O’Hanlon 1

MEDIEVAL VIEWS ON AGING AND THEIR MODERN IMPLICATIONS: ANALYZING

CHAUCER’S PARDONER THROUGH THE LENS OF A SECOND MIRROR-STAGE

By

Kelsie O’Hanlon

A Thesis submitted to the

Faculty of the Graduate Studies Division of

Ohio Dominican University

Columbus, Ohio

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH

December 2017

O’Hanlon 2

Introduction

The questions of personal identity—who am I, who do I want to be, and how can I get there—are often considered to be defined in adolescence and young adulthood.

Personality traits are established, careers are chosen, families are born; a person’s life appears to be mapped out early in life, and people expect to follow a certain path as they age. Yet, on paper, such a journey is much simpler than in reality. Aging is a difficult process for many people. Unexpected crises arise, friends are made and lost, and love can be elusive. Yet, this is not a modern phenomenon. While people can expect to live longer in the modern era, the problems associated with aging have always existed. This journey of finding oneself can be much more uncertain than one would initially believe. People struggling to define who they are have long turned to literature as a way of representing and of understanding the challenges of aging. While modern medicine and psychology have allowed for greater longevity and for a better understanding of personality development in today’s society, the medieval world was not without its insights into the human condition.

In his most acclaimed work The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer speaks to the heart of humanity through his characters. Indeed, Harold Bloom in his The Western Canon terms Chaucer’s creations as “the virtual reality of literary characters” (105). Chaucer’s memorable cast is comprised of people of all ages, classes, professions, and genders.

However, certain characters are more defined by their age than others. Readers learn of the noble Knight who is juxtaposed with his young, lusty squire; of the deceitful Pardoner who interrupts the aging Wife of Bath, who is herself on the pilgrimage in search of one more husband; of the grumpy old Reeve who is at odds with the more vigorous (and often drunken) Miller. Each of these characters tells his or her tale, and these tales reveal truths O’Hanlon 3 about the characters themselves. Of all of the characters and tales Chaucer creates, the one that best reveals the struggles of growing older is the Pardoner. In order to truly understand how the Pardoner reveals insights into medieval and modern views on aging, I will first establish how similarly medieval and modern peoples view the aging process. In addition, before scrutinizing the Pardoner through a psychological lens, I will define who the Pardoner is—analyzing who he is based on what he thinks, how he acts, and what he says. Having established these views towards aging and having defined the Pardoner, I will then reveal how the Pardoner’s tale is reflective of the Pardoner himself. By doing so, I can then establish through a psychoanalytic lens how the reflective nature of the Pardoner’s tale lends itself to revealing how the Pardoner is struggling with his second mirror-stage.

This idea of a second mirror-stage builds on Jacques Lacan’s notion of an adolescent mirror-stage and involves the adult re-imagining himself as he ages. Such a revelation will finally give further insights into both medieval and modern outlooks on aging.

“The Pardoner’s Tale,” in particular, is fascinating for its insights into human nature and medieval views on aging—though, interestingly, the tale the Pardoner tells is not original to Chaucer. Instead, it predates Chaucer by centuries. In his article “Jean Gobi’s

Pardoner Tales” Richard Firth Green sheds light on the fact that there were four tales similar to the one that Chaucer tells about a pardoner that predate The Canterbury Tales by over a century, and a fifth that was published shortly after Chaucer’s death, that were compiled by a French Dominican Jean Gobi sometime between 1323 and 1330. About each of the tales Green notes, “while none is a direct source for Chaucer’s own portrait, these exempla provide strong evidence that the pardoner was already a type of the avaricious trickster long before The Pardoner’s Tale” (341). The fourth tale, specifically, was an O’Hanlon 4 analogue for Boccaccio’s tale Fra Cipolla, whose resemblance to Chaucer’s Pardoner has been noted as striking (343). Knowing that the pardoner was a “type” prior to Chaucer, analyzing the character of the Pardoner that Chaucer specifically creates, along with the tale he has his Pardoner tell, can provide insight into Chaucer’s purpose in using such a character. Chaucer holds to the typical qualities of the pardoner: “all five stories are concerned with avarice (the pardoner’s winnings) in some form, and in four of them the pardoners are shown preaching” (Green 341). Some of the pardoner-preachers even tell tales to convince their listeners to buy relics, just like Chaucer’s Pardoner. However,

Chaucer gives his Pardoner a specific tale to tell that has its own origins in other tales, a story that is dissimilar to the pardoners of Chaucer’s predecessors.

In his article “Some Comments on the Sources of Chaucer’s ‘Pardoner’s Tale,’” Henry

Seidel Canby researches the initial source for the tale the Pardoner tells about the three revelers. The basis of the plot for each of the tales that historically precedes “The

Pardoner’s Tale” is, according to Canby, “easily reduced to two essentials: x, the virtuous man who warns, and yy, a group of characters who carry through the poisoning story”

(477). And while Canby has traced this line of descent of a story with these characteristics to Italy, and further back to Persia and even India, he notes that Chaucer made one specific change: “the hermit, be it observed, becomes an old man who seeks death instead of fleeing it” (482). The hermit Canby mentions, or as he is usually referred to, the Old Man, has been a topic of speculation for over a century of critics. Who is he? Why is he important? What is his purpose? And, why has Chaucer changed a tale that is centuries older than his own?

Arguably, Chaucer had an explicit reason for transforming the character of a virtuous man to one whose only key feature is being old, creating the Old Man to be just O’Hanlon 5 that—old. Doing so allows Chaucer to reveal psychological insights about both the character of the Pardoner and the society in which the Pardoner and Chaucer live, ones that transcend Chaucer’s medieval era and permeate the world today. However, before analyzing the age of the Old Man and how such a distinction reveals truths about the

Pardoner, it is important to first understand how both medieval and modern societies view the aged and the aging process in order to allow for a fuller understanding of the implications of aging and what it means to grow older.

O’Hanlon 6

Chapter 1: Aging in Adults: A Modern and Medieval Approach

Of all of the processes that connect humanity across millennia, aging is one of the most universal. Yet, questions arise as to how similarly people have viewed aging and those who are older. While life expectancies have changed over the centuries, there have been distinctions, whether patently recognized in society or not, in how people view the process of aging and the aged. One specific era that begins to classify age brackets into more defined categories is the late Middle Ages. In order to determine how (dis)similar medieval society viewed the aged, it is important to understand how today’s world does so in relation to the Middle Ages. Doing so will allow for the application of more modern psychoanalytic techniques to older works that predate this type of literary analysis, allowing readers to better understand the Pardoner’s transformation of the Old Man.

One way to categorize modern aging is the age brackets given to time periods in a person’s life. However, multiple age brackets exist. In his book Adult Development and

Aging, Philip F. Rice visits the studies of multiple psychiatrists to determine how various researchers have categorized the stages of aging. One such psychiatrist is Roger Gould, who argues that adults aged 35-43 find “increasing awareness of time squeeze, realignment of goals, increasing urgency to attain goals; realization that control over children is waning”

(Rice 12). For Gould, then, middle age begins around 35, and it is at this stage that people begin to question who they are. Moreover, in his research, Rice also looks at a study done by Levinson who breaks down age ranges differently than Gould. Levinson has a category called “mid-life transition,” where he asserts that adults in their forties and fifties experience a mid-life crisis or “mid-life transition” where these adults “adjust psychologically to the final half of life” and “question every aspect of life” (Rice 14). O’Hanlon 7

Levinson’s age bracket overlaps slightly with Gould’s and both seem to suggest that adults go through a questioning stage during their mid-thirties to late forties.

Another aspect of research pertaining to aging involves how the aging view themselves. In her book, The Adult Years, Dr. Dorothy MacKellar Rogers examines the various stages of adulthood, looking at the young adult, the middle-aged adult, and older adults. Specifically Rogers finds that adults of any age often grapple with the question “who am I really?” (125). For middle-aged adults, Rogers finds that “a major crisis… relates to changing values” and these people must “work through shifting values and new interpretations of life” (129). Rice also analyzes the various stages of adulthood and the various aspects of aging, including physical, emotional, and intellectual and cognitive development in his work. Specifically, in his section on “Middle Adulthood” within his chapter of “The Adult Years,” Rice argues that these categories of middle years are often represented “as a period of crisis… a crisis of time, a realization of personal mortality” (46).

Once adults reach a certain age in their lives, in this case middle age, they struggle with recognizing who they are and how much time they have left. Both Rogers and Rice reveal that adults in this stage of their lives come to a self-actualization, recognizing that they are changing significantly and that time is waning. Another issue facing middle-aged adults,

Rogers notes, is appearance: adults must adjust “to [their] own aging physical image”

(151). And, Rogers asserts that those who “cling to youth the most are those who attach the most importance to looking and remaining youthful” (156). In “Late Adulthood,” Rice describes that “many older people deny their own aging and cling tentatively to self- concepts of middle-aged” life and some seek to recapture images of their youth (63). People who reach this stage in aging, then, seem to revert to the views of themselves from the past. O’Hanlon 8

Overall, both Rogers and Rice reveal that there is often a negative view of aging and the self-image of those who age can often worsen towards middle life.

This self-imagining has also been defined in modern psychoanalytic theory. Various psychoanalytic critics have defined this view as “the mirror stage” of human psychological development. Jacques Lacan in his noted paper “The Mirror Stage os Formative of the

Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” originally given in 1936 at the

International Psychoanalytical Association in Marienbad and later published in Ecrits, defines it as a time in adolescence when a child can identify itself and its name (Lacan 1-2).

In other words, the mirror stage is when a child recognizes who he or she is and understands that he or she is a being. In her “Instant Repulsion: Decrepitude, the Mirror

Stage, and the Literary Imagination,” Kathleen Woodward agrees with Lacan in that there is an adolescent mirror stage of self-identification, but also argues there is a mirror stage of old age and defines the difference as being that “the infant holds his mirror image in an amorous gaze, [whereas] the elderly person resists it. The narcissistic impulse remains—it imposes itself upon all our desires—but it is directed against the mirror image” (60). In other words, people are fascinated with self-identification and personal growth, but in old age they reject the aging of the person and/or of the soul. Kay Heath in her "In the Eye of the Beholder: Victorian Age Construction and the Specular Self" seeks to expand on both

Lacan’s and Woodward’s definitions of the mirror stage and aging. She argues that

while the child contrasts a fragmented body with the mirrored whole, for the elderly

adult to compare an image of disintegration with an inner sense of wholeness he or

she must construct an image of an earlier unity called youthfulness that is a

necessary prerequisite to an imagined future of increasing fragmentation. (29) O’Hanlon 9

Heath, here, believes that an aging adult must have more than an initial construct of himself. Instead, he must be able to look at his previous self and assess how that self has changed from the initial view. Leni Marshall, a professor of English who has published on aging, life span, longevity, and literature, builds upon Heath’s and Woodward’s notions of a second mirror stage, noting that during this time, “disconnection and misrecognition” can happen that “threaten or challenge the individual’s knowledge of the lived self” (53) This disassociation Marhsall terms “meconnaisance.” Marshall believes that “meconnaisance offers either a moment of trouble or a moment of opportunity” (57). Moreover, she asserts that those who suffer this mis-recognition often feel as if they lose their social identities.

Indeed, “the youth culture’s boundaries exclude agedness, even though people cannot participate in society without aging” (61). Marshall believes that the youth are often repulsed by old age. Youth, then, help define the aging through contrast. When people notice these visible changes that “they associated with an aged body, they tend to respond to these changes as losses, as deaths of part of the self,” according to Marshall (62). Most people who age, then, dislike the physical changes they see and struggle psychologically adapting to those changes. While people can choose how they react to seeing themselves become older, often a rejection occurs of this new self—this second mirror-stage—and a desire to revert to an earlier appearance becomes stronger for the aging.

While researchers and scholars agree that approaching middle age in modernity has similar psychological ramifications for those aging, few people have studied how aging adults in the Middle Ages viewed themselves. In order to determine the medieval view of aging, it is important to look at how medieval scholars defined stages of aging, how society viewed those who aged, and how literature and society then portrayed these aging figures. O’Hanlon 10

Unfortunately, few personal diaries exist of how specific people viewed their own aging, so analyzing the depictions of the aged in literature can help reveal how authors and society viewed this process of aging, both physically and psychologically.

Medieval society had varying definitions of the stages of aging and of the defined period of old age. Professor Gilleard, who works St. George’s Hospital Medical School in the

Department of Health and Social Care Sciences in London, England, analyzes how “later life was commonly represented within Europe’s medieval society” (25). In the early Middle

Ages, one common way aging was represented was through the ecclesiastical literature of the time, which defined man as having multiple “ages.” Gilleard notes that “the classical tradition of dividing up the lifespan…carried over from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, with gravitas and senectutus indicating later stages of life” (27). Doctor of Osteopathy P.

Osmund Lewry provides another distinction for aging, shifting from the six stages to four:

“one in which the substance and power are being gathered; a second in which they are achieved; a third in which power diminishes without loss of substance; and a fourth in which both wane” (32). The second is today termed as boyhood, the third as manhood, and the fourth as old age (Lewry 32). Regardless of the number of categories, medieval scholars, and even those of antiquity, viewed aging as happening in multiple stages just as researchers do today.

Even though there are distinct rungs of the aging ladder, and even if they are defined differently, little room was made by medieval society to prioritize those who aged.

Gilleard asserts that there is an “absence of the aged or old age as a social category,” making it difficult to explicitly pinpoint qualities of views of the aged in the early Middle

Ages (29). Often, there was a distinct difference between how society viewed older men O’Hanlon 11 based on the class to which they belonged—the wealthy men were viewed as wise and revered and the lower classes as impoverished (30). Regardless, Gilleard notes that “the medieval world did little to challenge the social insignificance of adult age” (32). Medical doctor and scholar Luke Demaitre corroborates this statement, asserting that “before the fifteenth century only a handful of works were devoted exclusively to the care of old age”

(4). However, as the Middle Ages progressed, “a refashioning of old age” emerged “as a modern problem for society” (29). It was not until secular time truly emerged in the late

Middle Ages that age was more quantified and therefore categorized. Overall, Gilleard believes that “old age (whether labeled ‘senex’—wisdom—or ‘decrepitus’—infirmity) carried no social entitlement” (38). For the most part, then, being aged was not considered a benefit in early the early or late Middle Ages and little was done by society to protect those who aged, yet documenting aging became more defined towards the end of the era.

Specific medical attributes were also given to the aged in medieval society. These were defined as the accidentia senectutis. Some particular ailments are listed in the

Hippocratic Aphorisms and include “dyspnea, cattarhs accompanied with coughs, dysuris, pains of the joints, nephritis, vertigo, apoplexy, cachexia, pruritius of the whole body, insomnia, etc.” (Demaitre 10). Other physical aspects of old age include, per Roger Bacon’s

“The Cure of Old Age and Preservation of Youth,” “grey hair, paleness and wrinkling of the skin, weakness of the faculties and powers, diminution of the blood and spirits, bleariness of the eyes, abundance of mucus, putrid spittle, weakness of breathing, insomnia” and others (cited in Demaitre 10). Other issues associated with aging include baldness, being hunched over, and shaking (Demaitre 10-11). Demaitre asks for caution in aligning certain medieval afflictions with modern infirmities, such as shaking with Parkinson’s disease, but O’Hanlon 12 does suggest that there are similarities in the physical appearance and types of afflictions the aged suffer both then and now.

Other medieval scholars look beyond the distinction of age and more at the cultural views of the aged. Historian Paul Edward Dutton notes a drastic view of aging: “a body once youthful and full of energy, now thought to be old and decrepit, must eventually die” (76). A turning point in the view of one’s own life sets in, similar to how it does in modern interpretations of aging. Once the physical decline appears, so too does an encroachment of death. A researcher into medieval life, Alicia Nitecki also analyzes the “medieval convention governing the portrayal of old age,” specifically looking at Maximianus’ Elegies and

Innocent III’s De Contemtu Mundi as principle sources for portraying age (76). In fact, De

Contemtu Mundi is also one of Chaucer’s sources for “The Pardoner’s Tale.” In these two texts, Nitecki notes that “frequently, old age is contrasted with youth” (76). Moreover,

“Maximanius and Innocent III describe the same physical ills of age: the heart weakens, vigour wanes, breath stinks, the back is bent, eyes grow dim, the nose runs, hair turns grey or falls out, hands tremble, teeth decay, ears are stopped up” (Nitecki 108). Medieval scholar David Herlihy also looks at the cultural aspect of aging. He states that other medieval commentators on the stages of life “show a tendency to associate old age not with security and comfort, but with want and deprivation” (143). However, society, per Joel T.

Rosenthal, a scholar of medieval British family and social life, was able to see that “the usual slide from health and decline to decrepitude and old age is not hard to follow” in medieval society (185). And, just as in modern society, those who aged felt the impending stroke of time, so people had “the self-dramatizing tendency to emphasize the early approach of old age” and “many saw its frosty touch by age 30 or 35” (Rosenthal 185). O’Hanlon 13

Rosenthal also notes that “the aged were no doubt conditioned to blame themselves: isolation and hardship were but the natural returns for longevity” (188).

Other scholars analyze old age in medieval works of literature. Lee Patterson, a noted scholar on medieval literature, looks beyond the classification of age in the Middle

Ages and instead into medieval views of aging in the written word, noting that “age is at once a symbol of sinfulness, the sin itself and, final irony, the punishment, a cheerless decay that stands as nature’s mocking parody of the spiritual change that will now never be achieved” (390). Here, Patterson asserts that those in the Middle Ages viewed old age as a punishment where humans, naturally sinners, must continue to sin longer in that they must live longer. By being unable to die, the aged cannot ascend into heaven and therefore achieve spiritual peace and worldly freedom from the decrepit body. Indeed, for fourteenth century writers, physical appearance was a common way to “depict the aged and their miseries,” even though this depiction contradicts the Biblical teachings of revering old age

(Nitecki 78). Moreover, Nitecki asserts that “neither Chaucer, nor any other English writer of his period, presents idealized, venerable old people in his works; nor do any of the poets provide us with realistic portrayals of the old and their position in society. They draw, instead, on the counter-tradition that sees in old age an image of man’s physical and spiritual corruption” (108). Nitecki’s argument correlates with Patterson’s, and both seem to reveal more of the secular views of aging being represented in medieval society as depicted above.

Similar views seem to occur about those who age, both by society and those who are aging, in modernity and the Middle Ages. No consistent age brackets seem to exist over the centuries, but a consistent view of the fact that people reach various stages in life through O’Hanlon 14 aging does. Moreover, there seems to be a societal fear of and a dislike of the physical and psychological changes that occur with aging. By recognizing that aging and views towards this process appear similar, the more modern psychological ways of analyzing people’s conceptions of aging, including that of seeing how people experience a second mirror-stage in their lives, can then be applied. Using literature of the time to analyze this conception of the self and applying the process of identifying a second mirror-stage can reveal more explicitly how the aging viewed the process of getting older during the late Middle Ages.

More specifically, analyzing the figure of the Pardoner and the characters he creates in the tale he tells—ones that Chaucer has purposefully changed—can help reveal not only psychological understandings of medieval views towards aging, ones that may well be reflective of his (and Chaucer’s) society, but also how the Pardoner views the society that judges aging.

O’Hanlon 15

Chapter 2: Defining the Pardoner

Before examining how the Pardoner’s tale reveals insights about the Pardoner himself and his struggles with aging, it is important to define just who the Pardoner is. As part of the pilgrimage to Canterbury, the Pardoner is similar to many of the other characters in that most of them are first given names based on their occupations. Jill Mann in her

“Medieval Estates Satire and the General Prologue” argues that the “estates type was the basis for Chaucer’s creation of the Canterbury pilgrims” (22). In other words, the characters are given types based on their social or professional status. And, they are referred to by these names more often than the names the characters’ parents have given to them. Indeed, some characters’ first names are never even revealed, including the

Pardoner’s. In addition, these characters often embody the types given to them. The Knight, for instance, is described as “a worthy man” who “loved chivalry” (General Prologue, lines

43, 45). Such characteristics are ones that people would typically associate with such a figure and appear customary. Furthermore, Chaucer gives specific descriptions about many of his characters that fit their tropes. The Squire, for example, appears as a young, lusty man: “a young Squyer, / A lovyerem and a lusty bachelor, / With lokkes cruller, as they were leyd in presse, / If twenty yeer of age he was” (General Prologue, lines 79-82). Here,

Chaucer gives the Squire’s exact age and characteristics fitting of a healthy man in his twenties. The Reeve, too, appears to have more a definitive characterization. He describes himself as “old” and is restricted “for age” (Reeve’s Prologue, line 3868). Indeed, he is quite explicit about his aged appearance, noting that his “whyte to wrteth” his “old yeres” and his

“herte is also mowled as” his “heres” (Reeve’s Prologue, lines 3869-70). The Reeve knows that he is old and owns up to it, even using it later on as reasoning for why he reacts the O’Hanlon 16 way he does to other characters and the Host. And while many of the stories these characters tell are ribald and full of jollity, the characters themselves often act as humans do who fall into the modes they embody. Mann believes that these character types appear human “due to the fact that Chaucer encourages us to respond to them as individuals” (23).

The Knight speaks of a code of honor, the squire—a young gentleman—gives a tale of love, or at least his version of it, and the Reeve tells a particularly bawdy tale in response to that of the Miller’s as a crotchety old man might. In doing so, these characters appear real, even though they are based on estate types.

Yet, the Pardoner does not have such exactness in determining his age or qualities, though his tale is just as intriguing. Instead, he has conflicting descriptions of himself. His hair is “yellow as wex, / But smothe it heng, as dooth a strike of flex / By ounces henge his lokkes that he hadde, / And therwith he his shoulders overspradde” (General Prologue, lines 675-78). Here, the Pardoner appears to have yellow hair like flax, but this potentially positive description is challenged by the fact that it spreads over his shoulders, which sounds feminine in nature—not necessarily a positive attribute. The Pardoner’s masculinity, or lack thereof, is further called into question by the narrator:

A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot.

No berd hadde he, ne nevere sholde have,

As smothe it was as it were late shave:

I trowe he were a gelding or a mare. (General Prologue, lines 688-90)

The narrator’s description of the Pardoner creates ambiguity for the reader, calling into question exactly how to define him—in this case, with regards to his sexuality. While many critics have focused on what these lines reveal about the Pardoner’s ambiguous sexuality, O’Hanlon 17 the continued description of the Pardoner’s appearance also raises questions as to his age.

His hair is next shown to be thin and “lay, by colpons oon and oon” (General Prologue, line

679). His hair hangs in clumps, which sounds unkempt and disheveled, or perhaps even reflective of the fact that his hair is starting to thin or fall out through the process of aging.

In fact, the Pardoner appears so concerned about his appearance—whether because of age or his concerns over his masculinity—that he feels the need to mask his physical downfalls, so much so that it is noted by the narrator: “but hood, for jolitee, wered he noon, / For it was trussed up in his walet” (General Prologue, lines 680-81). The Pardoner is revealed as wanting to look good despite the fact that he may not be as attractive. By dressing to compensate for what he is lacking, the Pardoner then appears to be more insecure than he is letting on and creates even more ambiguity about this character for the reader, and this ambiguity is also seen through the words the Pardoner says in his prologue.

The Pardoner possesses certain rhetorical skills that he employs in his “sermon” at the start of his tale in which he professes honesty by revealing his own sinfulness. He begins by establishing his credibility in that he reveals he knows he is a liar in that he has, by selling

“reliks been they, as wenen they echoon,” earned “yeer by yeer, / An hundred mark sith [he were] a pardoner” (Pardoner’s Prologue, 349, 389-90). Through his pardoning and selling false relics, the Pardoner has earned a living, which is, quite obviously, devious. Yet, by being honest about who he is, which is in direct contradiction to how he dresses and presents his physical self, he seeks to build ethos of a sort with his fellow pilgrims.

Indeed, the Pardoner reveals his understanding of the biblical teachings and interprets them as a way to sound like an authority on the subject of sin to show that he knows O’Hanlon 18 exactly what it is he is doing, despite the fact that he should not be doing it. He first references Adam and Eve's fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, arguing that

it is no dred. / For whyl that Adam fasted, as I rede,

He was in Paradys; and when that he

Eet of the fruyt defended on the tree,

Anon he was outcast to wo and peyne.

O glotonye, on thee wel oghte us pleyne. (Pardoner’s Prologue, lines 507-12)

While many Christians have probably heard of this specific story, either from cultural knowledge or hearing of it preached in Church, the Pardoner then displays greater understanding of specific saints and apostles and their preaching:

what was commanded unto Lamuel—

Nat Samuel, but Lamuel, seye I—

Redeth the Bible, and find it expressly

Of wyn-yevin to him that han justyse. (Pardoner’s Prologue, lines 584-87)

Here, the Pardoner seems to caution against believing that Samuel in Proverbs warns against giving wine instead of Lemuel, revealing his study of the Bible. In using specific examples and revealing his extensive knowledge of the Bible, the Pardoner appears to establish his credibility, which appears slightly ironic in that he admits he is a sinner. By using these devices, Professor Helen Cooper purports that "in these sections of the tale we are listening to a sophisticated and self-conscious verbal artist...[, so] one is more conscious of the artistry of the speaker than the moral import of what he is saying" (274). The

Pardoner, then, appears purposeful in his deceptions and can distinguish right from wrong, revealing the truths about his corrupt self. O’Hanlon 19

The Pardoner's use of rhetorical devices reveals not just that he is a masterful storyteller, but that through these devices, the Pardoner removes any actual spiritual importance to his story—again, showing just how ironic the Pardoner is in his position of spiritual power. He even uses Jesus as a reason to buy his indulgences, a reason he knows to be false

And, lo, sires, thus I preche.

And Jesu Crist, that is our soules leche,

So graunte yow his pardon to receyve,

For that is best; I wol yow nat decyve. (Pardoner’s Tale, lines 916-18)

He says that Jesus allows people to cleanse their souls and implies that he is the person to do that. In fact, he then immediately says that he has "relikes" with him for people to touch and to pay him to have their sins forgiven. Yet, the Pardoner knows and admits that the relics are false and so he understands that the purchasers of those relics cannot actually receive spiritual forgiveness and the people will not actually own something religious and true. He knows his actions are wrong, yet he preaches about avoiding evil and gluttony, positive messages. The Pardoner knows he deceives his parishioners, yet does not deviate from his actions. The Pardoner shows, then, that he is actually knowingly deceitful through his honesty—a contradiction in words that is analogous to the contradictions in his appearance.

The Pardoner is well aware of the sins he has committed and, on the surface, as

Cooper argues, appears to be more concerned with his goal of earning money than he is with the moral implications of deceiving his listeners. However, by further examining the

Pardoner’s responses to his own deceptions, the Pardoner is arguably tormented by his O’Hanlon 20 inner guilt. Noted Chaucer scholar Donald R. Howard asserts that the Pardoner “projects

[his inner torment] into his sermon” (51). In the sermon, the Pardoner says,

Therefore my theme is yet, and evere was,

Radic malorum est cupititas

Thus can I preche agayn that same vyce

Which that I use, and that is avaryce.

But though myself be gilty in that sinne,

Yet can I maken other folk to twinne

From avarice. (Pardoner’s Prologue, lines 425-31)

In his “preaching,” the Pardoner outright states that he is guilty of the sin of avarice and even argues he can help others turn away from it. Howard notes that in medieval times,

“guilt is a torment, the sinner wishes to flee that torment, and his only choice, unless he repents, is to flee into further misconduct by wallowing in sins and lusts, all of which produce more guilt” (51). At the end of his sermon, the Pardoner recognizes that he “be a ful vicious man” and yet also recognizes that “a moral tale [he] you telle can” (Pardoner’s

Prologue, lines 458-59). Here, the Pardoner reveals to his audience that he knows he is sinful and corrupt and can even distinguish between himself as a sinner and other moral people. He is repenting, in a sense, by revealing who he knows himself to be, but can still not deviate from the guilt he feels in that he perpetuates his sinning and is then forced into the cycle of inner torment that Howard initially asserts. Medieval scholar H. Marshall

Leicester agrees, seeing the Pardoner as cognizant of his faults: “what happens is that, as he manipulates the conventional materials of the sermon to reflect his own obsessions, he becomes more conscious of himself and more aware of both his power and his O’Hanlon 21 powerlessness” (86). The Pardoner is unable to save himself and believes himself unforgivable. He says about himself, “of avaryce and of swich cursednesse / Is al my preching… For myn entente is nat but for to winne, / And nothing for correccioun of sinne”

(Pardoner’s Prologue 400-04). Here, the Pardoner admits he does nothing to correct his sins, such as ask for forgiveness or fully repent. Yet, as Leicester notes, “to say that God cannot forgive you is to place limits on His power and mercy, to usurp a judgment that belongs to Him. In its largest sense cupiditas is the desire to do this, and its inevitable frustration produces the hatred of God, self, and others that the Pardoner displays. This is the condition that the Pardoner suffers and wills” (Leicester 88). The Pardoner is aware of his avarice and chooses to believe he is unforgiveable, which results in his continued suffering. This interpretation causes contradictions for the reader as he first appears as a devious counterfeiter. However, his awareness of his own flaws causes, once again, ambiguity in the reader’s understanding of the Pardoner. He is rarely what he initially seems.

The Pardoner, then, is just as deceptive in his honesty as he is in the way he dresses in that both his moral inclinations and his physical appearance are not clear-cut. Both contradictions—those in his appearance and those in his words and actions—create ambiguity in defining the character of the Pardoner. Whatever the Pardoner first appears, it is likely that there is more beyond the surface assessment. The reader, then, must look deeper into these contradictions to actually understand this character. Just as examining the Pardoner’s appearance reveals his insecurities about his identity and his age, so too does examining his words reveal insights into this man. If one must look beyond the surface to truly understand the Pardoner, perhaps the reader can then also find some O’Hanlon 22 truths about the Pardoner through the tale he tells. While superficially it appears a moral tale about avoid greed and gluttony—the mantra the Pardoner preaches to his fellow pilgrims—looking beyond the literal meaning of the tale can reveal ambiguities within it, ones that can expose revelations about the Pardoner.

O’Hanlon 23

Chapter 3: Characters in the Pardoner’s Tale as Reflective of the Pardoner

The Pardoner’s guilt examined above is projected in the guises of the characters in the tale the Pardoner tells. For example, the Old Man appears as a projection of how the

Pardoner views his spiritual and earthly plights—the Pardoner cannot forget what he has done and cannot move forward, forced to continue his avaricious ways as an acknowledged sinner until he dies. Instead of merely stating that the Pardoner is a hypocrite, it is important to look deeper at the text, examining how an awareness of his own hypocrisy complicates the Pardoner. And, by exploring how he views his own hypocrisy through projecting his emotions into the Old Man, the audience can imbue some pity onto a man who, sadly, truly understands who he is. Alfred David, in his “Criticism and the Old Man in

Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale,” argues that “the power of the old man is the power of the symbol to suggest a range of meanings” (40). David chooses to analyze this character through a new critical approach, viewing “The Pardoner’s Tale” as a story to be interpreted both physically and spiritually. Moreover, David believes that “there is an implied analogy between the old man and the Pardoner” (41). Specifically, “the old man tells us something about the frustration, the suffering, and the self-destructiveness of evil. For evil may be both like a young man, who defies death, and like an old man whose only wish is to die”

(42). Overall, David connects psychologically the old man, the revelers, and the Pardoner, revealing that, at least in one interpretation, the characters in the tale the Pardoner tells can be interpreted as projections of the Pardoner and his conflicting attitudes and desires.

On the one hand the Pardoner would like to go back to a youthful state where he is unaware of his misdeeds, yet on the other he knows it is impossible and must trek slowly towards death, carrying with him his own misdeeds. O’Hanlon 24

Psychoanalytic analyses of the Pardoner and his tale reveal an interpretation where the Pardoner is consciously aware of his misdeeds, yet chooses to commit them as a form of spiritual suicide. When the Old Man enters the Pardoner’s story, he says to the three revelers,

‘I han myn age stille

As long time as it is Goddes wille.

Ne Deeth, allas! ne wol not han my lyf.

Thus walk I, lyk a resteless caityf’. (Pardoner’s Tale, lines 725-28)

The Old Man seeks to be free from his torment of old age, yet neither God nor death will take him. This inability to be free from death is reminiscent of the Pardoner’s inability to be free from guilt and sin. Howard notes that “this awesome portrayal of a soul cast adrift by its mother into an unwanted life, toward a death wished for and denied, reflects the

Pardoner’s spiritual plight—it expresses longing for oblivion…and it portrays a circumstance, like his own, in which no such release is permitted” (54). Like the Old Man who seeks to die but cannot, the Pardoner finds himself in an ironic situation, one in which he knows his sins and is conscious of his inability to completely rid himself of them and forget what he has done, which perpetuates the cycle of guilt and torment. The Pardoner cannot stop his path, including his path towards old age, and must therefore continue towards his ultimate fate. Patterson concurs with Howard and Leicester, noting that the

Pardoner’s performance and tale are “best understood in terms of medieval confessional habits” (371). Patterson asserts that the Pardoner feels a sense of victimization as seen through the figure of the Old Man (372). The Old Man cannot die and must suffer, just as the Pardoner must. Patterson looks at medieval history of confession and penitence and O’Hanlon 25 asserts that the sinner must “set himself before himself, face to face with the defilement he has become” (377). The Pardoner, Patterson and Howard argue, attempts to do so through his tale.

This inner conflict reveals truths about the Pardoner’s desires and character.

Indeed, Leicester states that “the Pardoner uses the Old Man as a spokesman for this sophisticated despair. The Old Man’s desire to exchange age for youth points to the

Pardoner’s envy of the innocence of the rioters” (91). The Pardoner, like the Old Man, is aware of his sins and guilt and, though he wishes it, like the Old Man he cannot rid himself of his awareness of his flaws. Paul G. Ruggiers, in The Art of the Canterbury Tales, also analyzes the Pardoner through a psychological lens and through his spiritual deficiencies.

Ruggiers looks at the Pardoner within the tale he tells, likening his “demonic bias” to the

“recitation of youth’s headed vices,” and arguing that “the whole process of dealing so energetically with the sins is suggestive of something deep in the Pardoner’s own character” (115-16). The Pardoner is seen as wanting youth again through this desire to exchange old age for youth, and this desire is reflected in the Pardoner’s clothing and style choices, as aforementioned. Like Ruggiers, Patterson also looks into medieval views of aging, noting that “age is at once a symbol of sinfulness, the sin itself and, final irony, the punishment, a cheerless decay that stands as nature’s mocking parody of the spiritual change that will now never be achieved” (390). Patterson then correlates this view of aging to the Old Man and the revelers—the Old Man is the embodiment of despair while the revelers act the “Pardoner’s life of self-damnation” (402). For Patterson, then, the entire tale mimics the Pardoner’s view of himself and acts as a type of confession of his own guilt and a projection of his own fears. Patterson’s chapter, along with Howard and Leicester’s O’Hanlon 26 criticism, helps place the Pardoner’s tale in the view of a confession, which indicates the tale as a projection of the Pardoner himself. Moreover, Patterson adds to other critics’ arguments that the Pardoner is aware of his own flaws, sees the irony in his situation, and feels condemned to the life he currently lives.

Other critics look towards the Pardoner’s conversation with the Host after the tale has been told to try to understand how the Pardoner views his future and his choices that are embodied in the characters from his tale. Howard argues that the Pardoner’s tale has, in medieval terms, “the quality of the somnium celeste, a warning from on high which he does not heed” (56). Howard believes that the Pardoner understands his own flaws and has guilt about them, but does not fully heed the warnings in his own tale. He views the exchange between the Host and the Pardoner as evidence of how the Pardoner seems to revert back to his old ways and, instead of repenting, which could, according to medieval thinking, free him from his psychological torment, continues with his deceptions. For example, the

Pardoner tells his audience that “myn holy paround may yow alle waryce-- / So that ye offer nobles or sterlinges” (Pardoner’s Tale, lines 906-07). In doing so, the Pardoner is purposefully returning to sinning by knowingly offering false relics to his fellow pilgrims.

Howard believes him to be “impudent” and that “the Host’s anger might be directed at the

Pardoner’s impulse to spoil his own success” (57). Howard seems to imply that the

Pardoner could understand how to be free, through repenting, but chooses not to do so, which infuriates the Host. Arguably, the Pardoner cannot repent because he cannot go backwards in time to erase his sins. Instead, he must age and carry his sins with him. While he would like to trade youth for age like the Old Man, such a reality is not possible and so he chooses to continue sinning. Leicester, too, believes that through the Old Man “the O’Hanlon 27

Pardoner most clearly expresses his self-pity. But his language also shows that he understands his condition spiritually and exegetically, that he interprets himself in traditional terms as the vetus homo.” (91). Here, Leicester acknowledges what Howard argues—that the Pardoner pities himself for his torment and chooses to remain a sinner.

However, Leicester views the Pardoner as seeing himself as sacrificial and believes that the

Host does not understand the Pardoner’s aim: “[the Host’s] response shows that he has missed the point of the Pardoner’s self-presentation,” not understanding the Pardoner’s true intent (98). Leicester believes this intent to be to “take all our sins on his shoulders by committing them” and he “scapegoats himself like Christ in order to dramatize the pervasive presence of spirit in ordinary life” (99). The Pardoner’s seemingly human moment of bemoaning the human condition as evidence of this: “O cursed sinne of alle cursednesse! / O traytours homicide, O wikkednesse!” (895-96). Instead of not understanding the message in his own tale of the need to repent, or at least choosing to ignore it, like Howard suggests, Leicester believes that the Pardoner does understand based on his moralizing after the tale. The Pardoner must be representative of the Old Man who carries the sins of aging and must warn others as the Old Man tries to warn the youthful revelers who still have a chance to change their ways. Moreover, the Pardoner cannot repent for to do so would be to detract from his purpose in sinning: to reveal corruption as a horrific mode of living and to influence others to live more Christian lives to spite the Pardoner’s type of existence.

The tale, then, serves as an analogy for the Pardoner, though various critics struggle with how to define this correlation. Howard acknowledges that “many allegorical meanings have been suggested, especially for the old man”; however, the tale “has one quality that O’Hanlon 28 makes it far more like a dream than an allegory: it is an exceedingly personal projection”

(52). And, for Howard, “these episodes [in the Pardoner’s tale] joined by dreamlike junctures are thematic more than narrative. They single out in abstraction truths which press upon the Pardoner’s consciousness; and they are presented with the intensity and visualization characteristic of the dream-vision” (53). Howard, then, views the Pardoner’s tale as non-allegorical because it is directly representative of the Pardoner’s self- conception, as analyzed above; the tale may be symbolic, but only of the Pardoner’s thoughts, causing Howard to view the tale as a dream or projection. Leicester views the tale, on the other hand, as semi-allegorical, noting that “the feeling of miasma in the opening scene arises, as I have previously suggested, from the semi-allegorical treatment of an ordinary tavern scene in such a way as to stress is spiritual overtones” (89). Specifically,

Leicester is looking at lines 680-84 of “The Pardoner’s Tale,” and emphasizes such phrases as

an old felawe of yours” and “er ye come in his presence,

Me thynketh that it were necessarie

For to be war of swich an adversaire.

Beth redy for to meete him evermore.

For example, according to Leciester, this “old felawe” could be an allegory for “all men in sin and before death” (90). Moreover, the entire tale, Leicester notes, could be seen as “a blasphemous parody of Christ’s sacrifice, which slew spiritual death for the faithful once and for all” (90). However, Leicester, like Howard, views the tale as more than just an allegory. He, too, believes the Pardoner projects himself into the tale, arguing that the

Pardoner is “momentarily attracted to [the revelers’] quest because it does correspond to O’Hanlon 29 something in him” (90). Thus, Leicester views the tale as semi-allegorical in that it is both a literal projection of the Pardoner’s emotions and symbolic in terms of characters and setting.

The entirety of the tale, however controversial the reading of it, is reflective of the

Pardoner. The Pardoner connects with the revelers because they reflect who he was when he was younger: not too far before their ultimate betrayal and at a time in life where change is possible. The Pardoner sees his future in the figure of the Old Man: he has suffered a life of corruption and must wait for a death that has not yet come, suffering all the while as punishment for his sins. The Pardoner, however, is at a crossroads between the revelers and the Old Man. He is not young enough to be a youthful reveler, but not old enough to be the Old Man. Yet, there is no character who seems to be in this “middle-aged” stage of life the Pardoner in which he finds himself. These characters, then, reveal insights into the Pardoner’s concerns of aging, ones that correlate with growing older and growing in sin.

O’Hanlon 30

Chapter 4: Analyzing the Tale as a Second Mirror-Stage

As noted above, many literary critics have analyzed the Pardoner through a psychoanalytic lens. Most look at how the Pardoner projects himself and his fears into his tale and the characters in it. These insights are helpful into better understanding this character, yet they do not fully answer the question of why the Pardoner chooses to do so.

Arguably, the Pardoner is at a stage in his life where he struggles to define himself, as analyzed above. He is between youth and old age, a time in one’s life where people re- evaluate who they are and how they view themselves. One psychoanalytic approach that takes the Pardoner’s middle age into account is that of the second mirror-stage. Such a lens allows readers to corroborate why the Pardoner projects his fears into his tale, where those fears are coming from, and how the Pardoner comes to terms with those fears and uncertainty. Arguably, the Pardoner comes to new realizations about himself, and subsequently his own sinfulness, because he must reevaluate himself (the process of recognizing one is at a second mirror-stage) at this middle-aged time in his life.

As aforementioned the idea of a mirror-stage was initially presented by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Lacan argued that the mirror stage occurs in children between six and eighteen months of age where they identify with their own images seen in the mirror and in turn create an image of the self towards which children will continuously strive throughout their lives (Johnston). Lacan’s theory, though, presupposes that a person never deviates from this perceived notion of the self. Having established through Rice and

Rogers that a period of middle age during which a mid-life crisis occurs where people question who they are and what they believe once again, this idea of a single mirror stage appears lacking in fully examining how people identify themselves. As addressed in chapter O’Hanlon 31 one, several scholars have taken up the notion that a second mirror-stage exists in a person’s middle life where people no longer recognize who they are or what they wanted to become, and “that misrecognition is unpleasant and potentially traumatic, a psychic step toward the acceptance of death” (Marshall 53). This second-mirror stage involves a re- evaluation of the self, one that causes people to question who they are, why they no longer recognize themselves, and what their futures hold. Having analyzed the Pardoner’s ambiguous nature recognizing that his ambivalent self appears in the characters in the tale he tells, the Pardoner then seems to be examining his second mirror-stage through the tale itself, elements of which are initially seen in his descriptions of himself in both the General

Prologue and the Pardoner’s sermon.

One important element of this second mirror-stage is that people seem to no longer recognize the person they once saw themselves to be by seeing an image in the mirror that looks changed. People, upon seeing an “older self” in the mirror “lose a connection between who they feel they are and their own mirror image—an image that has been known since childhood and that psychoanalytic theory suggests is an idealized self” (Marshall 54). This idealized self was one that Lacan purports people create in that first mirror stage. However, once an aging person no longer sees that idealized self, a disassociation between the self and the body occurs. The self-identity of the first mirror stage is now called into question, something the entire conception of self has been based on for decades, which causes people to react—oftentimes in ways that attempt to gain back that image of the idealized self.

The Pardoner appears to attempt this physical reversal by dressing in a younger, more fashionable style despite seemingly letting on that he may not be as young as he appears to dress. The Pardoner reveals that he has been working at his trickeries for quite O’Hanlon 32 a while, stating that “by this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer, / An hundred mark sith I was pardoner” (Pardoner’s Prologue, lines 389-90). Here, the Pardoner lets on that he has been preaching and swindling people for quite some time. He has gone to many villages, aiding adulterers, jealous men, gullible Christians, and many others through deception. He has even traveled to receive “Bulles of popes and of cardinals, / Of patriarkes, and bishoppes I shewe” (Pardoner’s Tale, 342-44). The Pardoner has spent a good deal of time acquiring proof of his honesty, his numerous relics, and great knowledge of his preaching.

To do so means that he has been “pardoning” for quite awhile. However, the way he dresses is in direct contrast with his supposed age and learning. Indeed, the Pardoner believes himself to be stylish and knows he dresses himself, or at least attempts to, in such a way:

“him thought he rood al of the newe jet; / Dischevele, save his cappe, he rood all bare”

(General Prologue, lines 682-83). The Pardoner’s effort to dress fashionably shows his desire to be en vogue despite his knowing that he is probably not of age to characteristically dress that way. Such attempts to do so are typically done by those who seek to look younger to better fit into society. David believes that the Pardoner purposefully dresses like a young man in order to deny his aging. Doing so reveals that “the Pardoner is, in short, a young-old man” (David 44). The Pardoner, through how he dresses, shows himself to be uncertain as to how to define himself. This odd stage in the Pardoner’s life—having had many experiences and gained much insight into the world, yet questioning how he should view himself—seems to be in line with Rice’s and Roger’s views of how those approaching middle-age view themselves. They represent a “crisis of identity” where “adults have to rethink who they are” (Rice 47). Here, the Pardoner appears to be in this middle age of his O’Hanlon 33 life in that he struggles with his physical identity, dressing as he might have a decade or two ago in an attempt to gain back that initial identity formed during his first mirror-stage.

Beyond examining the Pardoner’s physical descriptions in the General Prologue and information given about himself in his sermon, his tale can also act as evidence of the

Pardoner’s evolving into this second mirror-stage of his life. As Leni Marshall notes, the

“mirror can be literal or figurative” (54). While there is evidence of a literal mirror into which the Pardoner could look and see an image of which he chooses to adjust, the tale can act as a figurative mirror for how the Pardoner views himself. As aforementioned, the

Pardoner sees evidence of himself in both the revelers and the Old Man—revelers with whom he sees as his past self and the Old Man whom he worries he will become. Evidence that the Pardoner sees himself in the revelers can be seen in their similar goals. Both seek to commit horrible acts in God’s name. The Pardoner purposefully swindles his parishioners by subverting the preaching of God and the Church just as the revelers seek to

“sleen this false traytour Deeth… by Goddes dignitee” (Pardoner’s Tale, line 699).

Moreover, both commit acts of greed—the Pardoner seeks money by selling false relics and the revelers kill one another in order to steal the most money. The Pardoner, after preaching for so long on “Radix malorum est Cupiditas” must recognize both his own greed and that of the revelers (Pardoner’s Prologue, line 334). The revelers, then, seem to act for the Pardoner as a reflection of who he once was and who he is still trying to be during this new stage of his life.

Moreover, support that tales can be proof of the fear of old age is established in fourteenth century literature. Alicia Nitecki asserts that O’Hanlon 34

the episode with the old man and the roisters in the Pardoner’s Tale, then derives its

structural elements from the conventional treatment of age. Similarly, the old man’s

moral nature may be better understood in the terms of literature on aging. The most

frequent way to depict the aged and their miseries in the fourteenth century was to

concentrate on physical appearances. (78)

The Old Man seems to follow this convention. He describes himself as wasting away: “Lo, how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin!” (Pardoner’s Tale, line 732). Moreover, he has

“hoor upon his heed” (Pardoner’s Tale, line 743). The Old Man’s white-haired head and wrinkled, incapacitated body are reflective of physical decrepitude. And, through this description of his aged features, Nitecki believes that Chaucer shows that “the miserable period of old age is either punishment or atonement” (77). Here, the Old Man most certainly feels punished in that he cannot die. Instead, “he is the human spirit trapped by and in the world” (Nitecki 82). If the Old Man is reflective of the Pardoner’s fears of aging— a process which is portrayed as horrible and never-ending in the tale—then the Pardoner most certainly views getting older as a punishment he must eventually undergo without reprieve, just as the Old Man must forever walk the earth.

Moreover, the Old Man also fears death, which is also part of the fourteenth- century’s portrayal of the aged. Nitecki argues that “equally conventional is the old man’s fear of coming to harm at the hands of the rioters. That fear reflects the old men’s heightened sense of vulnerability and isolation” (77). The Old Man cannot defend himself and must therefore fear harm that could come to him. To confirm such a belief, Marshall notes that “in meconnaissance, an individual can experience the cycling out of social power, because the person has lost a social identity, one that the world responded to in known O’Hanlon 35 ways” (59). The revelers do not heed the Old Man’s warnings towards death; his position in society is no long effectual because of his age and plight. If the Old Man is reflective of the

Pardoner’s future fears, he could very well fear losing the control he has, both over his body and over those whom he swindles. These fears begin to arise at a point in the Pardoner’s life where he must look towards a future very different from the one he may have envisioned in youth as a reveler, revealing that he is struggling with this second mirror- stage. He no longer sees the self of the past, does not know how to view his future, and cannot corroborate the two—fears seen in the physical appearances of the revelers and Old

Man.

This idea that the Old Man reveals the Pardoner’s fears as he ages during this second-mirror-stage of his life can also be analyzed through the lens of the Pardoner’s fears of what will happen to him once he dies after having lived a morally corrupt life. While

“Chaucer stresses [the Old Man’s] longing for death,” he also stresses “his sense of desolation” (Nitecki 78). This desolation can come from the fact that “in this tale, the deathless world is not simply a literary conception but a trope for human longing and need for transcendence” (Nitecki 82). The Pardoner must ultimately die, but the future he will face after his spirit leaves his body is a question the Pardoner must confront. Arguably,

“the suggestion that the old man is excluded from death together with the peculiarity of the relationship between age and death creates an uncertainty about his moral nature. Since neither Death nor Earth accepts him, there is the sense that he is being punished” (81). The

Old Man is relegated to wandering misery because he cannot transcend to heaven. On earth, the Pardoner also does not feel accepted. He is not accepted by his peers and is also falsely accepted by those whom he swindles. Those who know of what he does view him O’Hanlon 36 with horror, like the Host. The vision of his potential future, Nitecki argues, “does not fulfill man’s real psychological needs, and the old man exemplifies the horror of a never-ending existence and of the denial of transcendence. Eternal life in a fallen world means eternal old age, bleakness, misery, and desire for release” (82). The Old Man cannot transcend to the spiritual afterlife because he cannot die. The readers do not know much about the Old

Man’s morality, yet he seems to be ready to move from this world to the next for he wants have his “bones been at reste” (Pardoner’s Tale, line 733). The Old Man seems ready to die and feels comfortable moving on to the afterlife, even if it is merely a means to end his suffering. However, he cannot die. He is forced to endure his life on earth. Perhaps, then, the Old Man is representative of the Pardoner’s fears of actually dying, ones he must begin to actualize as he grows older and comes to terms with this second mirror-stage.

If the Pardoner fears death, it could be either because he wishes to continue living or because he fears the ramifications of dying as the revelers do. Indeed, the Old Man says that he cannot find anyone that wolde change his youthe for myn age; / And therefore moot I han myn age stille, / As long time as it is Goddes wille” (Pardoner’s Tale, lines 724-25). The

Old Man is unable to go backwards and become young again; he cannot re-attain the first mirror-stage of youth that he initially envisioned. No one can. Unfortunately, the revelers dismiss the Old Man’s plea and also refuse to give their age as they value youth. Nitecki asserts, even, that the Old Man “is still alive because the world clings to youth and refuses age. In this sense, the man is the victim of a corrupt world” (81). In other words, people attach themselves to this first mirror-stage and believe they can attain the image of self they initially see in youth by continually striving for it. Yet, “the contrast between youth and age underlies the significant difference between the old man and the rioters in their O’Hanlon 37 attitudes toward death. The senex desires death because he suffers from infirmities of old age. The juevenes attempt to overcome death because they are young, and wish to perpetuate their life of riotous pleasures” (Steadman 75). The young avoid death in order to stay young and embrace the image of youth first seen in the first mirror-stage, and the very old seek to die having embraced their second mirror-stage and realities of death.

Death, eventually, cannot be avoided, and “by presenting the old man mimetically, rather than didactically, [Chaucer] forces an identification with him and, in doing so, shows death to be a spiritual and psychological necessity” (83). Even if the Pardoner sought to continue living forever, he must eventually come to terms with his second mirror-stage and recognize that he will at some point die.

The Pardoner, though, may very rightly fear death, especially the spiritual aspect of it, because of the life he has led. In fourteenth-century literature, one avenue to achieve

“vengeance on old age and death may be had through love and the Church” (Nitecki 80). By being religious and spiritually focused, death may appear as a positive end to one’s life.

Furthermore, a spiritual life can help with the transition from first mirror-stage to the second one in that the “world expands” past death; yet, “for others, it shrinks” (Marshall

61). When there is a positive aspect to aging—in this case becoming closer to God—the second mirror-stage can be a positive one. Yet, for those who fear death and the process of change, it can become, as it is for the Pardoner, quite horrible. The Old Man, Steadman argues, is aware of “la condition humaine. His poverty itself is emblematic; he can take nothing with him to the grace except his shroud” (80). The Old Man seeks to join his mother in death. The same story, though, “reflects the Pardoner’s spiritual plight—it expresses his longing for oblivion, for a return to the womb, or for another birth; and it O’Hanlon 38 portrays a circumstance, like his own, in which no such release in permitted” (Howard 54).

The Pardoner cannot return to the past, to that first mirror-stage. He cannot, like the Old

Man, go back to the earth as his moral nature is so corrupt. In fact, the Pardoner is, even during this middle crisis, more concerned with his worldly goods instead of spiritual ones.

For example, says of himself that “what, trowe ye, the whyles I may prehce / And winne gold and silver for I teche, / That I wol live in povert willfully?” (Pardoner’s Prologue, lines

439-41). Here, the Pardoner admits that he would not choose to live in poverty when he could continue to deceive people and have wine, gold, silver, and more. He knowingly subverts the teachings of the Church to make a profit, revealing his sinful nature. His story, though, creates inherent irony. Howard argues that “the trickster Pardoner is ironically tricked by his own story. As his whole tale in its aura of dreamlike unreality reflects his inner turmoil, its outcome is a warning of his own future which he cannot heed” (55). The

Pardoner knows his corrupt self of the past and has even come to terms with who he is, as evidenced by his admitting his faults and sins to the other pilgrims. Yet, even though he admits these flaws, he has not yet changed them. The key word there, though, is “yet.”

Howard seems to say that the Pardoner “cannot heed” his own advice and seek to return to a spiritual path. However, if the Pardoner is indeed at this crossroads in his life, he has the potential to change and attempt to avoid the path he fears, which is being endlessly trapped in an aged torment, reflecting on his horrific misdeeds before dying a death that would most likely not lead to heaven. The Pardoner could, as Marshall believes is possible, change his ways and learn to no longer deceive strangers and profit off falsehoods. The likelihood of such a scenario is slim, as seen through his purposeful insulting of the Host and his desire to continue to sell false relics to the other pilgrims. However, such a possibility must O’Hanlon 39 exist as the Pardoner still ends his tale and his pilgrimage in his middle years, as far as readers can know with this unfinished work, during this second mirror-stage, a time for possible change.

Regardless, “The Pardoner’s Tale” does not have a character just like the Pardoner— someone who is middle aged, who has done wrongs but recognizes them and still has a chance to change his ways. Instead, it shows the two other stages of life: one of youth and rashness and one of age and regret. The Pardoner, by not adding a character exactly reflective of himself instead shows himself to be in between these two positions. He has already committed horrible crimes—ones which he acknowledges—and sees his potential for the future in which he wanders around as an old, decrepit man who is aware of his sins and has not yet died. Being in this middle stage reveals that the Pardoner is in this second mirror-stage of his life. He no longer recognizes the image of the youthful reveler (though he might seek to dress like one) and is afraid of the future he might inhabit. He still has a choice of how to move forward. Perhaps the Pardoner must continue his type of

“martyrdom” as Howard believes, continuing to reveal his corrupt nature while at the same time being corrupt in order to teach others not to be like him. Perhaps continuing such acts would allow him to be like the Old Man, seeking death to be free from his continued sinful torment on earth, but knowing that he has done some good. Or perhaps, like Steadman believes, the Pardoner cannot recognize his own advice and will not and cannot deviate from his current course and must remain afraid of aging and grow into his grotesque self, both physically and spiritually. Either way, the opportunity remains. The Pardoner’s path is not yet set. His second mirror-stage provides the option for either Pardoner. Moreover, both options reveal the second mirror-stage in middle life is not the ultimate punishment— O’Hanlon 40 it is what comes after middle life (old age) that is the true torture, either as a burden that must be borne or a torment that must be enacted.

O’Hanlon 41

Chapter 5: Conclusions About Medieval Society and Aging

The Pardoner’s reactions to his potential future self reveal a dislike of growing to a great age, an attitude that appears reflective of those in medieval society. Old age does not appear to provide any real benefits, and Chaucer reveals such a belief through the Pardoner and his tale. Elizabeth Hatcher argues that Chaucer “made the Old Man define his own meaning by his behavior in a meaningful context,” which is, ironically, the revelers’ quest

(246). Hatcher analyzes the irony inherent in their quest in that if they kill Death, then they will only become older like the Old Man whom they confront and dislike. And, the Old Man shows that aging is a negative attribute. Hatcher notes that the revelers “take it for granted that life and youth are synonyms; they fail to see that if they carry out their plan, Death will die indeed, but Old Age will live on forever. Thus physical immortality will be a curse, not a blessing” (247). The Old Man would be doomed, as would, ultimately the revelers. Mark

Pelen, in analyzing death in “The Pardoner’s Tale,” agrees, stating that “an attempt to conceive of immortality in human, or material, terms can only lead to dissonance and confusion” (8). The idea of living forever may sound positive in theory, but the idea of growing older year by year is less appealing. Harold Bloom, in his The Western Canon, even goes so far as to say that “the Pardoner is a displaced spirit, exulting in deception even as he neglects his genius for evoking the terrors of eternity” (125). Here, Bloom describes eternity as a “terror,” showing that living to an old age where one is withering away is a horrible fate.

Other texts medieval writers and scholars would have known seem to concur.

Hacker analyzes the myth of Midas, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Virgil’s Aeneid. In all of them, characters seek but cannot find death (248-49). Age appears as a curse for many O’Hanlon 42 characters that are old, denying people access to heaven while at the same time afflicting infirmities upon them. Even the Reeve from The Canterbury Tales seems to dislike his own aging. He knows that his “grass-tyime is doon, [his] fodder now forage” (Reeve’s Prologue, lines 3868). The Reeve compares his life to the seasons, noting that his youth like the grass in springtime is over and life, the fodder, is now laid up for winter. Knowing he is old and nearing the end of his life, he acknowledges that

‘but if I fare as dooth an open-ers—

The ike fruyt is ever lenger the wers,

Til it be roten in mulock or in stree

We olde men, I drede, so fare we.’ (Reeve’s Prologue, lines 3871-3874)

Here, the Reeve compares himself to dried up, rotten fruit that only grows worse—a horrific view of the self in his old age. Yet, the Reeve does not stop describing what old age is like there. He actually continues: “‘Foure gleedes han we, which I shal devyse – /

Avauntyng, liyng, anger, coveitise; / Thise foure sparkles longen unto eelde’” (The Reeve’s

Prologue, lines 3883-885). The Reeve believes that old men only have boasting, lying, anger, and greed left to live with—none of which are qualities that sound positive. In addition, the Reeve bemoans the act of actually living:

‘Oure olde lemes mowe wel been unweelde,

But wyl ne shal nat faillen, that is sooth.

And yet ik have alwey a coltes tooth,

As many a yeer as it is passed henne

Syn that my tappe of lif bigan to renne.

For sikerly, whan I was bore, anon O’Hanlon 43

Deeth drough the tappe of lyf and leet it gon,

And ever sithe hath so the tappe yronne

Til that almoost al empty is the tonne.’ (Reeve’s Prologue, lines 3886-894).

Once a person is born, he is already in the act of dying. Like a cask of wine that has been tapped, life drips slowly on. And, while getting older, people hold on to their youthful desires, but can no longer attain them—ideas that are reminiscent of the Old Man’s desire to exchange his age for youth as he misses it. Instead, after achieving great age, though the

Reeve would not likely call it an achievement, one has nothing left in the cask, no matter how much a person bemoans his fate:

The streem of lyf now droppeth on the chymbe.

The sely tonge may wel rynge and chymbe

Of wrecchednesse that passed is ful yoore;

With olde folk, save dotage, is namoore!"

With old folk, save dotage, there is no more!’ (Reeve’s Prologue, lines 3883-

898).

Old men, according to the Reeve, have nothing left but to live out whatever life has been left to them—a life comprised of a decrepit body and a dearth of hope. The Reeve seems to view life similarly to the Old Man, neither of whom are figures the Pardoner would like to become. Other known ancient texts as well as medieval texts, then, including another tale from The Canterbury Tales, lend credence to the Pardoner’s fears of aging.

Not only does analyzing the Pardoner’s tale as a figurative mirror for the Pardoner’s second mirror stage reveal a contempt for old age, it also reveals that youth is a time of folly where people are unable to recognize the mistakes they have made as they are in the O’Hanlon 44 process of reaching their ideal first recognized in the initial mirror stage. Hatcher believes that Chaucer masters “the formidable effect of the Old Man by blending in him the traditional figures of the aged person who cannot die and the old man who warns the hero of his folly…the man who ages but cannot die teaches contemptus mundi because he is living proof that to love the material world as an end in itself is folly” (250). The revelers did not heed the warnings of the Old Man with regards to avoiding death, and their greed resulted in finding (their own) deaths. Other texts medieval writers would have been familiar with also show young heroes being foolhardy. Paris steals Helen from Menelaus, inciting a war that destroys his own city. Achilles believes himself to be invincible, and yet dies because of his own hubris. Odysseus, too, is overcome by pride, offends the gods, and must travel for two decades before returning home. In Chaucer’s contemporary Roman de la Rose, the man character undergoes a lengthy and somewhat foolhardy quest for love.

Each of these figures views himself as an adventurer or hero and believes himself to be able to conquer all odds. However, not each of them reaps the rewards of their quests, with several ending in a similar state as the revelers from the Pardoner’s tale.

This state of uncertainty surrounding the recognition of the second mirror-stage, however, is not one that seems to be overly analyzed in the Middle Ages. Not much literature appears on the process of recognizing what is termed today as a “mid-life crisis.”

Many characters in tragedies have a “moment of recognition or enlightenment” of their own flaws in the process of their downfalls, but rarely, if at all, do characters in medieval stories have to contend with their own futures in a way that causes them to reevaluate who they are and what they will become. Analyzing the Pardoner in his second mirror-stage, then, allows the reader to understand that the process of coming to this middle age in life is O’Hanlon 45 not so different from how people tend to react to it today. There is fear, concern, re- evaluation, re-inventing, and a desire to revert to a more youthful stage. The Pardoner shows that people, as they do today, struggle with seeing their bodies physically change in the mirror. Just as the Pardoner seeks to dress in a more youthful manner, so do people today. Just as the Pardoner recognizes his own misdeeds of his past, so often do we. Just as the Pardoner fears the future of old age and all that it entails, so do humans of the twenty- first century. And, just as the Pardoner has spiritual concerns about the afterlife, so does modern humanity. The Pardoner acts, in a sense, as the everyman of middle age—one who still exists in today’s society, yet seems to be underrepresented in literature of the Middle

Ages. People struggle with how to define themselves, and have even further difficulties when it comes time to re-assess everything they previously thought they knew about who they were. The Pardoner shows those fears in reality, and examining his character through the lens of the second mirror-stage opens up connections to the most basic human fears and desires, ones that, as the Pardoner shows, are centuries old, even if literature of that time did not depict them. And, if tradition holds true, the Pardoner’s tale, fears, hopes, and regrets of four hundred years ago are ones that will continue to resonate with the human condition for centuries to come.

O’Hanlon 46

Works Cited

Beidler, Peter G. “The Plague and Chaucer's Pardoner.” The Chaucer Review, vol. 16, no. 3,

1982, pp. 257–269. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25093795.

Bloom, Harold. “Chaucer: The Wife of Bath, The Pardoner, and Shakespearean Character.”

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, Harcourt, 1994, pp. 105-126.

Canby, Henry Seidel. “Some Comments on the Sources of Chaucer's ‘Pardoner's

Tale.’” Modern Philology, vol. 2, no. 4, 1905, pp. 477–487. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/432412.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue, edited by V.

A. Kolve and Glending Olson, W. W. Norton, 2005.

David, Alfred. “Criticism and the Old Man in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale.” College English, vol.

27, no. 1, 1965, pp. 39–44. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/373708.

Demaitre, Luke. “The Care and Extension of Old Age in Medieval Medicine.” Aging and the

Aged in Medieval Europe: Selected Papers from the Annual Conference of the Centre

for Medieval Studies, edited by Michael M. Sheehan, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval

Studies, 1990, pp. 3-22.

Dutton, Paul Edward. “Beyond the Topos of Senescence: The Political Problems of Aged

Carolingian Rulers.” Aging and the Aged in Medieval Europe: Selected Papers from the

Annual Conference of the Centre for Medieval Studies, edited by Michael M. Sheehan,

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990, pp. 75-94.

Gilleard, Chris. "Aging and Old Age in Medieval Society and the Transition of Modernity."

Journal of Aging and Identity, vol. 7, no. 1, 2002, pp. 25-41. OhioLINK Electronic

Journal Center, rave.ohiolink.edu/ejournals/article/324899935. O’Hanlon 47

Ginsberg, Warren. “Preaching and Avarice in the Pardoner’s Tale.” Geoffrey Chaucer’s The

Pardoner’s Tale: Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom,

Chelsea House, 2000, pp. 63-77. Originally published in Mediaevalia, vol. 2, 1976.

Green, Richard Firth. “Jean Gobi's Pardoner Tales.” The Chaucer Review, vol. 45, no. 3, 2011,

pp. 340–348. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/chaucerrev.45.3.0340.

Hatcher, Elizabeth R. “Life without Death: The Old Man in Chaucer's ‘Pardoner's Tale.’” The

Chaucer Review, vol. 9, no. 3, 1975, pp. 246–252. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/25093311.

Heath, Kay. "In the Eye of the Beholder: Victorian Age Construction and the Specular Self."

Victorian Literature and Culture 34.1 (2006): 27-45. Web.

Herlihy, David. “Age, Property, and Career in Medieval Society.” Aging and the Aged in

Medieval Europe: Selected Papers from the Annual Conference of the Centre for

Medieval Studies, edited by Michael M. Sheehan, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval

Studies, 1990, pp. 143-158.

Howard, Donald R. “’Modernizing’ Chaucer.” Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale:

Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House,

2000, pp. 49-62. Originally published in The Idea of The Canterbury Tales,

University of California Press, 1976.

Johnston, Adrian. “Jacques Lacan.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University,

2 April 2013, plato.stanford.edu/entries/lacan.

Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits, A Selection. Edited by Malcome Bowie. Translated by Alan Sheridan,

Routledge, 2008. O’Hanlon 48

Leicester, Jr., H. Marshall. “’Synne Horrible’: The Pardoner’s Exegesis of His Tale, and

Chaucer’s.” Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale: Bloom’s Modern Critical

Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, 2000, pp. 79-102. Originally

published in Acts of Interpretation: The Text in Its Contexts 700-1600: Essays on

Medieval and Renaissance Literature in Honor of E. Talbot Donaldson, Pilgrim Books,

1962.

Lewry, P. Osmund. “Study of Aging in the Arts Faculty of the Universities of Paris and

Oxford.” Aging and the Aged in Medieval Europe: Selected Papers from the Annual

Conference of the Centre for Medieval Studies, edited by Michael M. Sheehan,

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990, pp. 23-38.

Mann, Jill. “Medieval Estates Satire and the General Prologue. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The

General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House

Publishers, 1988, pp. 21-36.

Marshall, L. "Through (with) the Looking Glass: Revisiting Lacan and Woodward in

"Méconnaissance," the Mirror Stage of Old Age." Feminist Formations, vol. 24 no. 2,

2012, pp. 52-76. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/ff.2012.0022.

Nitecki, Alicia K. “The Convention of the Old Man's Lament in the ‘Pardoner's Tale.’” The

Chaucer Review, vol. 16, no. 1, 1981, pp. 76–84. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/25093779.

Patterson, Lee. “The Subjection of Confession: The Pardoner and the Rhetoric of Penance.”

Chaucer and the Subject of History, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, pp. 367-

421. O’Hanlon 49

Pelen, Marc M. “Murder and Immortality in Fragment VI (C) of the ‘Canterbury Tales’:

Chaucer's Transformation of Theme and Image from the ‘Roman De La Rose.’” The

Chaucer Review, vol. 29, no. 1, 1994, pp. 1–25. JSTOR, JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/25095868.

Rice, F. Philip. Adult Development and Aging. Allyn and Bacon, 1986.

Richardson, Gudrun. "The Old Man in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale: An Interpretative Study of

His Identity and Meaning." Neophilologus, vol. 87, no. 2, 2003, pp. 323-337.

OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center,

rave.ohiolink.edu/ejournals/article/316409221.

Rogers, Dorothy MacKellar. The Adult Years. Prentice-Hall, 1982.

Rosenthal, Joel T. “Retirement and Life Cycle in Fifteenth-Century England.” Aging and the

Aged in Medieval Europe: Selected Papers from the Annual Conference of the Centre

for Medieval Studies, edited by Michael M. Sheehan, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval

Studies, 1990, pp. 173-188.

Ruggiers, Paul G. “The Pardoner’s Tale.” The Art of the Canterbury Tales, University of

Wisconsin Press, 1989, pp.121-130.

Steadman, John M. “Old Age and Contemptus Mundi in The Pardoner’s Tale.” Twentieth

Century Interpretations of The Pardoner’s Tale, edited by Dewey R. Faulkner,

Spectrum, 1937, pp. 70-82. Originally published in Medium Ævum, vol. 33, 1964, pp.

121-30.

Woodward, Kathleen. “Instant Repulsion: Decrepitude, the Mirror Stage, and the Literary

Imagination.” Kenyon Review, 1983, pp. 43-66.