Understanding Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale

Understanding Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale” “The Pardoner’s Tale” (Coghill, 1977) was written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Middle Ages. As stated by Takami Mastuda the tale “warns against the deadly sin of avarice and teaches that spiritual death can indeed become the cause of physical death and eternal damnation” ( 313). The Pardoner tells a story dealing with death in order to get the pilgrims to buy indulgences. “ ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ ultimately questions the …

…the reader. Chaucer uses the Pardoner to help get his theme of death across. “The Pardoner can be related to ‘death’ from another viewpoint as well. In the fourteenth century there were many false pardoners, who were nothing but vagabonds, or beggars, or secular clerks, and who hawked false pardons and relics” (Higuchi 165). The tale of the ironic death of the rioters is purposely told by the character that can be most associated with death.