The article is dedicated to the analysis of the tragic modus in Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem “Canterbury Tales”. It gives a brief description of the terms “tragedy” and “the tragic”, which are understood in the medieval sense, and discusses the variants of their usage in the English medieval tradition. The author of the article singles out three main types of the tragic in Chaucer’s work and analyzes their specificity using “Monk’s Tale”, “Man of Law’s Tale” and “Second Nin’s Tale” as examples. The first type of the tragic is a story of fallen princes which is modeled on the genre of exemplum, having the Boethian tradition as a fundament. The content of the narrative, which is connected with the second type of the tragic, is associated not with a person of high position, but with an ordinary one undergoing all kinds of disasters. Finally, the third type of the tragic is close to the genre of the saint’s life and describes the torment of a sinless character. In some cases, different types of tragic are mixed. All variations of this modus are associated with the theme of merciless fate and are devoid of comicality.