Pardoner´s tale ironies

Irony In "The Pardoner's Tale"
Many tales are told in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Probably the greatest on is "The Pardoner's Tale". A greedy Pardoner who preaches to feed his own desires tells "The Pardoner's Tale". This story contains excellent examples of verbal, situational, and dramatic irony.
Verbal irony occurs when a writer or speaker says one thing but really means somethingquite different. One example of this type of irony is found in lines 216-217: " ‘Trust me,' the other said, ‘you needn't doubt my word. I wont betray you. I'll be true.'" The rioter is telling the second that he would never betray his friends, yet he is plotting to kill the youngest rioter, whom he promised to defend and treat like a brother earlier on in the tale. Another example occurswhen the youngest tells the apothecary that he has a lot of rats he wants to kill. A rat, in the literal meaning of the word, is a furry little creature that humans tend to despise. However, the rats spoken about here by the youngest rioter are his two comrades who are back in the woods, lusting over the gold.
Situational irony occurs when what actually happens is the opposite of what isexpected or appropriate. An instance where situational irony occurs is in the prologue where the Pardoner states that he preaches that the root of all evil is avarice. The only reason he preaches is to convince people to buy his pardons and holy relics so he can satisfy his own selfish desires. We would not expect a preacher to preach against his own vice. Another example occurs after thePardoner finishes his tale. He attempts to sell his pardons to the travelers, starting with the Host, claiming, "He is most-enveloped in all sin." The irony here is that the Pardoner himself is probably the most sinful of the all the travelers.
Dramatic irony occurs when the audience is aware of something that one or more characters do not know or understand. Two of the most recognized examples ofdramatic occur throughout most of the..

The irony of The Pardoner's Tale is that he preaches against the sin of avarice - "The love of money is the root of all evil" - when he is infact guilty of this sin. He makes a living by selling useless artefacts to peasants who believe that this will absolve them of their sins.

The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale
The Wife of Bath and the Pardoner areboth given particularly ample space to expose their own way of living before telling their Tales, in developed Prologues which have certain qualities in common. In both cases, the speaker seems unaware that the hearers (the readers) might not be so full of admiration as they seem to be about themselves. Both speak in a rather boasting mode about lives and actions which others might find less thanappealing. The Pardoner's Prologue is less lengthy than the Wife of Bath's but serves to provide a powerfully ironic frame to the sermon that forms the body of his Tale. The Prologue serves to make us aware of the difference that can exist between a Tale and its Teller.
Critics often call the form used in these two Prologues 'literary confession' but neither of Chaucer's characters expresses anysign of regret. Rather, the two prologues are rooted in satirical traditions in which a figure embodying some vice speaks a 'confession,' almost entirely without shame, illustrating the way it lives. Chaucer found examples of this in the Romance of the Rose, the Pardoner's Prologue has some vague similarities with the figure Faux-Semblant (False Seeming) found there.
As seen in the GeneralPrologue, a pardoner is a layman who sells pardons or indulgences, certificates from the pope by which people hoped to gain a share in the merits of the saints and escape more lightly from the pains of Purgatory after they died. This particular Pardoner works for a religious house notorious for fraud in this trade. Just as the indulgence bought with money seems to make confession, absolution and...