The Pardoner's Pants (and Why They Matter)

Author / Editor
Green, Richard Firth.

Title
The Pardoner's Pants (and Why They Matter)

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 131-45.

Description
The breeches-kissing episode in PardT is analogous to fabliau narratives of the "Friar's Pants" in which a cuckolded husband is duped into believing that the cuckolder's pants are relics. Green adduces several versions of the account and suggests that the allusion casts the Pardoner as an excessive womanizer, not a homosexual or eunuch.

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.