The Pardoner's hyprocrisy of his subjectivity

Robert Boenig. ANQ. Lexington: Fall 2000.Vol. 13, Iss. 4;  pg. 9, 7 pgs

Abstract (Document Summary)

Boenig examines the almost ubiquitous assumption that Chaucer's Pardoner's hypocrisy and suggests an alternative reading in which the Pardoner's words do not reveal anything about his morality but instead depict his parodic reaction to the Wife of Bath's prior literary performance.

Full Text (2963   words)

Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS Fall 2000

In this article I interrogate the almost ubiquitous assumption of Chaucer's Pardoner's hypocrisy and suggest an alternative reading, one informed by recent debate over Chaucerian subjectivity, in which the Pardoner's words do not reveal anything about his morality but instead depict his parodic reaction to the Wife of Bath's prior literary performance.

In the fourteenth-century English Franciscan preacher's manual, the Fasciculus Morum, which treats at length the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedial virtues, we find a succinct description, under the topic of "Pride," of hypocrisy:

Ypocrite autem similes sunt trutannis qui cum accessus hominum intelligerint, labia movent sanctitatem pretendentes, ut cicius a transeuntibus aliquid accipiant, set cum per transierint in dissolucionem prorumpuntur. Revera sic ypocrite in conspectu hominem orant, ieiunant, et huiusmodi faciunt ut ab hominibus videantur; set in latibulo faciunt omnia contraria, nam orant clamorose ut ab hominibus audiantur, set revera cor dissonat longe ab ore; Ysaie 29: Populus his labiis me nonorat, cor autem eorum longe, etc.

Hypocrites are like fake beggars who, when they have noticed someone coming, move their lips in pretended holiness, in order to receive something from the passersby, but when they are gone they dissolve into laughter. Thus in the sight of men hypocrites pray, fast, and do similar works that they may be seen by people; but in secret they do all the opposite, for they pray aloud that they may be heard by people, but in fact their heart is far from their mouth. Isaiah 26 [verse 13]: "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me:' and so on. (Wenzel 1989, 60-61)

The reader must immediately notice how poorly the Pardoner fits this description. He indeed "moves his lips," not in "pretended holiness," but in self-condemnation, openly claiming his own hypocrisy:

For certes, many a predicacioun Comth ofte tyme of yvel entencioun; Som for plesance of folk and flaterye, To been avaunced by ypocrisye, And som for veyne glorie, and som for hate .... Thus spitte I out my venym under heave Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and trewe. (6.407-11, 421-22)1

The Pardoner "dissolves" not "into laughter" when his performance is over but into silence (see 6.956); before this his "heart" is seemingly very close to his "mouth" in that he announces his hypocritical intentions both before and after his preaching performance. In short, his performance is more a contrite repentance for a past sin of hypocrisy than an enactment of his present condition.

Chaucer well knew the definition of a hypocrite, cited above, or something close to it, for he provides a definition very similar to it in his own excursus on the Seven Deadly Sins, the Parson's Tale: "Ypocrite is he that hideth to shew hym swich as he is, and sheweth hym swich as he noght is" (10.393). Again, the issue is one of hiding. Other standard treatments of hypocrisy agree. As one important instance among many, the Summa Virtutum Anime (of course, one of the sources of the Parson's Tale) includes hypocrisy as part of its treatment of humility, the remedy for pride:

Sequitur de falsa humilitate, que idem est quot simulacio uel ypocrisis, que dicitur ab "ypos," quod est falsum et "crisis," iudicium, quia falsum iudicium de se velinguit cum aliud aget et aliud astrendet.

Now we turn to false humility, which is the same as pretense of hypocrisy, which is named from "hypos," which means false and "crisis:' judgment, because it causes a false judgment of itself when it does one thing and shows forth another. (Wenzel 1984, 94-95)

What follows in the text is a series of metaphors expounding the disjunction between outward virtue and inner corruption: a hypocrite is a whited sepulcher, a wolf in sheep's clothing, a dungheap covered with snow (sterquilinium niue tectum) (Wenzel 1984, 97). The Pardoner, of course, fails to hide his supposed hypocrisy, trumpeting aloud his intentions to all the pilgrims: "For myn entente is nat but for to wynne, / And nothyng for correccioun of synne" (6.403-04).

Following George Lyman Kittredge, though, Chaucerians have uniformly taken the Pardoner's words at face value, condemning him as a hypocrite. As long ago as 1914, Kittredge claimed, "The Pardoner is an abandoned wretch" (21) characterized by "cynicism" (22, 218). He is "[t]he most abandoned character among the Canterbury Pilgrims" (211), "the one lost soul among the Canterbury Pilgrims" (180). Subsequent condemnations of him abound.2 Critical response to the Pardoner, his tale, and especially his infamous appeal for money from his fellow pilgrims has, with some interesting variation, followed that of Harry Bailly, who reacts to him with startling vituperation. Venerable established theories that have long been accepted as truth are, of course, dangerous, for they masquerade as something they are not. The very dominance of the received interpretation of the Pardoner demands that it be questioned, lest we inscribe our own reading of him on Chaucer's intentions.

How does this ubiquitous condemnation square with the Pardoner's obvious failure to conceal the dungheap under the snow-or, more accurately, with his enthusiasm in revealing his sin? As the handbooks of the Seven Deadly Sins point out, it is only the truly humble who can openly confess their sins. The problem is, in other words, the Pardoner's call to the pilgrims, with Harry Bailly first in line, to donate money for indulgences. If penitent, the Pardoner still seems as interested in profit as he was in his unrevealed and presumably truly hypocritical state: "Com forth anon, and kneleth heere adoun.... / So that ye offren, alwey newe and newe, / Nobles or pens. ." (6.925, 29-30). Harry Bailly picks up, in his truculent response, the excremental nature of the dunghill-covered-with-snow metaphor: "Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech, / ... though it were with thy fundement depeint!" (6.948, 50).

A possible solution to the problem is that the Pardoner's appeal is a performance whose purpose is to parody the pilgrim whose prologue and tale seem in so many odd ways to echo his own-the Wife of Bath. Indeed, almost as central to the criticism of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale as the Pardoner's arrogance, blind hypocrisy, and sexual irregularities is his odd relationship with that other favorite of the explicator, the Wife of Bath. In this interpretation, the Pardoner is someone who emphasizes seemingly hypocritical excesses in his own character and career primarily as a means of interpreting the Wife's hypocrisy.3 He is being intentionally parodic and interpretive, and it is the pilgrims' misunderstanding of his performance that leads to Harry Bailly's violent reaction. Connections between the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath have long been recognized (Lumiansky 205-06; Kernan; Rhodes; Burlin 169; David 193), but a coherent interpretation emphasizing the parodic nature of the Pardoner's performance has not yet been made.

A partial list of important connections between the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath is helpful here: (1) The Pardoner and the Wife couple tales with long, confessional prologues. (2) The mysterious old Loathly Lady in the Wife's Tale appears to a young knight on a quest, while the mysterious Old Man in the Pardoner's appears to three young men, also on a quest. (3) Both tales center on surprises for their young heroes: the Loathly Lady changes her old age for youth while the Old Man (who says he cannot4.721-24) enables the rioters to find death in a very unexpected way. (4) Both the Wife and the Pardoner are fond of quoting books, particularly the writings of St. Paul. (5) Both go off on tangents that delay the beginning of their tales. (6) The Wife glories in the libidinizing effect on her of wine and dancing to a harp (3.455-59); the Pardoner condemns drinking as a sin (6.549-55) while he has the three rioters playing musical instruments-- including the harp-in drunken revelry at their tavern (6.463-71). (7) The Pardoner frequently alludes to, sometimes actually quotes, the words of the Wife, with the most obvious example being his "For myn entente is nat but for to wynne" (6.403)-a quotation and misdirection of the Wife's "For myn entente is nat but for to pleye" (3.192). This list could be lengthened considerably. These connections indicate that the Pardoner is performing a parody of the Wife in which an exaggerated and paradoxically admitted hypocrisy plays a large part.

When the Pardoner makes his appeal, it is a calculated, open parody of what the Wife has left submerged in her text:

I rede that oure Hoost heere shal bigynne, For he is moost envoluped in synne. Com forth, sire Hoost, and offre first anon, And thou shalt kisse the relikes everychon, Ye, for a grote! Unbokele anon thy purs. (6.941-45)

He has prepared his audience for this literary critical act by earlier explaining his hypocrisy:

For myn entente is nat but for to wynne, And nothyng for correccioun of synne .... Thus quyte I folk that doon us displesances; Thus spitte I out my venym under hewe Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and trewe. (6.403-04, 20-22)

Significant is not only his quotation of the Wife but also his adoption of the vocabulary generated in The Canterbury Tales for a rudimentary sort of literary criticism: quyte, as, for example, in the Miller's statement, "I kan a noble tale for the nones, / With which I wol now quite the Knyghtes tale" (1.3126-27). The Pardoner means for his hypocrisy to be evident to the pilgrims-as it certainly is-but with its primary meaning not the literal one but the allegorical, which is the Wife's hypocrisy.

When, having gained sovereignty over her knight, the Loathly Lady assumes both beauty and faithfulness and becomes the perfect wife, she makes the same covert appeal for the Wife herself, who, as she explains, likes to go abroad "for to se, and eek for to be seye / Of lusty folk" (3.552-53) and is ready to "[w]elcome the sixte, whan that evere he shal" (3.45). Like the Pardoner's appeal for money, this appeal is directed toward the other pilgrims. The Wife's unfaithfulness, shrewishness, violence, and increasing age, however, dismantle the meaning of her tale: her covert appeal thus is hypocritical. By carefully parodying her and appending an overt appeal to his own prologue and tale, the Pardoner is engaged not so much in self-revelation but in literary criticism-interpretive explication of the Wife's text.

We are in danger when we take his parody of another's autobiography for his own. All we know of him, after all, comes from two sources-his own words, which I suggest are not self-directed but parodic of the Wife, and the Pilgrim Chaucer's portrait of him in the "General Prologue." That portrait certainly seems to support the standard interpretation of the Pardoner: "And thus, with feyned flaterye and japes, / He made the person and the peple his apes" (1.705-06). But the assumption here is that the Pilgrim Chaucer finally has one character right after naively misunderstanding so many others (Donaldson 7). If he accepts so many of the self-congratulatory remarks of the other pilgrims at face value, thus generating that favorite concept of critics, Chaucerian irony, we have no logical grounds to assume that he does not also mistakenly accept the equally wrong self-deprecating remarks of the Pardoner. The Pardoner's silence, then, at the end of his tale reflects anger not only at the violence of the Host's attack on him but also at the literary insensitivity that would miss the point of his brilliant parodic criticism: "This Pardoner answerde nat a word; / So wrooth he was, no word ne wolde he seye" (6.956-57). The control he loses at the end is not over himself but over his audience. His only recourse, when his performative words fail to signify, is silence.

If this reading of the Pardoner has any force, the Pardoner's performance has interesting implications for the recent discussion of Chaucerian subjectivity. In their powerful readings of the Pardoner, H. Marshall Leicester and Lee Patterson have between them defined the terms of the debate over the Pardoner and his tale. For Leicester, the Pardoner is a marginalized deconstructer of his own tale and language, one "who deliberately mimes official discoveries in such a way as to bring out their underlying contradictions" (16). He is a self-conscious voice (39), an "exegetical critic of his own tale" (39) whose despair causes him to interpret "himself in traditional terms as the vetus homo," the unregenerate sinner of the Bible (50). The similarities between the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath lead Leicester to the conclusion that

the fundamental experience of the constitution of the subject as an absence is the same in the cases of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner. For both, the "I" is what slips away, evades definition, never settles down. (172)

The Pardoner for Leicester is an exegetical critic whose spiritual despair leads to self-deconstruction.

Patterson, following the social theories of Anthony Giddens, is interested in a Chaucer who constitutes his own subjectivity through his text (45). His characters, one narrative level away from Chaucer, do the same:

In The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale Chaucer used the rhetoric of misogyny to construct a feminine subjectivity. In the remarkably similar Pardoner's Prologue and Tale, he deploys the rhetoric of penance for an analogous act of self-constitution. (367)

For Patterson, the Pardoner's "performance is best understood in terms of medieval confessional habits" (371). The Pardoner is anxious, tormented inwardly, despairing yet impenitent (382). His language reveals yet conceals this despair (397), for although his tale "contains an accurate account of ... [his] own spiritual condition.... it is one that he is himself apparently incapable of reading" (405). The Pardoner's offering of the relics to his fellow pilgrims is "an elliptical and compact gesture that is as self-contradictory as the Pardoner's previous utterances" (406).

Both Leicester and Patterson appeal to Lacanian psychoanalysis in their divergent erasures of the Pardoner's subjectivity. I do not wish to challenge their readings, the most persuasive admissions of the Pardoner we have inherited from Kittredge into the discourse of postmodern critical theory. If my reading of the Pardoner diverges yet further from theirs, it does so only to suggest a more thorough erasure of the subject than theirs and to free us at last from Kittredge's Pardoner. If the Pardoner's words signify a parodic performance rather than an autobiographical confession, and if he reads the Wife's text as an exegetical critic, allegorizing her "play" by his "win:' substituting avaricia for luxuries, money for sex as an interpretive gesture aimed at the Wife's use of the latter to gain the former, then we have almost no subject left at all. He is a trace, as Derrida might put it, rather than a presence. We cannot confidently speak of his hypocrisy, despair, eunuchry, homosexuality, or greed. The fleeting glimpse we have of him as he recedes from us is, simply, that of a parodist.