Poetry: The Pardoner's Tale

Overview
Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tale," delivered in Middle English around 1387 as part of The Canterbury Tales, is a sharply ironic exemplum about mortality and moral corruption. Framed by the Pardoner's own gleaming prologue, the tale dramatizes how avarice corrodes human bonds and invites death, while the preacher who condemns greed profits from it. The piece mixes grim comedy, moral instruction, and biting social critique, making the Pardoner one of Chaucer's most unsettling and memorable narrators.

Plot
The story itself follows three riotous young men in a town ravaged by Death, who vow to hunt down Death after it claims a friend. Their search leads them to an old man who cryptically directs them to a wide oak tree. There they find a heap of gold coins. Greed supplants their original quest: they scheme to haul the treasure away under cover of night. Two agree to kill the youngest to increase their shares, while the youngest slips into town to buy provisions and returns with a poisoned bottle of wine that he intends to use to kill the two older men. The younger is stabbed by his companions and dies; the murderers then drink the poisoned wine and perish. The tale closes with the bleak moral that it was not Death but "avarice", expressed in the Latin proverb "Radix malorum est cupiditas", that proved fatal.

The Pardoner's Prologue and Character
Before telling the tale the Pardoner delivers a candid prologue in which he admits to peddling fake relics and indulgences purely for profit, confessing no regard for saving souls. He boasts of his rhetorical skill: though he knows his merchandise is fraudulent, he can move people to repentance and money through artful preaching. This confession of hypocrisy undercuts the moral authority of his sermon, producing an acute dramatic irony when he proceeds to preach against the very sin that defines his practice. The prologue exposes the gap between religious rhetoric and corrupt practice, and paints the Pardoner as both scoundrel and effective evangelist.

Themes and Tone
The tale concentrates on the corrosive power of greed and the inevitability of death, exploring how supposedly noble aims can be subverted by base desire. Chaucer stages a moral lesson with dark humor: the rioters' quest to slay Death becomes a farce because their own vice leads them directly to destruction. Hypocrisy is another central theme; the Pardoner's ability to profit by denouncing avarice deepens the story's moral ambiguity and forces readers to reckon with complicity between sinner and preacher. The tone alternates between didactic severity and bitterly comic irony, which amplifies the tale's unsettling force.

Style and Legacy
Chaucer uses plain, vivid narration, pointed dialogue, and a memorable Latin maxim to make the tale both a cautionary parable and a display of narrative wit. The sharp contrast between storyteller and story provides a study in narrative voice: the Pardoner's self-aware corruption turns a moral exemplum into a complex encounter with authenticity and manipulation. The tale's economy, moral clarity, and ironic layering have made it a staple of medieval literature study and an enduring meditation on greed, rhetoric, and human frailty.