Sandy Feinstein                                                                                              Neal Woodman

Penn State Berks                                                                                             USGS

Shrews, Rats, and a Polecat in the Pardoner’s Tale

Vermin, etymologically, would seem to relate to something wormlike. In the Pardoner’s Tale, the vermin are explicitly identified as small mammals: rats and a polecat. We look at the “materiality of these animals,” both what was known about them and their reputation.  In addition, we consider a third type of vermin, the shrew, whose perceived nature in some ways reflects those of the human creatures in this tale who are referred to as shrews.  Like the rats and the polecat, shrews—both animal and human—are familiar types in the medieval agrarian landscape. We examine the textual and taxonomic interrelationships among these three creatures and what they might mean in the tale for both tellers of tales, the companion who invents a story scapegoating the rats and a polecat and the Pardoner who tells the tale. In natural histories and in bestiaries, these three animals are seen as related, possibly interchangeable forms. It was thought that one could even breed with the other.

The passage we focus on (VI, 835-867), and the animals in it, have not received much scholarly attention; when mentioned at all, the focus has been on how the animals serve rhetorically, namely as the villains in a tale one character invents to persuade the apothecary to sell him poison that he would use to kill his companions. We redirect the emphasis to the animals themselves, what is said about them that does not necessarily accurately represent them, but which might be accepted as true or likely given contemporary understanding of their behaviors and natures. To this purpose, we consider etymology, bestiary descriptions, natural history descriptions, and empirical evidence, what could have been observed. That shrews were considered “venomous,” for example, has ramifications for the embedded tale about the ravaging polecat and rats the character maligns in order to kill his companions and for the larger tale the Pardoner admits to spitting forth with venom.

The crimes attributed to the rats and polecat are a convenient fiction serving a murderous motive, just as the Pardoner’s Tale is used by its teller as a convenient fiction to serve his avaricious interests. In addition to gluttony, avarice, and murder, this tale reveals the commission of another sin, one against God’s smaller, typically unappreciated creatures who are falsely accused, as ironic as this particular sin may seem considering the particular animals in question.  These animals cannot refute the charges and few would speak for them; but, in this case, at least, they don’t suffer the ultimate consequences for the crimes of vermin.  Indeed, the intended sin for which the poison is purchased, premeditated murder, far exceeds any destructive actions attributed to either these imagined creatures or the material rats or polecats upon which such behavior could be based.  Here, the poison is in the very soul of the Shrews, as it is in the spiritually bankrupt teller of their tale.