Shrews, Rats, and a Polecat in 'The Pardoner's Tale'
- Author / Editor
- Feinstein, Sandy, and Neal Woodman.
Shrews, Rats, and a Polecat in 'The Pardoner's Tale'
- Published
- Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 49-66.
- Description
- The Pardoner is compared to a hare, goat, and horse, and PardT refers to smaller animals usually considered vermin. The three gluttonous rioters are appropriately called shrews, and the poison used to kill them is ostensibly bought for rats and a polecat. In the exemplum, however, animals are innocent and it is the rioters, and the Pardoner himself, who are "vermin."
- Contributor
- Woodman, Neal.
- Alternative Title
- Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Pardoner and His Tale