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Article: Chaucerian Tragedy.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Modern Language Review
- Article date:
- July 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Modern Humanities Research Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Chaucerian Tragedy. By HENRY ANSGAR KELLY. Cambridge and New York: Brewer. 1997. xi + 297 pp. 45 [pounds sterling]; $78.
That definitions of tragedy are fraught with difficulty is a truth universally acknowledged; the problem is more acute in discussing a culture where knowledge of the originary Greek texts and commentaries was nonexistent or partial. Henry Ansgar Kelly is a scrupulous guide to divergent medieval notions of those texts and understandings (both etymological and semantic) of the word itself. Where this learned book is less successful is in the persuasiveness of its interpretations of particular tragedies.
Kelly seems torn between exegesis of ...