On an easel in my classroom, I have drawn a big fancy frame. I added a little doodle inside the frame, then the word “story,” and then another swirly frame inside the big one. As we read The Odyssey in class this week, we point to our narrative location inside my goofy chart. Well, if I wanted to chart the Pardoner’s Tale from The Canterbury Tales, I might need to add some double matting, and maybe a flip side, too. It couldn’t hurt to look at how the frame hangs on the wall.
The Pardoner’s Prologue is divided into Introduction and Prologue. The Host takes the stage for The Introduction. Our narrator/poet tells us the Host is upset by the prior tale. He calls upon the Pardoner to “’Tel us som mirthe or japes, right anon’” (line 319). We need a break—make it funny. The Pardoner agrees, so long as he may have a drink or two first. But the fellow pilgrims object:
“Nay, lat him telle us of no ribaudye.
Tel us som moral thing that we may leere
Som wit, and thane wol we gladly heere” (lines 324-326).
Once again the Pardoner agrees, but he still needs to “thinke” and “drinke” on it first.
The Pardoner then takes the stage to deliver the Prologue. He willingly describes to his audience his normal act. He takes the pulpit and preaches on the evils of avarice. He keeps it simple and memorable for the audience but peppers in a little Latin for lagniappe. Then he brings out his wares—jars of rags, bones, and sundry fake artifacts—and makes his sales pitch. Honestly, our Pardoner could just as easily be a traveling preacher in a tent rival in a Flannery O’Connor story as a pilgrim on the road to Canterbury. But here’s the thing--the Pardoner is entirely self-aware, if a little drunk:
By this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer,
An hundred mark sith I was pardoner.
I stoned lik a clerk in my pulpet,
And when the lewed peple is doun yset,
I preche so as ye han herd before,
And telle an hundred false japes more (lines 389-394).
He confesses his own avarice: “For myn entente is nat but for to winne,/And nothing for correccioun of sinne” (403-404).
He may be a crook, but he’s an honest crook? Why does he admit his own “entente” so freely? Well, for one thing, he claims it makes him a better preacher: “Thus can I preche again that same vice/Which that I use, and that is avarice” (lines 427-428). As Canterbury Prologues go, this one bears taking a note. The Pardoner doesn’t offer an excuse or a “blameth me not.” He says blame me plenty—my experience makes me qualified to tell the tale.
And so the Tale begins. Well, not so fast. First, the Pardoner introduces his cast of rowdy characters, “a compaignye/Of younge folk that haunteden folye--/As riot, hasard, stewes, and tavernes….” (lines 463-465). He spends the next seventeen lines telling us just how naughty our young folk can be. And then he seems to get to the preaching. The next several pages tell us of the many evil-doers in the Bible. Now, somewhere in the middle of reading all this, an old Tom Petty song called “Ways to be Wicked” started playing in my head. The Pardoner has a fine list of “ways” going here. How to get drunk? The Pardoner is your sommelier. “Now keepe you fro the white and fro the rede,” especially from Fishstreet or Cheapside. And look out for the Spanish wine, too. It will sneak up on you (see lines 560-571). I’ll have the Bordeaux, please…
Back to our frame (or our mat), at line 660, the Pardoner at last declares, “But sires, now wol I telle forth my tale.” Took him long enough? Maybe, but the story really doesn’t change. Our Pardoner is right back to all the ways to be wicked. Curses? He has a full playbook. You get the idea. The funny, lovely thing is, the longer the Pardoner goes on, the more he falls into his own trickery, his own avarice. By the end, he is peddling his fake wares back to the Host.
How do you think the frame of the Pardoner’s Tale compares to our other tales thus far? And what’s your favorite “way to be wicked” from the Pardoner’s playbook? Blameth me not if it gets stuck in your head, too.
P.S. I recommend the Margo Price cover.
One reading of this Tale that came up in class that I found very interesting was that the Tale never really exits its frame. The other tales go a narrative level deeper by more clearly showing when the respective pilgrim starts and ends the tale, but the narrative of the three men who tried to kill death could be seen as all within the Pardoner's "sermon." His point wasn't really to tell a tale, but to sell his relics, so because he uses the tale to try and further that goal, the frame doesn't really go into a deeper narrative level like the other tales do.
The Pardoner's tale is sandwiched between his relic sale pitches and really drives home the idea that the Pardoner is a great preacher not because he shares good doctrine but because he is a great performer, invoking emotional reactions out of his audiences, and peddling his Shein-quality objects for a profit. It's this self-awareness that makes him the most intriguing out of the corrupt clergy-folk, in my opinion. He is such a good con man that he literally tells you that he is going to con you before he actually does so. It's this unique frame that further establishes this point.