Chaucerian Tragedy

Author / Editor
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.

Title
Chaucerian Tragedy

Published
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997.

Physical Description
xi, 297 pp.

Description
Chaucer was the first to consider Boccaccio's stories tragedies. But unlike Boccaccio, who served a cautionary moralism and wished to stress retributive justice, Chaucer aimed primarily at sympathy and empathy, developing a generic theory that included all kinds of falls and misfortunes and that set him apart from writers who simply wrote ably on the theme of mutability or who had a keen sense of "lacrimae rerum."
With TC, Chaucer introduced the word "tragedy" into English, established its meaning for later generations, and wrote the first tragedy with any claims to greatness since the Greek tragedies.

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde.
Monk and His Tale