The Construction of Chaucer's Pardoner

Author / Editor
Minnis, Alastair.

Title
The Construction of Chaucer's Pardoner

Published
R. N. Swanson, ed. Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 169-95.

Description
There is a paucity of writing on indulgences in medieval vernacular literatures. Minnis explores depictions of pardoners and indulgences in PardP, Langland's "Piers Plowman, "and John Heywood's "The Foure PP" and "The Pardoner and the Frere." Chaucer's Pardoner is best understood as "an aberrant quaestor," a lay usurper of the powers granted only to members of the ecclesiastical major orders.

Contributor
Swanson, R. N., ed.

Alternative Title
Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe.

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale