Summoner’s Tale Puns

What a Summoner is The Summoner brings those accused of violating Church law to ecclesiastical court.

Appearance His face is covered in sores that no ointment can heal and his narrow eyes are covered by fierce, bushy eyebrows. So hideous is his face, in fact, that children are afraid of it. On top of that, the Summoner likes to eat smelly vegetables like onions, garlic, and leeks, so his breath is probably pretty bad

Personality This Summoner is a lecherous man. He gets drunk frequently, is irritable, and is not particularly qualified for his position. He spouts the few words of Latin he knows in an attempt to sound educated.

Previous Tale: Friar’s Tale The story centers around a corrupt summoner. In the tale, the summoner recounts various sins of his in a boastful manner. This includes bribery, corruption, extortion and a network of pimps and wenches acting as informants making this important clerical office seem more like a 14th-century protection racket.

Summoner’s Tale The Summoner gets back at the Friar in the beginning of his tale by telling a lewd story about how a man has a vision of hell in which millions of friars are living in the devil's butt.

Summoner’s Tale In the Summoner’s Tale, a friar begs for money from a dying man named Thomas and his wife, who have recently lost their child. The friar shamelessly exploits the couple’s misfortunes to extract money from them, so Thomas tells the friar that he is sitting on something that he will bequeath to the friars. The friar reaches for his bequest, and Thomas lets out an enormous fart. The friar complains to the lord of the manor, whose squire promises to divide the fart evenly among all the friars.

Puns In ars-metrike shal ther no man fynde, In the art of measuring (arithmetic) shall there no man find  Ars-metrike is a pun on “passing gas.” Ars-metrike is translated as “arithmetic” or “measuring.” “Arse” means “rear-end.” So the metric of the rear-end likely refers to “gas.” The Summoner is likely saying that no man is a better “gas- passer.” The pun equates church donations to farting, suggesting that donating to the church is a meaningless, silly act. Pretty dangerous.

Puns It is a homophonic pun, because “ars-metricke” sounds like “arithmetic.”