Where is the pardoners tale set

The rioters are outraged and, in their drunkenness, decide to find and kill Death to avenge their friend. Traveling down the road, they meet an old man who appears sorrowful. He says his sorrow stems from old age—he has been waiting for Death to come and take him for some time, and he has wandered all over the world.

The youths, hearing the name of Death, demand to know where they can find him. The old man directs them into a grove, where he says he just left Death under an oak tree. The rioters rush to the tree, underneath which they find not Death but eight bushels of gold coins with no owner in sight.

At first, they are speechless, but, then, the slyest of the three reminds them that if they carry the gold into town in daylight, they will be taken for thieves. They must transport the gold under cover of night, and so someone must run into town to fetch bread and wine in the meantime. They draw lots, and the youngest of the three loses and runs off toward town. As soon as he is gone, the sly plotter turns to his friend and divulges his plan: when their friend returns from town, they will kill him and therefore receive greater shares of the wealth.

The second rioter agrees, and they prepare their trap. Back in town, the youngest vagrant is having similar thoughts. He could easily be the richest man in town, he realizes, if he could have all the gold to himself. He goes to the apothecary and buys the strongest poison available, then puts the poison into two bottles of wine, leaving a third bottle pure for himself.

He returns to the tree, but the other two rioters leap out and kill him. Within minutes, they lie dead next to their friend. JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. The pilgrims in Chaucer's tales are traveling in the spring of some year in the late 14th century.

They meet up in a lively Inn in Southwark, outside London, on their way to Canterbury to visit the relics of Saint Thomas Becket, an archbishop of Canterbury who was gruesomely murdered in by followers of King Henry II.

Becket was made a saint in and his relics were venerated by people all over Europe. He was a hugely popular martyr because he had insisted on putting the Church first and the government second. Imagine that. Much of the Pardoner's Prologue and Tale is not the tale itself, but the Pardoner's interaction with the Canterbury pilgrims, where he describes all the clever techniques he uses to sell fake relics and expensive pardons to unsuspecting customers.

However, he rejects the Physician's moral to the tale and substitutes one of his own: Thus the gifts of fortune and nature are not always good "The gifts of Fortune and Nature have been the cause of the death of many a person". Thinking that the pilgrims need a merry tale to follow, the Host turns to the Pardoner. The more genteel members of the company, fearing that the Pardoner will tell a vulgar story, ask the Pardoner for a tale with a moral. The Pardoner then explains to the pilgrims the methods he uses in preaching.

His text is always "Radix malorum est cupidatis" "Love of money is the root of all evil". Always employing an array of documents and objects, he constantly announces that he can do nothing for the really bad sinners and invites the good people forward to buy his relics and, thus, absolve themselves from sins. Then he stands in the pulpit and preaches very rapidly about the sin of avarice so as to intimidate the members into donating money.

He repeats that his theme is always "Money is the root of all evil" because, with this text, he can denounce the very vice that he practices: greed. And even though he is guilty of the same sins he preaches against, he can still make other people repent. The Pardoner admits that he likes money, rich food, and fine living. And even if he is not a moral man, he can tell a good moral tale, which follows. In Flanders, at the height of a black plague, three young men sit in an inn, eating and drinking far beyond their power and swearing oaths that are worthy of damnation.

The revelers mark the passing of a coffin and ask who has died. A servant tells them that the dead man was a friend who was stabbed in the back the night before by a thief called Death.

The young revelers, thinking that Death might still be in the next town, decide to seek him out and slay him. On the way, the three men meet an old man who explains that he must wander the earth until he can find someone willing to exchange youth for old age. Study Guide for Chaucer Quiz. Pardoner's Tale - Collaborative Learning Project. Rough outline of activities for reading Canterbury Tales playscript.

The Wife of Bath. Review of topic sentences and concluding sentences. The Pardoner - pardonersproject. The Pardoner's Tale. The Pardoner's Tale Summary There were three men who lived in. The Pardoner.

Pardoner's Tale. Morality in The Pardoner's Tale. Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale and the Irony of Misinterpretation. Download advertisement. Add this document to collection s. You can add this document to your study collection s Sign in Available only to authorized users.