The Wife Of Bath Vs The Pardoner's Tale Essay

Even though The Canterbury Tales is considered one of the most important works of literature it is incomplete, out of the 120 stories that were supposed to be written only twenty-four of them were ever published. The author, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote The Canterbury tales taking place in April of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The story is set around the time of the pilgrimage to see the saint st. Thomas a Becket, a variety of people agreed to travel together and to make the trip less boring, agreed to each share four stories each, two on the way there and two on the way back. The deal is whoever tells the story with the most entertainment and the greatest moral will receive a dinner paid for by the other travelers. Two out of the twenty-four, “The Pardoner's Tale” and “The Wife of Bath”, were chosen and compared to decide who had told the better story. “The Wife of Bath” is considered the better story because it was not only …show more content…
This story could be considered more effective because it sticks to one vice making it easier to follow along with the plot compared to the wife of Bath’s story. The Pardoner stayed with the vice of greed all throughout the story like when the youngest of the three rioters had left to get supplies to help them carry the gold into town and only the other two were left alone. “here’s a lot of gold that is to be / Divided equally among us three. / Nevertheless, if I could shape things thus / so that we shared it out - the two of us- / wouldn’t you take it as a friendly act?” (p. 177). One of the rioters has just proposed a deal that would cut the youngest one, the one that left, out of his share of the gold so that the gold only has to be split two ways instead of three. This one vice is said to make the story easier to follow, even though the wife of bath does not have this level or organization it is still more