Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/597

 The Secret of Chaucer's Pardoner 593 THE SECRET OF CHAUCER'S PARDONER Apparent inconsistencies in Chaucer's portrayal of the Par- doner have, up to this time, received no adequate explanation. Offering contemporary historical evidence, J. J. Jusserand arrives at the conclusion that in the presentation of this charac- ter "there is not the slightest exaggeration in Chaucer, that he knew well the Pardoners of his time, and described them exactly as they were, and that he did not add a word, not justified by what he saw, in order to win our laughter or to enliven his description." 1 Professor Tupper, in his theory of Chaucer's architectonic use of the Seven Deadly Sins motif in the com- position of the Canterbury Tales, asserts in one place 2 that ' the rascal is formally illustrating" the Sins of Gluttony and Avarice, in another, 3 that he is "exemplifying only the vices of the tavern," and in still another, 4 that he must be considered "a typical glutton or tavern-reveler." And Professor Kittredge, in his attempt to harmonize certain conflicting elements in both character and story, seeks a pleasant but unconvincing solution of the problem in the supposition that this "one lost soul among the Canterbury Pilgrims," acting for the most part from the basest of motives, suffers for a single moment from a "paroxysm of agonized sincerity." 5 Still, in spite of these investigations, I cannot help feeling that the Pardoner's character in its relation to his personal appearance, his impudent confession, and his unreasonable anger against the Host need further treatment. Critics have heretofore given too little attention, I think, to the possible significance of those supposedly accidental items of 1 Chaucer's Pardoner and the Pope's Pardoners, J. J. Jusserand, Essays on Chaucer, 2nd Ser. No. 2, p. 423. Cf. also the same author's English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, p. 210. 2 Chaucer and the Seven Deadly Sins, F. Tupper, Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc., Vol. 29, p. 115. 3 The Pardoner's Tavern, F. Tupper, Jour. Eng. and Germ. Philol., Vol. 13, p. 558. This theory was exploded by J. L. Lowes, Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc., Vol. 30, pp. 260 ff. ' 5 Cf. Chaucer and his Poetry, G. L. Kittredge, pp. 212 ff., and a fuller dis- cussion by the same author in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 72, pp. 830 ff.
 * Jour. Eng. and Germ. Philol., Vol. 13, p. 565.