The Pardoner's Homosexuality and How It Matters
- Author / Editor
- McAlpine, Monica E.
The Pardoner's Homosexuality and How It Matters
- Published
- PMLA 95 (1980): 8-22.
- Description
- In Chaucer's famous line "I trowe he were a geldyng or a mare" the word "mare" is best glossed "homosexual," and the description of the Pardoner fits all three medieval confusions with homosexuality: effeminacy, eunuchy, and hermaphroditism.
- In his tale the Pardoner alludes to a fleshly unpardonable sin (379-80), which may be his own. He is a pardoner who cannot himself (he feels) be pardoned. His relics, therefore, entice others away from true contrition and are, like his body to himself, a source of sin.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Pardoner and His Tale.