Diagnosis, Medical Ethics, and Moral Authority in the <i>Pardoner’s Tale</i>

ABSTRACT In the Pardoner’s Tale, Chaucer evinces a surprising interest in the medical practice of diagnosis, leveraging diagnosis and its investment in etiology to interrogate how semiotic systems explain the relationship between a person’s body and moral authority. He references two semiotic systems that might make the Pardoner’s moral authority legible: one based on scholastic medical ethics and another on Galenic complexion theory. Neither system, however, fully accounts for the Pardoner’s body. Consequently, Chaucer elevates the semiotic dilemma in the tale from what is the right way to read the human body to whether there is a right way. This article uses medical discourse to show how Chaucer problematizes ideas of bodily semiotics. Indeed, Chaucer advances the annihilating possibility that there is no single way to interpret signs and that humans are left to muddle their way as best they can through a world full of competing semiotic systems.