The Pardoner In The Canterbury Tales

The Medieval period was a time of firsts, the first Crusade, the first census, the first manifestation of the modern-day perception of knights and kings alike. The fourteenth century was also full of literary firsts, the most predominant being the shift from scholarly reading to a more universal style of tales written in Middle English, introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer, a timelessly renowned poet. The Canterbury Tales, considered the most important literary piece of the Medieval period written in 1392 by Chaucer, is considered his greatest achievement although the work is fragmented. The Tales begins in Chaucer’s day, the fourteenth century, in a quintessential English town named Southwark. Inside this town is a pub named the Tabard Inn, owned …show more content…
His job description alone reveals that he is not a pious man; in fact, he is rather the opposite. His personality is mainly depicted in the General Prologue through the description and satire of his job; this omission of a distinct non-physical description suggests how closely intertwined the Pardoner is with his work. His vocation alone suggests he is greedy, as well as sneaky, underhanded and unethical. His physical attributes embody his demeanor; he has a rat-like appearance and yellow hair as slimy as his personality, which should be adorned with a clergyman’s hood but is not. Chaucer’s physical description of the Pardoner tells a significant amount about him, especially during the Medieval period, when physiognomy was prevalent.
According to the medieval science of physiognomy, the Pardoner's stringy yellow hair indicates a personality that is deceitful, sharp-witted, and greedy for material gain. His wearing it long suggests a contempt for church regulations, which dictated that clerics wear their hair short. The man's glaring eyes show that he is a glutton and a drunkard, one who generally leads a dissolute life. (Rossignol, “General Prologue” par.