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TRISTAN and ISOLT

Tristan and Isolt are second only to Lancelot and Guinevere as the great lovers of the Arthurian legends. The story of their tragic love has been the subject of numerous medieval and modern retellings. The medieval versions of the story are sometimes divided into two branches, called the courtly and the common versions. The former is represented by the Tristan of the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas, which was written in the latter part of the twelfth century. His version in turn influenced Gottfried von Strassburg, whose Tristan, written in the first decade of the thirteenth century, is one of the great romances of the Middle Ages, and the Old Norse Tristrams saga (1226). In this version, love is loftier and more courtly than in the common version. The love potion is of unlimited duration and Tristan's courtly skills are emphasized. The common version, represented by Béroul's late-twelfth-century Roman de Tristran, which like Eilhart von Oberge's Middle High German Tristrant, also written in the late twelfth century, has some elements considered less than courtly. For example, the love potion in these versions is of limited duration; and Isolt is turned over by Mark to a colony of lepers as punishment for her infidelity. There were many other medieval versions of the tale, including a long French prose romance, the Middle English poem Sir Tristrem, which was edited by Sir Walter Scott in 1804, and the account of the lovers' deeds in Malory's Morte d'Arthur, where the Tristan-Isolt-Mark triangle is a foil for the Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur triangle. The story has been equally popular in the modern period. Matthew Arnold, the first of the Victorians to treat the story, wrote his Tristram and Iseult in 1852. Tennyson's moralistic and condemnatory account of the lovers in the idyll "The Last Tournament" inspired Algernon Charles Swinburne to write Tristram of Lyonesse (1882), which he considered to be more medieval in tone because more sympathetic to the lovers. Numerous twentieth-century poets, playwrights and novelists have taken up the theme, including Thomas Hardy, John Masefield, Martha Kinross, Don Marquis, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, John Erskine, John Updike, and many others. (See the Bibliography of Modern Tristan and Isolt Literature in English for a complete list of these retellings.) It is also the subject of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, which was inspired by Gottfried's Tristan.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blakeslee, Merritt R. Love's Masks: Identity, Intertextuality, and Meaning in the Old French Tristan Poems. Arthurian Studies XV. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989.

Bromwich, Rachel. "The Tristan of the Welsh." In The Arthur of the Welsh. Ed. Rachel Bromwich, A.O. H. Jarman and Brynley Roberts. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991. Pp. 209-28.

Curtis, Renée L. Tristan Studies. M&uumlaut;nchen: Wilhelm Fink, 1969.

Eisner, Sigmund. The Tristan Legend: A Study in Sources. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969.

Loomis, Gertrude Schoepperle. Tristan and Isolt: A study of the Sources of the Romance. 2 vols. Second ed., expanded by a bibliography and critical essay on Tristan Scholarship since 1912 by Roger Sherman Loomis. New York: Burt Franklin, 1963.

Lupack, Alan. "Acting Out an Old Story: Twentieth-Century Tristan Plays." In Popular Arthurian Traditions. Ed. Sally Slocum. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992. Pp. 162-72.

Shirt, David J. The Old French Tristan Poems: A Bibliographical Guide. London: Grant & Cutler, 1980.

Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook. Ed. Joan Tasker Grimbert. New York: Garland, 1995.

You may also view a Bibliography of Modern Tristan and Isolt Literature in English.