The Pardoner's Prologue, in which he freely admits that "For min entente is nat but or to winne,/And nothing for correcioun of sinne," (403-404) sets up an interesting commentary on the relationship between teller and tale. The pardoner makes it clear that he tells tales explicitly for his own profit, and their content does not reflect his own values, but rather what he thinks his audience wishes to hear from him. I wonder what Chuacer is trying to say here about his own relation to the morality which his tales sometimes seem to advise? Where exactly does morality fit into the Canterbury Tales and whose morality is it? The Chaucer-narrator-character dynamic which makes the source of any sentiment hard to locate is further complicated by the Pardoner's blatant hypocrisy in this case. We are fully aware of his actual avarice even as he vehemently insists
Til Crist hadde boght us with his blood agayn!
Lo, how deere, shortly for to sayn,
Aboght was thilke cursed vileynye!
Corrupt was al this world for glotonye.(501-504)
This leaves with a weird double consciousness that puts the intent of the story in even more uncertainty than usual; are we meant to disdain the admonitions against greed since they come from a corrupt source?
Even more interesting is the pardoner's attempt to lure the host into giving money to him after he has told his story, even though he has already told him he does not believe a word of it! Is the pardoner just hopelessly dense, or does he have faith in a story's power to convince apart from the motives or involvement of its teller?