At some point every educated person needs to read Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer was the first great poet in the English language. Venerable Bede first wrote history; Chaucer wrote poetry. Chaucer did more than this: he wrote English social history. Chaucer’s pilgrims represent all facets of English social life. Chaucer was the first English author to try to do this.
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The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighlieri is one of the defining movments in western lilterature. It is a serious moral tale written in Italian (vs. Latin) and is the first serious poetry to be written in this language. It is a comedy (vs. tragedy) because it has a happy ending.

The Divine Comedy three parts: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Most people only read Inferno and that is too bad because Inferno is a description of hell; Paradise is a description of heaven.
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My favorite Shakespeare tragedy is Macbeth. I am tempted to nominate the melancholy Dane Hamlet who has been embraced by most American high school teachers. However, I agree with Charles Eliot who argues, “AMONG the tragedies of Shakespeare, Macbeth is noted for the exceptional simplicity of the plot and the directness of the action. Here is no underplot to complicate or enrich, hardly more than a glimpse of humor to relieve the dark picture of criminal ambition, only the steady march toward an inevitable catastrophe.”

One thing I like about this play is that there are unambiguous villians (Lady Macbeth) and unambiguous heroes (Banquo). I am sick to death of experiencing complicated, multi-faceted characters who are neither good nor bad and I want to spew them out of my mouth! No, give me a vicious Lady Macbeth and her wimpy husband Macbeth!
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Many of us think Michael Moore created a new genre. But not only are his satires low humor, vulgar, and terrible inaccurate, but they are not even unique. This sort of satire–done much better–was occurring centuries before Moore demeaned the whole thing.

For one thing Athenian, Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote three biting satires during the Peloponnesian War. He attacks everyone: the government, the army, and the populace.
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