Pardoner

The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale The Wife of Bath and the Pardoner are both given particularly ample space to expose their own way of living before telling their Tales, in developed Prologues which have certain qualities in common. In both cases, the speaker seems unaware that the hearers (the readers) might not be so full of admiration as they seem to be about themselves. Both speak in a rather boasting mode about lives and actions …

…be compared to the equally complex responses provoked by the Clerk's Tale, be it within the text, or among its readers. The Pardoner is a prime example of one who refuses to listen, whose folly or disbelief (which is it?) is such that he firmly opts for this world's petty happiness ('Nay, I wol drynke licour of the vyne / And have a joly wench in every toun.' (Riverside 452-3)) And to hell with hell!