Examples Of Hypocrisy In Canterbury Tales

The Selected Hypocrisy Tales

The beauty of history comes to us as lesson to be learned, corrected, and used as guidance for the future. Times surely have changed but human behavior hasn 't seemed to follow accordingly as we can depict from some of the characters in Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Hypocrisy can be noticed in a lot of the characters but the most two most evident being the Monk and the Pardoner. We will look to break down what it is about these characters that Chaucer was trying to illustrate and give examples to help back up why they were considered to be hypocritical. Also look to discuss what we can tell through Chaucer’s writing of his view of medieval society through the numerous characters. In the Canterbury Tales the Monk is introduced to us in ‘The General …show more content…
Chaucer describes his looks as alluring ‘This pardoner had hair as yellow as wax But smooth it hung as does a strike of flax.” and “But as to hood, for sport of it, he’d none” which also showed that he was conscious of his looks. Interestingly enough in a time where homosexuality was forbidden Chaucer makes a remark “I think he was a gelding or a mare” stating that either he was castrated or that he intact was homo sexual. The work of a pardoner is to travel on behalf of the church to go to less rural locations and give forgiveness for sins that were committed. In this story the Pardoner is more deceitful as he would travel from place to place and prey on the poor and uneducated by selling them pardons when could not afford it. He would also use relics to try and get more money out of people, for example said he had a piece of the sale from the time of Saint Peter was out at see until Jesus found him, also having a jar of pig bones that he also used to convince unsuspecting countryside folks to give to his ignoble