Chaucer's Pardoner: The Dialectics of Inside and Outside

Author / Editor
Harwood, Britton J.

Title
Chaucer's Pardoner: The Dialectics of Inside and Outside

Published
Philological Quarterly 67 (1988): 409-22.

Description
Chaucer's Pardoner is the ultimate "confidence man," a mask layered over the persona of the character and the authorial voice. Yet, his very distance from the other pilgrims provides him a kind of opennes. For purposes of contrast, and to emphasize both the open and the closed nature of this character, Chaucer places him between the Host and the Summoner.
For response, see the essay by Jane Chance entitled "Disfigured is thy face."

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale.