Medieval Tragedy and the Genre of 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Author / Editor
Clough, Andrea.

Title
Medieval Tragedy and the Genre of 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Published
Medievalia et Humanistica 11 (1982): 211-27.

Description
Fourteenth-century practice recognized at least three categories of tragic narrative: "de casibus" tragedy, the Ovidian tale of the deserted heroine, and the tale of ill-fated lovers. In TC, Chaucer combined the first and last of these in a new type, "romance tragedy," which integrated the rise-and-fall structure of objective events with the subjective movements from joy to sorrow, thereby giving the tragic fall a new psychological significance.

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde.