Chaucer’s Pardoner and the Jews

Abstract

The role of the Jews in Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale extends well beyond the few direct mentions of them. A focus on representations of Jews, both explicit and implicit, in The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale reveals new connections between the Pardoner’s sinfulness, his sexuality, and his relics. The essay begins with analysis of the tale’s allusion to the figure of the Wandering Jew through the figure of the Old Man. I argue for the Wandering Jew as a type of relic and for the encounter between the rioters and the Old Man as an exploration of what Caroline Bynum calls the “dynamic of seen and unseen” that animates medieval Christian materiality. The essay extends this examination of the relationship between anti-Judaism and Christian materiality to the Pardoner’s own “relics,” the prevalent oaths in The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, Chaucer’s depiction of the Pardoner’s body, and, finally, to the bitter concluding exchange between the Host and the Pardoner. Through this analysis, I show how anti-Judaism both permeates and shapes Chaucer depiction of the Pardoner and the Pardoner’s tale.