The Pardoner’s art in “The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” is that of preaching in order to gain money from his hearers. The following couplet encapsulates the paradoxical nature of his art:
Thus can I preche again that same vice
Which that I use, and that is avarice.
The Pardoner’s avarice is the fundamental fault which underpins his multi-levelled duplicity. He is a figure of hypocrisy, a personification of the liar paradox. He preaches so as to move his hearers unto salvation, yet is himself damned by the immorality of his lecherous behaviour and fraudulent abuse of his ecclesial office. His deliberate, cunning play on the multiple meanings of words in order to sell pardon is borne out through permeating themes: reducing the spiritual to the material and making fertile what is sterile. In exploring the Pardoner’s art, it becomes evident that he is conscious of the irony in the content and context of his speech. It is in exercising his art that he shows himself the......
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