"Allas, the shorte throte, the tendre mouth" : the sins of the mouth in the Canterbury Tales

The subject of this work is the capital vice gluttony and its manifold and complex presence in two of Chaucer’s tales, The Pardoner’s Tale and The Parson’s Tale. The following is one of the many interpretations possible and, undoubtedly, cannot and does not claim to be exhaustive. Precisely because the medieval debate on this vice – and the sins derived therefrom – is rich and abundant, I have attempted to focus on the wider social and cultural aspects of the two tales where the various levels of significance that they express are set, as well as on the peculiar linguistic-literary characteristics used to express these concepts. In effect, it is in such a wider perspective that looks beyond the pure textual aspects that we can construe the many varieties of relationships and exchanges between fact and fiction, or, more to the point, between historical fact and literary fact in a world and in an era where fact and fiction intersect, intertwine and mirror each other until they merge together. A kind of play on roles is thus created, where words and characters move around expressing thoughts, doubts, desires, passions, anxieties and limits of their human nature.