Forgivenesses of sins Essay

Pardoners were supposed to issue papal indulgences (forgivenesses of sins) in exchange for alms money, which was to be given to the sick, poor, or another worthy cause. But many pardoners were out-and-out frauds, selling worthless pieces of paper, and even legitimate ones often kept more than their share of the proceeds. This Pardoner is from Rouncivalle, a London hospital well known for the number of illegal pardons connected with it. Most pardoners, like this one, claimed to have come â€Å"straight from the court of Rome,† with a bagful of pardons â€Å"al hoot† off the presses, though of course our Pardoner hasn’t set foot outside England. NOTE: Fake pardoners claimed they could do almost anything for the right sum of money, even remove an excommunication. Despite widespread abuses, though, there still were plenty of people gullible enough to believe in a pardoner’s â€Å"powers. † There’s something suspect in the fact that the Pardoner sings â€Å"Come hither, love, to me,† to the Summoner, who accompanies him in a strong bass voice. Some see more than a hint of sexual perversion in this young man who has thin locks of yellow hair that he wears without a hood because he thinks it’s the latest style. His small voice and the fact that he has no beard, â€Å"ne never sholde [would] have,† leads Chaucer to suspect â€Å"he were a gelding or a mare†Ã¢â‚¬â€œa eunuch or effeminate man. NOTE: Scientific opinion of the day believed that thin hair represented poor blood, effeminacy, and deception, while glaring eyes like the Pardoner’s indicated folly, gluttony, and drunkenness. Chaucer’s audience would catch the references just as we would instantly see the significance of a villain in a black cape and with a black moustache. As if the description weren’t bad enough, the Pardoner tricks people into buying phony relics of saints, such as a pillowcase that he says was â€Å"Our Lady’s veil,† or a piece of sail allegedly belonging to St. Peter. No wonder he makes more money in a day than the poor Parson does in two months. Ironically, Chaucer calls him â€Å"a noble eccesiaste,† since he can sing a church lesson beautifully–for money, of course. His tale is right in character: he tells what the pilgrims say they want to hear. He says he bases his sermons on money being the root of all evil (he ought to know). But he admits he’s not a moral man, although he can tell a moral tale. In his tale about three rowdies, he ironically delivers a sermon against gluttony and other sins. Afterwards, the Host lights into the Pardoner’s hypocrisy with such force that the Pardoner is speechless with anger. Chaucer is probably the earliest English poet you’re likely to read. A first glance at the original Middle English of the Canterbury Tales, with all those strange-looking words, might be enough to tempt you to slam the book shut, either in disgust or in terror at having to learn it all. But take a closer look and examine some of the words. You’ll see that many aren’t any harder to understand than when some people, trying to be â€Å"olde†-fashioned, write shoppe instead of shop. (Chaucer’s English is in fact where this idea originated. ) Try to get a dual-language edition of the Canterbury Tales, in which the Middle English original is printed on one side of the page and modern English on the other. When you’ve gotten some practice reading the original words and checking against the modern English, you’ll find that the rhythm of Chaucer’s poetry gets easier to understand. Why is it called â€Å"Middle English†? Simply because it’s at the midpoint between the ancient language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons of England and the English we speak today. In fact, you might feel grateful that you’re reading Chaucer instead of the poetry of some of his fellow fourteenth-century poets, because Chaucer’s dialect–the Middle English spoken in London–is the language that evolved into our English, while the dialects the other poets used died out. Imagine trying to read something written in a hillbilly drawl or in a Scottish brogue; standard English, even if it’s not what we speak all the time, is easier to read. Even if Chaucer had never written a word, it makes sense that the speech of London, the hub of English society, should develop into the standard English that eventually came over on the Mayflower. But Chaucer gave a great boost to the prestige of English, as Shakespeare did later on. It’s partly because of Chaucer’s terrific (though unintentional) public relations job that the poet John Dryden, three hundred years later, called him â€Å"the father of English literature. † There is a robust flavor to Chaucer’s language that we can’t get in a translation, no matter how good it is. You won’t be able to get the nuances of all the old words. But after a while you’ll almost be able to hear the pilgrims chatting away. The opening of the General Prologue bursts with spring, with new life, and shows that Chaucer is both similar to and different from his poetic predecessors. He uses many images of spring that would be familiar to a medievel audience: the April showers (familiar to us too) â€Å"piercing† March’s dryness, the â€Å"licour† in each plant’s â€Å"vein,† the breezes â€Å"inspiring† the crops. It’s short, but enough of a description to give us a sense of waking up to new and exciting events. Even the birds sleep with â€Å"open eyes† because of the rising sap. Then, instead of moving from the conventional spring setting to a description of courtly romantic or heroic deeds, as his audience might expect, he draws us into a very down-to-earth world. Spring isn’t romance; it’s the time of year â€Å"when people long to go on pilgrimages. † We can all identify with the feeling of â€Å"spring fever,† when we want to travel and shake off the winter doldrums. What’s more, in case we or Chaucer’s listeners are expecting a conventional medieval description of moral allegorical types–Greed, Love, Fortune, etc. –or battles, we’re in for a shock. Other poets presented characters for moral purposes or to embody ideals such as courtly love. But Chaucer doesn’t deal in types, whether religious or courtly, but in portraits of real people. He even ignores the unwritten rule of the time that, if you’re describing someone, you start at the top, very orderly, and work down. Chaucer will start with someone’s beard, then hat, boots, tone of voice, and finally his political opinions! (That’s just a partial description of the Merchant. ) He’s not reporting for a moral purpose, but out of love of life and the people around him. Imagine that you’re minding your own business in a wayside tavern and in burst 29 people representing every facet of society. For Chaucer, that meant the nobility, embodied in the Knight and Squire; the church, in the form of the Prioress, Monk, and others; agriculture (the Plowman); and the emerging middle class (the Merchant, Franklin and tradesmen). Rather than shy away from this motley crew, Chaucer the narrator (who is not the same, remember, as Chaucer the poet) befriends and describes them, inserting his own opinions freely.