THE CANTERBURY TALES
The Pardoner’s Tale
BRITISH LITERATURE
Objectives
1. Use rereading, questioning, and context clues to enhance understanding
2. Identify, analyze and evaluate an author’s techniques for revealing character
3. Identify, analyze and evaluate elements of allegories and frame stories
BRITISH LITERATURE
“The Pardoner’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Vocabulary Warm-up Exercises, p. 97
A.
1. pulpit
2. congregation
3. dignity
4. sermon
5. vice
6. wary
7. discourse
8. vanity
B. Sample Answers
1. The superhero’s secret powers enabled him to overcome any
adversary. (enemy)
2. The spy chose to betray his country, and he revealed government
secrets to the enemy. (let down)
3. People visit a doctor when they need medical counsel. (advice)
4. If you cultivate a child’s interest in reading when the child is young, he
or she will become a lifelong reader. (nurture)e
5. The advertisement might deceive customers because it does not explain
that some of the parts they need are sold separately. (mislead)
6. The girl pretended to care about her cat, but her hypocrisy showed
when she repeatedly forgot to feed the animal. (insincerity)
7. Certain magazines are known for gossip and for stories slandering
celebrities. (spreading lies about)
BRITISH LITERATURE
Reading Strategy
If you cannot fully understand a passage at first, you can repair your
comprehension by rereading it and the surrounding passages.
Rereading can help you clarify characters’ identities, the sequence or causes of
events, and puzzling language.
BRITISH LITERATURE
Literary Analysis
Allegories are narratives that have both literal and deeper, symbolic meanings.
This form appears in many types of work, including poetry, novels, plays, and short
stories.
“The Pardoner’s Tale” is a kind of allegory called an exemplum, Latin for
“example.”
The tale is an exemplum against the sin of greed, and the Pardoner uses the tale to
illustrate the point of one of his sermons, “Love of money is the root of all evil.”
BRITISH LITERATURE
Literary Analysis
To teach its lesson effectively, an allegory must be easily understood and
remembered.
For this reason, an allegory may use certain basic storytelling patterns, or archetypal
(regularly recurring) narrative elements, found in folk literature around the world.
These elements include the following:
■ Characters, events, and other things that come in threes
■ A test of characters’ morality
■ A mysterious guide who helps point the way
■ A just ending that rewards good or punishes evil.
ENGLISH III
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Reading Strategy
Passage
If you cannot fully understand a passage at first,
you can repair your comprehension by rereading it
and the surrounding passages.
“He gathered lots and
hid them in his hand....”
Reread Earlier Passage
Rereading can help you clarify characters’
identities, the sequence or causes of events, and
puzzling language.
“‘We draw for lots and see the
way it goes; / The one who draws
the longest, lucky man,...’”
As you read “The Pardoner’s Tale,” use a diagram
like the one shown to clarify difficult passages.
Clarification
“Drawing lots” must be like
drawing straws: The one who
draws the longest is “it.”