Church Office, Routine, and Self-Exile in Chaucer's Pardoner

Author / Editor
Hoerner, Fred.

Title
Church Office, Routine, and Self-Exile in Chaucer's Pardoner

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 16 (1994): 69-98.

Description
Reads PardPT psychoanalytically and in light of Max Weber's theory of charisma, commenting on how words and details of the Pardoner's performance reflect his attraction to salvation and his fearful distortion of it. Institutionalized and rhetorically routinized, the performance inverts the methods of genuine charismatic transformation, perverting rather than converting the Pardoner and threatening the other pilgrims, especially the Host, a figure of corporation and institutionalization.

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale.