Nominalism is the belief that signifiers, appearances, and felt and sensed reality have no weight and do not show the deeper truth. In the Canterbury Tales, especially in the Prologue and the Pardoner's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer affirms nominalism. In the Pardoner's prologue, the Pardoner admits that he is not what he seems and that his relics are fake. In his paradoxical tale, the Pardoner condemns the vice of avarice, of which he is guilty. Although the tale means what it appears to mean regarding morality, for the Pardoner the words he speaks have no moral value. Chaucer not only asserts nominalism in the prologue and tale of the Pardoner, but also in other parts of the book, such as in the disclaimers of various narrators. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer uses his characters and their tales to assert nominalism. The Pardoner is a noble ecclesiastic who sells indulgences. Being a churchman, he seems holy, pious and better than ordinary people, but in reality he is no less a sinner than anyone else. In his prologue he admits that he is deceptive and that his relics are not authentic. He says that his “intention is to earn money, not to cast out sins,” and that he would never “intentionally live in poverty” (Chaucer 511-513). He preaches with arrogance to disguise his true intentions. His social status as a forgiver is true in name only. A true Forgiver would live like the apostles and be concerned with helping sinners, but the Forgiver admits that he wants “money, wool, cheese, and corn, even if it be given to him by the poorest page, or the poorest widow in the village, though she the children will starve” (513). Chaucer reveals through the Pardoner that people are not what they seem. The relationship... in the center of the card... is not what it appears. They are deceptive because they do not reflect the narrator's opinions; they reflect the people whose stories are told. Chaucer uses his characters and their stories to assert nominalism. The Forgiver and his story demonstrate that he is a forgiver in name only: his social status does not reflect who he truly is. The metaphor that Death is a man in the Pardoner's Tale is not to be taken literally because it actually symbolizes the plague. The disclaimers provided by the various narrators reveal that their words are deceptive: they appear to reflect the narrators' opinions, but this is not the case. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer asserts nominalism and destroys the convention that things are what they appear to be. Works Cited Chaucer, Geoffrey, A. Kent Hieatt, and Constance B. Hieatt. The Canterbury Tales. Toronto: Bantam, 1971. Print.