From Chaucers Pardoner to Shakespeares Iago

In The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages the American critic Harold Bloom claims that Shakespeare drew on Chaucers Pardoner when creating the villain Iago for his Othello. This book turns Blooms observation of influences within the canon of Western literature into a more complex intermedial analysis of dramatic and literary traditions at the waning of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance. The discussion of verbal and non-verbal codes in Chaucers presentation of the Pardoner and Shakespeares depiction of Iago sheds light on the various strands of the Vices development, and shows that Chaucers pilgrim, who descends obliquely from the stage Vices, stands at the very beginning of the Vice tradition, while Iago is a late development of him, who adapts his role to new dramatic challenges.