, that he
Dar nat, for shame, of it yshryven be,
...Swich folk shal have no power ne no grace
To offren to my relikes in this place. (378-84)
The Pardoner’s words in the above quotation have implications that the believer’s faith, or power, is what makes his relics, false in substance, true in spiritual meaning. The people who “Dar nat... of it yshryven be” have succumbed to the deadly sin of despair and have chosen to reject God’s power of absolution, thus having no faith in the relics nor the Pardoner’s tales; these people render the Pardoner’s rhetoric impotent, which, I believe, is the Pardoner’s main fear over any threats of damnation. The audience’s entente towards the Pardoner’s words is important, and the authority of his words lies not in the impressive quality of the Pardoner’s rhetoric but in the entente to believe by the faithful audience in the truth of his words. Says critic Janette Dillon:
By foregrounding the deceitfulness of the author here, Chaucer forces his audience to recognise an independent authority in the words spoken, an authority endorsed by the audience’s, rather than by the speaker’s, faith. The false relics that the Pardoner carries are emblematic of the same paradox. Pigs’ bones they may be but their power to bring sinners to repentance is not in doubt. Such power as they have comes not from their ‘author,’ that is, the Pardoner, who makes false claims for them, but from the Pardoner’s audience whose faith makes real their authenticity. (Game in the Pardoner’s Tale, 217)
With the truth of the Pardoner’s words lying in his audience’s entente and not in his entente, the duality of words and entente resolves itself in this shift of emphasis from the Pardoner to his audience. Thus, “a ful vicious man, / A moral tale yet” he “telle kan.”
This “moral tale” is an allegory about three sinners, gleefully committing sins of gluttony (drinking), gambling, and blasphemy (465). They kill each other over gold during their murderous pursuit for Death (888), which had killed one of their friends and which they take to be an actual person (671-710). They search for death, and they find it, but not in the form which “Thise riotoures thre” (661) expect. The story itself, as mentioned before, is allegory, an appropriate genre considering the Pardoner’s prior dualities of japes vs. morality, words vs. entente. The characters are both persons in the story and representations of concepts which lie outside of the story and within the audience but also are implied within the story. The rioters’ perception of Death, a cosmic reality, as “a privee theef men cleped Death,” (675) is a simple duality resolved in the rioters interpretation of Death to be ironic misinterpretation, which the tale’s audience and “An oold man” (760) recognize.
As for the old man, he has many meanings because he can represent many things: He may be Death himself (which plays upon the irony of what is the misinterpretation: is Death an abstract idea, a physical person, or both?). He may represent the audience, who never dies as long as there is a reader to read this tale. He may be the archetype of Wise Old Man or the Wandering Jew. As Dillon states, “Though the audience may smile at the rioters’ over-literal ‘reading’ of the word ‘Deeth,’ they themselves are faced with an equally slippery signifier in the shape of the old man” (Game in the Pardoner’s Tale, 215). But the old man’s “slippery” significance becomes stable in the audience’s entente. He could be any one of these representations, all of them, or none of them, depending upon the entente of the audience, which is not a hegemonic collective but consists of differing ententes of differing individuals. Only in the audience’s entente is the old man’s “slippery signifier” resolved.
The Pardoner’s Tale ends with a return to the dualities of japes vs. morality when the Pardoner goes into his sermonizing sales pitch after the allegory is done (921) and of words vs. entente when the Host, already aware of the Pardoner’s base entente, crudely refuses to give him his rhetorical power and thus rendering the Pardoner wordless: “This Pardoner answerde nat a worde; / So wrooth he was, no word ne wolde he seye” (956-57). The Host dashes the Pardoner’s expectation for a believer’s entente to believe in the spiritual truth of his relics when the Host reduces the relics to the non-spiritual, i.e. the corporeal, mortal body, testicles for relics (952-53). As for the Pardoner’s reason for revealing his principal entente and then trying to solicit the Host, maybe he was denying that the source of his rhetorical power is within his audience and, in so doing, the audience -- the Host -- denies the Pardoner his rhetorical power.
Thus the main dualities in the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale are japes vs. morality, words vs. entente, Death the cosmic reality vs. Death the person, and the duality of allegory. The most important duality in this tale, however, is words vs. entente, especially in regards to the source of the teller’s rhetorical power and of transcendental truth: the tale’s audience. Does Chaucer belong in this duality? Considering that the unnamed “I” who seems to know all the tale-tellers and the named writer Chaucer who materially writes these tales may or may not be the same person, depending upon the belief of the Canterbury Tales’ audience, one can believe with some surety that he participates in this duality of words and entente, from the General Prologue in the beginning to his Retraction in the end.
Works Cited
Bauschatz, Paul C. “Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Beneficent Lie.” Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts Vol.2, 1982. Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh, 1983. 19-43.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Dillon, Janette. “Chaucer’s Game in the Pardoners Tale.” Essays in Criticism Vol.41, No.3. Oxford: Oxford, 1991. 208-21.
Fletcher, Alan J. “The Topical Hypocrisy of Chaucer’s Pardoner.” The Chaucer Review Vol.25, No.2. University Park, PA: Penn State Univ. Press, 1990. 110-26.
Gross, Gregory Walter. “Trade Secrets: Chaucer’s Sodomitic Indulgences,” Secrecy and Confession in Late Medieval Narrative: Gender, Sexuality, and the Rhetorical Subject. Ph.D dissertation. Providence: Brown Univ, 1994. 108K e-mail print-out.
© 1994 Rufel F. Ramos