Polecats, Poison, and Prejudice: Naturalized Anti-Judaic Tropes in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale

<p><em>The Pardoner’s Tale</em>, one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s <em>Canterbury Tales</em>, is a fourteenth-century allegory against gluttony, told by a corrupt, gluttonous pardoner to the rest of the pilgrims on their way to St. Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury. In the Pardoner’s initial description, the narrator compares the Pardoner to a hare, a goat, a gelding, and a mare to make conjectures concerning his gender identity. The comparison of the Pardoner to animals to suggest defining traits about his character invites closer attention to his tale’s use of animal imagery.</p> <p>This thesis examines animal imagery and cultural signifiers related to the Black Death in <em>The Pardoner’s Tale </em>to illuminate the Pardoner’s anti-Judaic storytelling techniques, which support his argument about how Christians should behave. Building on prior scholarship establishing the anti-Judaism of <em>The Pardoner’s Tale</em>, I draw together additional threads of scholarship on medieval bestiary lore, blasphemy, poison, the Black Death, to further characterize the cultural prejudices against Jews present in <em>The Pardoner’s Tale</em> and its reflection of the intensity of religious prejudice entrenched in fourteenth-century English storytelling. As a result, I argue that <em>The Pardoner’s Tale</em>’s subtle anti-Judaic stereotypes, which align Jews with the bestial, reveal how commonplace anti-Judaic ideas were in Chaucer’s England.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2024

Author dc:creator

• Broome, Rachel

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Leah Parker
• Dr. Jameela Lares
• Dr. Alexandra Valint

• Chaucer
• Pardoner's Tale
• Jews
• Black Death
• animal imagery
• polecat
• Literature in English, British Isles
• Medieval Studies

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/1058

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-2130