Friday, May 8, 2020

Chaucers Canterbury Tales - Comparing Dishonesty in The...

Dishonesty and Hypocrisy in The Physicians and Pardoners Tales Chaucer presents characters in the Physicians and Pardoners Tales who are very similar to each other in one important way. Although the characters seem on the surface to be mirror images of each other, they have an important underlying similarity: both the physician and the pardoner are not what they appear to be to most people. Both are hypocritical, although they show this hypocrisy in different ways. One way of seeing this hypocrisy, in the case of the physicians tale, is to examine the way the similarities and differences between the knight Virginius and the physician himself in terms of what he sees as moral actions. It seems fairly clear that†¦show more content†¦The tale as told by the physician, however, is problematic as a moral example, because (although Virginia may have had to submit to the judges rule that he live with her), there is nothing in Apius ruling that would have forced her to yield her chastity to him. She would still have had a moral choice when she submitted. It may be that the choice would have come to nothing but consentual or nonconsentual sex with Apius. This is still a very important distinction in Christian terms, because without yielding her consent, Virginia would have been guilty of no sin. It may have been that she would have been dishonored in the eyes of society if she was to live with the judge, but she would have committed no moral tr ansgression. By identifying himself with Virginius, by drawing on a similar story in the Biblical book of Judges to provide moral backing for his own story, and holding the tale up as a moral example of Christian behavior, the physician re-frames it in terms of Christian ethics, although it is set in ancient Rome. It is understandable (although perhaps unusual to the modern reader) that a father would rather see his daughter dead than sacrifice her eternal reward in heaven; but once it is realized that her eternal reward, within the context of this tale, is not at stake, it seems absurd that a father would rather have his

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