Chaucer's 'The Pardoner's Tale' Mentions Cheese
Poet involved
What happened
In Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Pardoner's Tale,' part of 'The Canterbury Tales' (c. 1387–1400), the Pardoner explicitly lists cheese among the comforts of his corrupt life, saying 'I wol have moneye, wolle, cheese, and whete.' This casual mention reflects the familiarity of cheese in late medieval English society and its place in the poetic imagination as a symbol of material desire and worldly pleasure.
Literary impact
Chaucer's inclusion of cheese in the Pardoner's list of worldly goods underscores the moral critique embedded in his poetry, where food often serves as a marker of greed and corruption. This usage influenced later English poets, including Edmund Spenser and John Milton, who employed food imagery to explore ethical and spiritual themes. Chaucer's reference also demonstrates how cheese could function as a shorthand for earthly temptation, a motif that would persist in English literature.
Source: Wikipedia
