Summaries of a Few of Chaucer’s Stories

By Daniel Zimmermann

All the stories summarized in this e-book come from the “The Canterbury Tales” of Geoffrey Chaucer. Included are “The Pardoner’s Tale,” “The Knight’s Tale,” “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” “The Friar’s Tale,” “The Physician’s Tale,” “The Lawyer’s Tale,” and “The Squire’s Tale.” Three of my seven reviews are based on Chaucer’s original Middle English text, which is presented in Peter Beidler’s edition of “The Canterbury Tales.” For those who do not read Middle English, Peter Beidler presents a modern English translation.
The other four tales that I reviewed were not included in Peter Beidler’s edition. My reviews of these tales are based on modern English translations that I found on the Internet.
To make this work suitable for people of all ages, I omitted “The Miller’s Tale,” “The Reeve’s Tale,” and similar stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312408609

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Summaries of a Few of Chaucer’s Stories

Summaries of a Few of Chaucer’s Stories

By Daniel Zimmermann

Introduction

All the stories summarized in this e-book come from the The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. Included are The Pardoner’s Tale, The Knight’s Tale, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, The Friar’s Tale, The Physician’s Tale, The Lawyer’s Tale, and The Squire’s Tale. Three of my seven reviews are based on Chaucer’s original Middle English text, which is presented in Peter Beidler’s edition of The Canterbury Tales." For those who do not read Middle English, Peter Beidler presents a modern English translation.

The other four tales that I reviewed were not included in Peter Beidler’s edition. My reviews of these tales are based on modern English translations that I found on the Internet.

To make this work suitable for people of all ages, I omitted The Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, and similar stories.

A Summary of The Pardoner’s Tale

From the The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer, a fourteenth century English author, wrote a classic entitled The Canterbury Tales. In this work, a number of pilgrims journey to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. As they travel, they divert one another by telling stories. One of these storytellers is a questionable character called a pardoner, who makes money by selling forgiveness of sins.

The Pardoner's Tale is introduced by a lengthy prologue in which the pardoner explains his work with amazing frankness. When he comes to a church, he first displays the documents that he has received from the pope and other ecclesiastical dignitaries so that no one will harm him. Then he shows his relics and explains their virtue. For example, he has a marvelous mitten. If anyone sticks his hand in the mitten, his crops of wheat and oats are sure to prosper.

He brags about how much money he makes when people make offerings to his relics. In his sermons, he likes to preach against avarice so that the people will give more money to him. His salutary preaching causes people to repent, but he frankly admits that repentance is not his main purpose. He acknowledges that he is greedy and mainly wants to get the people's money. He does not want to live in poverty, and he dislikes manual labor. So he willingly takes money even from the poorest widow. He does not care if her children die of starvation.

After drinking a hearty draught