Irony in “The Pardoner’s Tale” How does irony effectively express Chaucer’s criticism of the church?

Irony in “The Pardoner’s Tale”

How does irony effectively express Chaucer’s criticism of the church?

3 young men of drunk and riotous behavior search for Death.

An old man whom they insult tells them that Death lies up the hill under a tree.

They find bags of gold and plot to send the youngest for food and wine and then kill him for the gold.

He returns with poisoned wine. They all die.

The Pardoner’s Tale

Some Background… Pardoners sold pardons—

official documents from Rome that pardoned a person’s sins.

The Pardoner in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is dishonest.

The Pardoner often preaches about how money is the root of all evil.

Chaucer’s dissatisfaction

There was widespread dissatisfaction with pardoners (as also with money-loving Friars) in Chaucer's time, and both were popular subjects of satire and joking.

“The Pardoner’s Tale” is an allegorical, satirical, and ironic conveyance of the greed of the church and the recognition that the church was corrupted during this time period.

TYPES OF IRONY Situational

The opposite of what is expected to happen occurs

Dramatic The reader knows something the character

does not Verbal

The opposite of what is meant is said (sarcasm)

Situational Irony

The fire safety lectures were canceled because the screen caught on fire.

An ambulance runs over a pedestrian. If you have a phobia of long words you have

to tell people that you have Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia...

Why is this ironic?

Dramatic Irony

Scary music in a horror movie only the audience can hear, so we are prepared for what is to come while the characters are not.

In Titanic, we know the boat is going to sink. The people on the boat are unaware of the actual dangers the iceberg presents.

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows the fate of the two lovers before they do

Verbal Irony

Verbal irony is slightly different than situational irony in that verbal irony involves saying what one does not mean.

Verbal irony uses sarcasm, understatement and overstatement: When in response to a foolish idea we might say, “What a great idea!”

What does the Pardoner always preach about? “The root of all evil is greed”

What makes this ironic?