CLOSURE: Central Library will be closed Tuesday, July 21, through Saturday, July 25, while emergency repairs are made to the building’s cooling system. We expect to reopen Monday, July 27. Click for more details on holds, program schedules, and returns during the closure. 

Notice of Public Meeting: Kalamazoo Public Library Board of Trustees | July 27 | 5:30 pm | Central Library/Van Deusen Room. The packet of information for the meeting can be found on the library’s website. 

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The Canterbury Tales

Year

2024

Language

ENGLISH

Publication Information

Cactus

Summary

Writing at the end of a tragic and violent century, Chaucer portrays England as a discordant nation, where virtue prevails over vice and vice is an occasion for laughter rather than cause for indignation. To do so, he stages a group of pilgrims heading from London to Canterbury, who meet along the way and tell stories. There is a good-natured and somewhat prevaricating innkeeper, a modest and virtuous knight who has seen a thousand military campaigns, a learned but somewhat greedy medical doctor, and no shortage of civil servants, millers and farmers, good country parish priests, vain nuns and corrupt friars. The result is a cross-section of a mobile and restless society, whose characters seem almost like our contemporaries. Therein lies Chaucer's true masterpiece: in the vividness of the subjects depicted in the frame to the actual tales.

Subjects