The pardoners prologue and Tale Essay Example

entertainment. Like a performer, the pardoner is able to access his audience, e recognizes that his audience want to be entertained thus he embellishes his stories with discourse markers and other rhetorical devices in order to make a profit consequently abusing his power given by the church. Chaucer uses rhetorical questions to display the Pardoners arrogance and hunger for money.

As the pardoner is a performer he uses devices that will help to persuade his audience into purchasing false relics, this acts as the pardoners business in which he was greatly profited at the expense of others "That I wool live in poverty willfully? This rhetorical device shows the audience the extent of money he has made from extorting money out of the church and its people. He then goes on further and tells us that he spends his money on "whole, cheese and white" whilst also having a "jolly wench in every town" Not only is the Pardoner abusing his religious authority but he is acting against the church.

Men who worked in the church were expected to live off very little money and have no luxury items much like Jesus and the apostles lived; this means that the Pardoner is going against the church rules and abuse the ewer it has given him in order to fuel his seedy lifestyle. The extortion money of money is a moral sin that the Pardoner commits, but what is worse is his constant desire to usurp the role of priest through the method of preaching.

The Medieval preacher only had the power to collect money for the church, however as explored before, many Pardoners, like Saucer's

chose to break the boundaries. Preaching was strictly prohibited yet our Pardoner used this as a method of abuse, "in chirps when I preach....

" He is outright admitting that he is going against the rules which Saucer's uses to rate an overconfident tone. Additionally the Pardoner commits a blasphemous sin that can be linked to his abuse of the church; as he preaches to the audience he compares himself to God, "as doth a dove,we sittings on a Berne. This simile alludes to the symbol of a dove which is symbolic of the Holy Ghost, he is comparing himself to God, suggesting he has the same power and authority. This is utterly profound and blasphemous, thus showing is negligence and exploitation towards the church. The tone throughout the prologue and the extract is arrogant yet persuasive, the redone boasts about his spiritual work and his ability to make a profit, "it is an honor to feverish that is here.

Not only is he unlawfully preaching but he does so in an egotistical manner which provokes a feeling of disgust from the audience. However, the medieval audience had great fears over penance and the absolving of sin and did anything they could in order to get into heaven; this was because the life expectancy was so low and heaven presented the idea of no social hierarchy. With that in mind, the Pardoner uses his arrogance and persuasion techniques to fool the naive audience into thinking hat they are being absolved when in fact they are not.