Tristan and Iseult
Encyclopedia
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
knight Tristan
Tristan
Tristan is one of the main characters of the Tristan and Iseult story, a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table featuring in the Matter of Britain...
(Tristram) and the Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
princess Iseult
Iseult
Iseult is the name of several characters in the Arthurian story of Tristan and Iseult. The most prominent is Iseult of Ireland, wife of Mark of Cornwall and adulterous lover of Sir Tristan. Her mother, the Queen of Ireland, is also named Iseult...
(Isolde, Yseult, etc.). The narrative predates and most likely influenced the Arthurian
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
romance of Lancelot
Lancelot
Sir Lancelot du Lac is one of the Knights of the Round Table in the Arthurian legend. He is the most trusted of King Arthur's knights and plays a part in many of Arthur's victories...
and Guinevere
Guinevere
Guinevere was the legendary queen consort of King Arthur. In tales and folklore, she was said to have had a love affair with Arthur's chief knight Sir Lancelot...
, and has had a substantial impact on Western art
Western art history
Western art is the art of the North American and European countries, and art created in the forms accepted by those countries.Written histories of Western art often begin with the art of the Ancient Middle East, Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Aegean civilisations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC...
, the idea of romantic love and literature
Western literature
Western literature refers to the literature written in the languages of Europe, including the ones belonging to the Indo-European language family as well as several geographically or historically related languages such as Basque, Hungarian, and so forth...
since it first appeared in the 12th century. While the details of the story differ from one author to another, the overall plot structure remains much the same.
Legend
Thomas of Britain
Thomas of Britain was a french poet of the 12th century. He is known for his Old French poem Tristan, a version of the Tristan and Iseult legend that exists only in eight fragments, amounting to around 3,300 lines of verse, mostly from the latter part of the story...
and Béroul
Béroul
Béroul was a Norman poet of the 12th century. He wrote Tristan, a Norman language version of the legend of Tristan and Iseult of which a certain number of fragments have been preserved; it is the earliest representation of the so-called "vulgar" version of the legend...
. Their sources could be traced back to the original, archetypal Celt
Celt
The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....
ic romance. Later traditions come from the Prose Tristan
Prose Tristan
The Prose Tristan is an adaptation of the Tristan and Iseult story into a long prose romance, and the first to tie the subject entirely into the arc of the Arthurian legend...
(c. 1240), which was markedly different from the earlier tales written by Thomas and Béroul. The Prose Tristan became the common medieval tale of Tristan and Iseult that would provide the background for the writings of Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur. The antiquary John Leland as well as John Bale believed him to be Welsh, but most modern scholars, beginning with G. L...
, the English author, who wrote Le Morte d'Arthur
Le Morte d'Arthur
Le Morte d'Arthur is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table...
(c. 1469).
The story and character of Tristan vary from poet to poet. Even the spelling of his name varies a great deal, although "Tristan" is the most popular spelling. Most versions of the Tristan story follow the same general outline.
After defeating the Irish knight Morholt, Tristan goes to Ireland to bring back the fair Iseult for his uncle King Mark
Mark of Cornwall
Mark of Cornwall was a king of Kernow in the early 6th century. He is most famous for his appearance in Arthurian legend as the uncle of Tristan and husband of Iseult, who engage in a secret affair.-The legend:Mark sent Tristan as his proxy to fetch his young bride, the Princess Iseult, from...
to marry. Along the way, they ingest a love potion which causes the pair to fall madly in love. In the courtly version, the potion's effects last for a lifetime; in the common versions, the potion's effects wane after three years. In some versions, they ingest the potion accidentally; in others, the potion's maker instructs Iseult to share it with Mark, but she deliberately gives it to Tristan instead. Although Iseult marries Mark, she and Tristan are forced by the potion to seek one another as lovers. Although the typical noble Arthurian character would be shamed from such an act, the love potion that controls them frees Tristan and Iseult from responsibility. The king's advisors repeatedly try to have the pair tried for adultery, but again and again the couple use trickery to preserve their façade of innocence. In Béroul's version, the love potion eventually wears off, and the two lovers are free to make their own choice as to whether they cease their adulterous lifestyle or continue.
As with the Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere love triangle, Tristan, King Mark, and Iseult all hold love for each other. Tristan honors, respects, and loves King Mark as his mentor and adopted father; Iseult is grateful that Mark is kind to her; and Mark loves Tristan as his son, and Iseult as a wife. But every night, they each have horrible dreams about the future. Tristan's uncle eventually learns of the affair and seeks to entrap his nephew and his bride. Also present is the endangerment of a fragile kingdom, the cessation of war between Ireland and Cornwall. Mark gets what seems proof of their guilt and resolves to punish them: Tristan by hanging and Iseult by burning on the stake, later putting her up in a lazar house (a leper colony). Tristan escapes on his way to the gallows by a miraculous leap from a chapel and rescues Iseult. The lovers escape into the forest of Morrois and take shelter there until they are discovered by Mark. They make peace with Mark after Tristan's agreement to return Iseult to Mark and leave the country. Tristan then travels on to Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
, where he marries (for her name and her beauty) Iseult of the White Hands, daughter of Hoel
Hoel
Hoel or Howel is a legendary king of Brittany and one of the oldest characters associated with Arthurian legend. He is the son of King Budic of Brittany, and serves as one of King Arthur's vassals and loyal allies...
of Brittany and sister of Sir Kahedin
Kahedin
Sir Kahedin is brother to Iseult of Brittany and the son of King Hoel of Brittany in Arthurian legend...
.
In the Prose Tristan
Prose Tristan
The Prose Tristan is an adaptation of the Tristan and Iseult story into a long prose romance, and the first to tie the subject entirely into the arc of the Arthurian legend...
and works derived from it, Tristan is mortally wounded by Mark, who treacherously strikes Tristan with a poisoned lance while the latter is playing a harp for Iseult. The poetic versions of the Tristan legend offer a very different account of the hero's death. According to Thomas' version, Tristan was wounded by a poison lance while attempting to rescue a young woman from six knights. Tristan sends his friend Kahedin to find Iseult, the only person who can heal him. Tristan tells Kahedin to sail back with white sails if he is bringing Iseult, and black sails if he is not. Iseult agrees to return to Tristan with Kahedin, but Tristan's jealous wife, Iseult of the White Hands, lies to Tristan about the colour of the sails. Tristan dies of grief, thinking that Iseult has betrayed him, and Iseult dies swooning over his corpse. Several versions of the Prose Tristan include the traditional account of Tristan's death found in the poetic versions. In some sources it states that two trees (hazel
Hazel
The hazels are a genus of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate northern hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family Betulaceae, though some botanists split the hazels into a separate family Corylaceae.They have simple, rounded leaves with double-serrate margins...
and honeysuckle
Honeysuckle
Honeysuckles are arching shrubs or twining vines in the family Caprifoliaceae, native to the Northern Hemisphere. There are about 180 species of honeysuckle, 100 of which occur in China; Europe, India and North America have only about 20 native species each...
) grow out of their graves and intertwine their branches so that they cannot be parted by any means. It was said that King Mark tried to have the branches cut 3 separate times, and each time, the branches grew back and intertwined, so therefore he gave up and let them grow.
Fairy
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
-king Oberon and marries a girl named Martha, who bears him a son named Mark.
The Tristan Stone
The Tristan Stone is located in Fowey, Cornwall and is a tall stone at 3 meters. It is at the entrance of Fowey.
Persian and Western
There are many theories present about the origins of Tristanian legend, but historians disagree over which is the most accurate. There is a "Tristan stone", with its inscription about Drust, but not all historians agree that the Drust referred to is the archetype of Tristan. There are references to March ap Meichion and Trystan in the Welsh TriadsWelsh Triads
The Welsh Triads are a group of related texts in medieval manuscripts which preserve fragments of Welsh folklore, mythology and traditional history in groups of three. The triad is a rhetorical form whereby objects are grouped together in threes, with a heading indicating the point of likeness...
, some of the gnomic poetry, Mabinogion
Mabinogion
The Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...
stories and in the late 11th century Life of St. Illtud
Illtud
Illtyd , was a Welsh saint, founder and abbot of Llanilltud Fawr in the Welsh county of Glamorgan...
.
Drystan's name appears as one of Arthur's advisers at the end of The Dream of Rhonabwy
The Dream of Rhonabwy
The Dream of Rhonabwy is a Middle Welsh prose tale. Set during the reign of Madog ap Maredudd, prince of Powys , it is dated to the late 12th or 13th century. It survives in only one manuscript, the Red Book of Hergest, and has been associated with the Mabinogion since its publication by Lady...
, an early 13th century tale in the Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
collection known as the Mabinogion
Mabinogion
The Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...
, and Iseult is listed along with other great men and women of Arthur's court in another, much earlier Mabinogion tale, Culhwch and Olwen
Culhwch and Olwen
Culhwch and Olwen is a Welsh tale about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors that survives in only two manuscripts: a complete version in the Red Book of Hergest, ca. 1400, and a fragmented version in the White Book of Rhydderch, ca. 1325. It is the longest of the surviving Welsh prose...
.
Different scholars suggest that the 11th century Persian story Vis u Ramin
Vis u Ramin
Vis and Rāmin is an ancient Persian love story. The epic was composed in poetry by the Persian poet Asad Gorgani in 11th century....
must have been the model for the Tristan legend because the similarities are too great to be coincidental.The evidence for the Persian origin of Tristan and Iseult is very circumstantial and different theories have been suggested how this Persian story reached the West, some suggesting story-telling exchanges during the crusades in Syrian court and through ministrels who had free access to both Crusader
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
and Saracen
Saracen
Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to a people who lived in desert areas in and around the Roman province of Arabia, and who were distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Middle Ages the term was expanded to include Arabs, and then all who professed the religion of Islam...
camps in the Holy Land.
Analogues
Possible Irish antecedents to the Tristan legend have received much scholarly attention. An ill-fated triantán an grá or love triangle features into a number of Irish works, most notably in the text called Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus GhráinneThe Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne
The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne is an Irish prose narrative surviving in many variants...
or The Pursuit of Diarmuid
Diarmuid Ua Duibhne
Diarmuid Ua Duibhne or Diarmid O'Dyna is a son of Donn and a warrior of the Fianna in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology. He is most famous as the lover of Gráinne, the intended wife of Fianna leader Fionn mac Cumhaill in The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne...
and Gráinne
Gráinne
Gráinne is the daughter of Cormac mac Airt in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology. She is one of the central figures in the Middle Irish text Finn and Gráinne and most famously, in the 17th-century tale The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne, which tells of her betrothal to Fionn mac Cumhaill, leader...
. In the story, the aging Fionn mac Cumhaill
Fionn mac Cumhaill
Fionn mac Cumhaill , known in English as Finn McCool, was a mythical hunter-warrior of Irish mythology, occurring also in the mythologies of Scotland and the Isle of Man...
takes the young princess, Gráinne, to be his wife. At the betrothal ceremony, however, she falls in love with Diarmuid, one of Fionn's most trusted warriors. Gráinne gives a sleeping potion to all present but him, eventually convincing him to elope with her. The fugitive lovers are then pursued all over Ireland by the Fianna
Fianna
Fianna were small, semi-independent warrior bands in Irish mythology and Scottish mythology, most notably in the stories of the Fenian Cycle, where they are led by Fionn mac Cumhaill....
. Another Irish analogue is Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin, preserved in the 14th century Yellow Book of Lecan
Yellow Book of Lecan
The Yellow Book of Lecan , or TCD MS 1318 , is a medieval Irish manuscript written no later than the dawn of the 15th century. It is currently housed at Trinity College, Dublin and should not be confused with the Great Book of Lecan.-Overview:The manuscript is written on vellum and contains 344...
. In this tale, Cano is an exiled Scottish king who accepts the hospitality of King Marcan of Ui Maile. His young wife, Credd, drugs all present, and then convinces Cano to be her lover. They try to keep a tryst while at Marcan's court, but are frustrated by courtiers. Eventually Credd kills herself and Cano dies of grief. In the Ulster Cycle there is the text Clann Uisnigh or Deirdre of the Sorrows
Deirdre
Deirdre or Derdriu is the foremost tragic heroine in Irish mythology and probably its best-known figure in modern times. She is often called "Deirdre of the Sorrows." Her story is part of the Ulster Cycle, the best-known stories of pre-Christian Ireland.-Legendary Biography:Deirdre was the...
in which Naoise mac Usnech
Naoise
In Irish mythology, Noíse or Noisiu was the nephew of King Conchobar mac Nessa of Ulster, and a son of Usnech , in the Ulster Cycle....
falls for Deirdre, who was imprisoned by King Conchobar mac Nessa
Conchobar mac Nessa
Conchobar mac Nessa was the king of Ulster in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. He ruled from Emain Macha .-Birth:...
due to a prophecy that Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
would plunge into civil war due to men fighting for her beauty. Conchobar had pledged to marry Deirdre himself in time to avert war, and takes his revenge on Clan Usnech. The death of Naoise and his kin leads many Ulstermen to defect to Connacht
Connacht
Connacht , formerly anglicised as Connaught, is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the west of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for...
, including Conchobar's stepfather and trusted ally Fergus mac Róich
Fergus mac Róich
Fergus mac Róich is a character of the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology...
, eventually precipitating the Táin Bó Cúailnge
Táin Bó Cúailnge
is a legendary tale from early Irish literature, often considered an epic, although it is written primarily in prose rather than verse. It tells of a war against Ulster by the Connacht queen Medb and her husband Ailill, who intend to steal the stud bull Donn Cuailnge, opposed only by the teenage...
.
Some scholars believe that Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe are two characters of Roman mythology, whose love story of ill-fated lovers is also a sentimental romance.The tale is told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.-Plot:...
, as well as the story of Ariadne at Naxos might have also contributed to the development of the Tristan legend. The sequence in which Tristan and Iseult die and become interwoven trees also parallels Ovid's love story of Baucis and Philemon
Baucis and Philemon
In Ovid's moralizing fable , which stands on the periphery of Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Baucis and Philemon were an old married couple in the region of Tyana, which Ovid places in Phrygia, and the only ones in their town to welcome disguised gods Zeus and Hermes , thus embodying the...
in which two lovers are transformed in death into two different trees sprouting from the same trunk. However this also occurs in the saga of Deidre of the Sorrows making the link more tenuous.
Association with King Arthur
In its early stages, the tale was probably unrelated to contemporary Arthurian literature, but the earliest surviving versions already incorporate references to Arthur and his court. The connection between Tristan and Iseult and the Arthurian legend was expanded over time, and sometime shortly after the completion of the Vulgate Cycle (or Lancelot-Grail Cycle) in the first quarter of the 13th century, two authors created the vast Prose Tristan, which fully establishes Tristan as a Knight of the Round Table who even participates in the Quest for the Holy GrailHoly Grail
The Holy Grail is a sacred object figuring in literature and certain Christian traditions, most often identified with the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and said to possess miraculous powers...
.
Courtly branch
The earliest representation of what scholars name the "courtly" version of the Tristan legend is in the work of Thomas of BritainThomas of Britain
Thomas of Britain was a french poet of the 12th century. He is known for his Old French poem Tristan, a version of the Tristan and Iseult legend that exists only in eight fragments, amounting to around 3,300 lines of verse, mostly from the latter part of the story...
, dating from 1173. Only ten fragments of his Tristan poem, representing six manuscripts, have ever been located: the manuscripts in Turin and Strassburg are now lost, leaving two in Oxford, one in Cambridge and one in Carlisle. In his text, Thomas names another trouvère
Trouvère
Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...
who also sang of Tristan, though no manuscripts of this earlier version have been discovered. There is also a fascinating passage telling how Iseult wrote a short lai
Lai
A lai is a lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance.Lais were mainly composed in France and Germany, during the 13th and 14th centuries. A Provençal term for a similar kind of poem is descort.The English term lay is a...
out of grief that sheds light on the development of an unrelated legend concerning the death of a prominent troubadour, as well as the composition of lais by noblewomen of the 12th century.
The next essential text for knowledge of the courtly branch of the Tristan legend is the abridged translation of Thomas made by Brother Robert
Brother Robert
Brother Robert was a cleric working in Norway who adapted several French literary works into Old Norse during the reign of King Haakon IV of Norway . The most important of these, Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, based on Thomas of Britain's Tristan, is notable as the only example of Thomas' "courtly...
at the request of King Haakon Haakonson
Haakon IV of Norway
Haakon Haakonarson , also called Haakon the Old, was king of Norway from 1217 to 1263. Under his rule, medieval Norway reached its peak....
of Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
in 1227. King Haakon had wanted to promote Angevin
Anjou
Anjou is a former county , duchy and province centred on the city of Angers in the lower Loire Valley of western France. It corresponds largely to the present-day département of Maine-et-Loire...
-Norman culture at his court, and so commissioned the translation of several French Arthurian works. The Nordic version presents a complete, direct narrative of the events in Thomas' Tristan, with the telling omission of his numerous interpretive diversions. It is the only complete representative of the courtly branch in its formative period. Preceding the work of Brother Robert chronologically is the Tristan and Isolt of Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg is the author of the Middle High German courtly romance Tristan and Isolt, an adaptation of the 12th-century Tristan and Iseult legend. Gottfried's work is regarded, alongside Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and the Nibelungenlied, as one of the great narrative...
, written circa 1211-1215. The poem was Gottfried's only known work, and was left incomplete due to his death with the retelling reaching half-way through the main plot. The poem was later completed by authors such as Heinrich von Freiberg and Ulrich von Türheim, but with the "common" branch of the legend as the ideal source.
Common branch
The earliest representation of the "common branch" is BéroulBéroul
Béroul was a Norman poet of the 12th century. He wrote Tristan, a Norman language version of the legend of Tristan and Iseult of which a certain number of fragments have been preserved; it is the earliest representation of the so-called "vulgar" version of the legend...
's Le Roman de Tristan, the first part of which is generally dated between 1150 and 1170, and the latter part between 1181 and 1190. The branch is so named due to its representation of an earlier non-chivalric, non-courtly, tradition of story-telling, making it more reflective of the Dark Ages than of the refined High Middle Ages. In this respect, they are similar to Layamon
Layamon
Layamon or Laghamon (ˈlaɣamon; in American English often modernised as ; ), occasionally written Lawman, was a poet of the early 13th century and author of the Brut, a notable English poem of the 12th century that was the first English language work to discuss the legends of Arthur and the...
's Brut
Brut (Layamon)
Layamon's Brut , also known as The Chronicle of Britain, is a Middle English poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. The Brut is 16,095 lines long and narrates the history of Britain: it is the first historiography written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle...
and the Perlesvaus
Perlesvaus
Perlesvaus, also called Li Hauz Livres du Graal , is an Old French Arthurian romance dating to the first decade of the 13th century...
. As with Thomas' works, knowledge of Béroul's is limited. There were a few substantial fragments of his works discovered in the nineteenth century, and the rest was reconstructed from later versions. The more substantial illustration of the common branch is the German version by Eilhart von Oberge
Eilhart von Oberge
Eilhart von Oberge was a German poet of the late 12th century. He is known exclusively through his Middle High German romance Tristrant, the oldest surviving complete version of the Tristan and Iseult story in any language. Tristrant is part of the "common" or "primitive" branch of the legend, best...
. Eilhart's version was popular, but pales in comparison with the later Gottfried.
Common source?
The French medievalist Joseph BédierJoseph Bédier
Joseph Bédier was a French writer and scholar and historian of medieval France.-Biography:Bédier was born in Paris, France to Adolphe Bédier, a lawyer of Breton origin, and spent his childhood in Réunion. He was a professor of medieval French literature at the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland ...
thought all the Tristan legends could be traced to a single original poem, adapted by Thomas of Brittany into French from an original Cornish or Breton source. He dubbed this hypothetical original the "Ur-Tristan", and wrote his still-popular Romance of Tristan and Iseult as an attempt to reconstruct what this might have been like. In all likelihood, Common Branch versions reflect an earlier form of the story; accordingly, Bédier relied heavily on Eilhart, Béroul and Gottfried von Strassburg, and incorporated material from other versions to make a cohesive whole. Some scholars still consider Bédier's argument convincing.
French
Contemporary with Béroul and Thomas, the famous Marie de FranceMarie de France
Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II of England...
presents a Tristan episode in one of her lais
The Lais of Marie de France
The Lais of Marie de France are a series of twelve short narrative Breton lais by the poet Marie de France. They are written in the Anglo-Norman and were probably composed in the late 12th century. The short, narrative poems generally focus on glorifying the concept of courtly love through the...
: "Chevrefoil
Chevrefoil
"Chevrefoil" is a Breton lai by the medieval poet Marie de France. The eleventh poem in the collection called The Lais of Marie de France, its subject is an episode from the romance of Tristan and Iseult. The title means "honeysuckle," a symbol of love in the poem...
". It concerns another of Tristan's clandestine returns to Cornwall in which the banished hero signals his presence to Iseult by means of an inscription on a branch of a hazelnut
Hazelnut
A hazelnut is the nut of the hazel and is also known as a cob nut or filbert nut according to species. A cob is roughly spherical to oval, about 15–25 mm long and 10–15 mm in diameter, with an outer fibrous husk surrounding a smooth shell. A filbert is more elongated, being about twice...
tree placed on the road she will travel. The title refers to the symbiosis of the honeysuckle
Honeysuckle
Honeysuckles are arching shrubs or twining vines in the family Caprifoliaceae, native to the Northern Hemisphere. There are about 180 species of honeysuckle, 100 of which occur in China; Europe, India and North America have only about 20 native species each...
and hazelnut tree which die when separated, as do Tristan and Iseult: "Ni moi sans vous, ni vous sans moi." ("Neither me without you, nor you without me.") This episode is reminscient of one in the courtly branch when Tristan uses wood shavings put in a stream as signals to meet in the garden of Mark's palace.
There are also two 12th century Folie Tristan, Anglo-Norman poems identified as the Oxford and the Bern versions, which relate Tristan's return to Marc's court under the guise of a madman. Besides their own importance as episodic additions to the Tristan story and masterpieces of narrative structure, these relatively short poems significantly contributed to restoring the missing parts of Béroul's and Thomas' incomplete texts.
The great trouvère
Trouvère
Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...
Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...
claims to have written a Tristan story, though no part of it has ever been found. He mentions this in the introduction to Cligès
Cligès
Cligès is a poem by the medieval French poet Chrétien de Troyes, dating from around 1176. Cligès is the second of five Arthurian Romances; Erec and Enide, Cligès, Yvain, Lancelot and Perceval. It tells the story of the knight Cligès and his love for his uncle's wife, Fenice...
, a romance that many see as a kind of anti-Tristan with a happy ending. Some scholars speculate his Tristan was ill-received, prompting Chretien to write Cligès - a story with no Celtic antecedent - to make amends.
After Béroul and Thomas, the most important development in French Tristaniana is a complex grouping of texts known broadly as the Prose Tristan
Prose Tristan
The Prose Tristan is an adaptation of the Tristan and Iseult story into a long prose romance, and the first to tie the subject entirely into the arc of the Arthurian legend...
. Extremely popular in the 13th and 14th Century, the narratives of these lengthy versions vary in detail from manuscript to manuscript. Modern editions run twelve volumes for the long version, which includes Tristan's participation in the Quest for the Holy Grail, or five volumes for a shorter version without the Grail Quest. The Roman de Tristan en prose is a great work of art with fits of lyrical beauty. It also had a great influence on later medieval literature, and inspired parts of the Post-Vulgate Cycle
Post-Vulgate Cycle
The Post-Vulgate Cycle is one of the major Old French prose cycles of Arthurian literature. It is essentially a rehandling of the earlier Vulgate Cycle , with much left out and much added, including characters and scenes from the Prose Tristan.The Post-Vulgate, written probably between 1230 and...
, the Roman de Palamedes
Palamedes (Arthurian legend)
Palamedes is a Knight of the Round Table in the Arthurian legend. He is a Saracen pagan who converts to Christianity later in his life, and his unrequited love for Iseult brings him into frequent conflict with Tristan...
, and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
English
The earliest complete source of the Tristan material in English was Sir Tristrem, a romance of some 3344 lines written circa 1300. It is preserved in the famous Auchinleck manuscriptAuchinleck manuscript
The Auchinleck Manuscript, NLS Adv. MS 19.2.1, currently forms part of the collection of the National Library of Scotland. It is an illuminated manuscript copied on parchment in the 14th century in London. The manuscript provides a glimpse of a time of considerable political tension in England...
at the National Library of Scotland
National Library of Scotland
The National Library of Scotland is the legal deposit library of Scotland and is one of the country's National Collections. It is based in a collection of buildings in Edinburgh city centre. The headquarters is on George IV Bridge, between the Old Town and the university quarter...
. The narrative largely follows the courtly tradition. As is true with many medieval English adaptations of French Arthuriana, the poem's artistic achievement can only be described as average, though some critics have tried to rehabilitate it, claiming it is a parody. Its first editor, Sir Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
, provided a sixty line ending to the story, which has been printed with the romance in every subsequent edition.
The only other medieval handling of the Tristan legend in English is Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur. The antiquary John Leland as well as John Bale believed him to be Welsh, but most modern scholars, beginning with G. L...
's The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones, a shortened "translation" of the French Prose Tristan
Prose Tristan
The Prose Tristan is an adaptation of the Tristan and Iseult story into a long prose romance, and the first to tie the subject entirely into the arc of the Arthurian legend...
in Le Morte d'Arthur. Since the Winchester Manuscript surfaced in 1934, there has been much scholarly debate whether the Tristan narrative, like all the episodes in Le Morte d'Arthur, were originally intended to be an independent piece or part of a larger work.
Nordic
The popularity of Brother Robert's version spawned a unique parody, Saga Af Tristram ok Ísodd, as well as the poem Tristrams kvæði. In the collection of Old Norse prose-translations of Marie de France's lais – called StrengleikarStrengleikar
Strengleikar is a collection of twenty-one Old Norse prose tales based on the Old French Lais of Marie de France. It is one of the literary works commissioned by King Haakon IV of Norway for the Norwegian court. The collection is anonymous...
(Stringed Instruments) – two lais with Arthurian content have been preserved, one of the them being the "Chevrefoil", translated as "Geitarlauf".
By the 19th century, scholars had found Tristan legends spread across the Nordic world, from Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
to the Faroe Islands
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...
. These stories, however, diverged greatly from their medieval precursors. In one Danish ballad, for instance, Tristan and Iseult are made brother and sister. Other unlikely innovations occur in two popular Danish chapbook
Chapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
s of the late 18th century Tristans saga ok Inionu and En tragoedisk Historie om den ædle og tappre Tistrand, in which Iseult is made the princess of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. The popularity of these chapbooks inspired Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
ic novelists Gunnar Leifsson and Niels Johnson to write novels inspired by the Tristan legend.
Dutch
A 130 line fragment of a Dutch version of Thomas of Britain's Tristan exists. It is in a manuscript in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
at the National Library.
Welsh
A short Tristan narrative, perhaps related to the Béroul text, exists in six Welsh manuscripts dating from the late 16th to the mid 17th century.Spanish
In the first third of the 14th century the famous Arcipreste de Hita wrote a version of the Tristan story. Carta enviada por Hiseo la Brunda a Tristán; Respuesta de Tristán was a unique 15th century romance written in the form of imaginary letters between the two lovers. Then there was a famous SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
reworking of the French Prose Tristan, Libro del muy esforzado caballero Don Tristán de Leonís y de sus grandes hechos en armas first published in Valladolid in 1501, then republised in Seville
Seville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
in 1511, 1520, 1525, 1528, 1533 and 1534; additionally a second part, Tristan el Joven, was created which dealt with Tristan's son, Tristan of Leonis.
Czech
A 13th century verse romance exists in CzechCzech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, based on the German Tristan poems by Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg is the author of the Middle High German courtly romance Tristan and Isolt, an adaptation of the 12th-century Tristan and Iseult legend. Gottfried's work is regarded, alongside Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and the Nibelungenlied, as one of the great narrative...
, Heinrich von Freiberg and Eilhart von Oberg. It is the only known verse representative of the Tristan story in a Slavic language
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
.
Italian
The Tristan legend proved very popular in ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
; there were many cantari, or oral poems performed in the public square, either about him, or frequently referencing him:
- Cantari di Tristano
- Due Tristani
- Quando Tristano e Lancielotto combattiero al petrone di Merlino
- Ultime imprese e morte Tristano
- Vendetta che fe Messer Lanzelloto de la Morte di Messer Tristano
There are also four differing versions of the Prose Tristan in medieval Italy, most named after their place of composition or library in which they are currently to be found:
- Tavola Ritonda
- Tristano Panciaticchiano
- Tristano Riccardiano
- Tristano Veneto
Belarusian
The Belarusian prose Povest Trychane represents the furthest eastern advance of the legend, and, composed in the 1560s, is considered by some critics to be the last "medieval" Tristan or Arthurian text period.Its lineage goes back to the Tristano Veneto. Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, at that time, controlled large parts of the Serbo
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
-Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
n language area, engendering a more active literary and cultural life there than in most of the Balkans during this period. The manuscript of the Povest states that it was translated from a (lost) Serbian intermediary. Scholars assume that the legend must have journeyed from Venice, through its Balkan colonies, finally reaching a last outpost in this Slavic language.
Art
The Tristan story was very popular in several art media, from ivoryIvory
Ivory is a term for dentine, which constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals, when used as a material for art or manufacturing. Ivory has been important since ancient times for making a range of items, from ivory carvings to false teeth, fans, dominoes, joint tubes, piano keys and...
mirror-cases to the 13th century Sicilian Tristan Quilt
Tristan Quilt
The Tristan Quilt, sometimes called the Tristan and Isolde Quilt, is one of the earliest surviving quilts in the world.. Depicting scenes from the story of Tristan and Isolde, an influential romance and tragedy, it was made in Sicily during the second half of the 13h century...
. Many of the manuscripts with literary versions are illuminated
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
with miniatures.
Literature
In English, the Tristan story suffered the same fate as the Matter of BritainMatter of Britain
The Matter of Britain is a name given collectively to the body of literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and its legendary kings, particularly King Arthur...
generally. After being mostly ignored for about three centuries, there was a renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
of original Arthurian literature, mostly narrative verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tristan material in this revival included Alfred Tennyson's The Last Tournament, one of his Idylls of the King
Idylls of the King
Idylls of the King, published between 1856 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom...
; Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
's Tristram and Iseult
Tristram and Iseult
Tristam and Iseult is a narrative poem containing strong romantic and tragic themes: first published in 1852 by Matthew Arnold. This poem draws upon the Tristam and Iseult legends: which were popular with contemporary readers.-Overview:...
; and Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
's epic poem Tristram of Lyonesse
Tristram of Lyonesse
"Tristram of Lyonesse" is a long epic poem written by the British poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, that recounts in grand fashion the famous medieval story of the ill-fated lovers Tristan and Isolde . It was first published in 1882 by Chatto and Windus, in a volume entitled Tristram of Lyonesse and...
. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
most Tristan texts were in the form of prose novels or short stories, although Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell OBE is an English author of historical novels. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe which were adapted into a series of Sharpe television films.-Biography:...
includes a "historical" interpretation of the legend as a side story in The Warlord Chronicles
The Warlord Chronicles
The Warlord Chronicles is a trilogy of books about Arthurian Britain written by Bernard Cornwell...
. Novelist Thomas Berger
Thomas Berger (US novelist)
-Biography:Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Berger was in Europe with the United States Army and then studied at the University of Cincinnati, and at Columbia University. He worked as a librarian and a journalist before publishing his first novel, Crazy in Berlin, in 1958. Berger may be best known for...
retold the story of Tristan and Isolde in his 1978 interpretation of Arthurian legend, Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel
Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel
Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel is a 1978 novel by American author Thomas Berger. Berger offers his own take on the legends of King Arthur, from the heroic monarch's inauspicious conception, to his childhood in bucolic Wales, his rise to the throne, his discovery of the great sword Excalibur, his...
. The story is also referenced in James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
".
The Cornish
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
writer Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch ("Q") started Castle Dor, a retelling of the Tristan and Iseult myth in modern circumstances with an innkeeper in the role of King Mark, his wife as Iseult and a Breton
Breton people
The Bretons are an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France. They trace much of their heritage to groups of Brythonic speakers who emigrated from southwestern Great Britain in waves from the 3rd to 6th century into the Armorican peninsula, subsequently named Brittany after them.The...
onion-seller as Tristan, the plot set in "Troy", his name for his home town of Fowey
Fowey
Fowey is a small town, civil parish and cargo port at the mouth of the River Fowey in south Cornwall, United Kingdom. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 2,273.-Early history:...
. The book was left unfinished at Quiller-Couch's death and was completed many years later, in 1962, by Daphne du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...
.
Rosalind Miles also wrote a trilogy about Tristan and Isolde. The first book is called The Queen of the Western Isle, second The Maid of the White Hands and third The Lady of the Sea, and Nancy McKenzie wrote a book Prince of Dreams: a tale of Tristan and Essylte as part of her Arthurian series.
In Bengali literature
Bengali literature
Bengali literature is literary works written in Bengali language particularly from Bangladesh and the Indian provinces of West Bengal and Tripura. The history of Bengali literature traces back hundreds of years while it is impossible to separate the literary trends of the two Bengals during the...
the story has been depicted by author Sunil Gangopadhyay
Sunil Gangopadhyay
Sunil Gangopadhyay , is a celebrated Indian poet and novelist.-Early life:...
in the novel Sonali Dukkho.
Joseph Bédier’s Romance of Tristan and Iseult is quoted as a source by John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
in the afterword to his novel Brazil about the lovers Tristão and Isabel.
Music
In the 19th century, Richard WagnerRichard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
composed the opera Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
, now considered one of the most influential pieces of music from the century. In his work, Tristan is portrayed as a doomed romantic figure.
Twentieth century composers also used the legend (often with Wagnerian overtones) in their compositions. Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
built his Turangalila Symphony around the story. Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
's Tristan
Tristan (orchestral composition)
Tristan is a six-movement orchestral work by the German composer Hans Werner Henze.Scored for piano, tape and full orchestra, it takes the form of a homage to Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, with the piano providing preludes to a series of widely divergent material, both live and on...
borrowed freely from the Wagnerian version as well as retellings of the legend.
Blind Guardian
Blind Guardian
Blind Guardian is a German power metal band formed in the mid-1980s in Krefeld, West Germany. They are often credited as one of the seminal and most influential bands in the power metal and speed metal subgenres...
, a power metal
Power metal
Power metal is a style of heavy metal combining characteristics of traditional metal with speed metal, often within symphonic context. The term refers to two different but related styles: the first pioneered and largely practiced in North America with a harder sound similar to speed metal, and a...
band from Germany, also has a song inspired by Tristan and Iseult's story, "The Maiden and the Minstrel Knight", from their A Night at the Opera
A Night at the Opera (Blind Guardian album)
- Chart positions :Album – Billboard - Band :* Hansi Kürsch – lead and backing vocals* André Olbrich – lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars* Marcus Siepen – rhythm guitar* Thomas "Thomen" Stauch – drums & percussion...
album.
Colin Meloy
Colin Meloy
Colin Patrick Henry Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter for the Portland, Oregon, folk-rock band The Decemberists. In addition to vocals, he performs with an acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, harmonica, percussion and interpretive hand gestures.-Early life...
's former band Tarkio
Tarkio
Tarkio may refer to:*Tarkio River, river in Iowa and Missouri**Tarkio, Missouri, the city which Brewer & Shipley's album was named after;***Tarkio College, a college no longer in existence in the city of Tarkio, Missouri;...
have a song entitled "Tristan and Iseult" from their Sea Songs for Landlocked Sailers ep.
Patrick Wolf
Patrick Wolf
Patrick Wolf is an English-Irish singer-songwriter from South London. Patrick utilises a wide variety of instruments in his music, most commonly the ukulele, piano and viola...
, English singer and songwriter, has a song about the Tristan and Iseult legend: "Tristan" from his second album Wind in the Wires
Wind In The Wires
Wind in the Wires is the second studio album by English-Irish singer-songwriter Patrick Wolf.-Track listing:All songs written by Patrick Wolf.#"The Libertine" – 4:23#"Teignmouth" – 4:50#"The Shadowsea" – 0:37#"Wind in the Wires" – 4:18...
.
Films
The story has also been adapted into film many times. The earliest is probably the 1909 French film Tristan et Yseult, an early, silent version of the story. This was followed by another French film of the same name two years later, which offered a unique addition to the story. Here, it is Tristan's jealous slave Rosen who tricks the lovers into drinking the love potion, then denounces them to Mark. Mark has pity on the two lovers, but they commit double suicide anyway. A third silent French version appeared in 1920, and follows the legend fairly closely.One of the most celebrated and controversial Tristan films was 1943's L'Éternel Retour
L'Éternel retour
L'Éternel retour is a French drama romance film from 1943, directed by Jean Delannoy, written by Jean Cocteau, starring Madeleine Sologne and Jean Marais...
(The Eternal Return), directed by Jean Delannoy
Jean Delannoy
Jean Delannoy was a French actor, film editor, screenwriter and film director.Although Delannoy was born in a Paris suburb, his family is from Haute-Normandie in the north of France...
(screenplay by Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
). It is a contemporary retelling of the story with a man named Patrice in the Tristan role fetching a wife for his friend Marke. However, an evil dwarf tricks them into drinking a love potion, and the familiar plot ensues. The film was made in France during the Vichy regime
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
, and elements in the movie reflect Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
ideology, with the beautiful, blonde hero and heroine and the ugly, Semitic dwarf. Not only are the dwarfs visually different, they are given a larger role than in most interpretations of the legend; their conniving rains havoc on the lovers, much like the Jews of Nazi stereotypes.
The 1970 Spanish film Tristana is only tangentially related to the Tristan story. The Tristan role is assumed by the female character Tristana, who is forced to care for her aging uncle, Don Lope, though she wishes to marry Horacio. This was followed by the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
French film Tristan et Iseult in 1972 and the Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
Lovespell, featuring Nicholas Clay
Nicholas Clay
Nicholas Anthony Phillip Clay was an English actor.-Early life:Born in Streatham London, to Bill and Rose Clay, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began his acting career in the early 1970s with small parts in film and television.-Career:Clay also appeared in several West End...
as Tristan and Kate Mulgrew
Kate Mulgrew
Katherine Kiernan Maria "Kate" Mulgrew is an American actress, most noted for her roles on Star Trek: Voyager as Captain Kathryn Janeway and Ryan's Hope as Mary Ryan...
as Iseult; coincidentally, Clay went on to play Lancelot in John Boorman
John Boorman
John Boorman is a British filmmaker who is a long time resident of Ireland and is best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope and Glory, The General and The Tailor of Panama.-Early life:Boorman was born in Shepperton, Surrey,...
's epic Excalibur
Excalibur (film)
Excalibur is a 1981 dramatic fantasy film directed, produced and co-written by John Boorman that retells the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Adapted from the 15th century Arthurian romance, Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, Excalibur features the music of Richard Wagner...
. The popular German film Fire and Sword premiered in 1981; it was very accurate to the story, though it cut the Iseult of Brittany subplot.
Legendary French director François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
adapted the subject to modern times for his 1981 film La Femme d'à côté
La Femme d'à côté
The Woman Next Door is a 1981 French film directed by François Truffaut. The film was the 39th highest grossing film of the year with a total of 1,087,600 admissions in France. -Plot:...
(The Woman Next Door), while 1988's In the Shadow of the Raven transported the characters to medieval Iceland. Here, Trausti and Isolde are warriors from rival tribes who come into conflict when Trausti kills the leader of Isolde's tribe, but a local bishop makes peace and arranges their marriage. Bollywood
Bollywood
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...
director Subhash Ghai
Subhash Ghai
Subhash Ghai is an Indian film director, producer and screenwriter. His most notable films include Kalicharan ,Karz , Hero , Meri Jung , Karma ,Ram Lakhan ,Saudagar , Khalnayak , Pardes and Taal...
transfers the story to modern India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in his 1997 musical Pardes. The Indian American
Indian American
Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestral roots lie in India. The U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Indigenous peoples of the Americas who are commonly referred to as American Indians.-The term: Indian:...
Kishorilal (Amrish Puri
Amrish Puri
Amrish Singh Puri , ; 22 June 1932 – 12 January 2005 was an iconic theater and film actor from India, who was a key player in the Indian theater movement that picked up steam in the 1960s. He worked with notable playwrights of the time, such as Satyadev Dubey and Girish Karnad...
) raises his orphaned nephew Arjun (Shahrukh Khan
Shahrukh Khan
Shahrukh Khan , often credited as Shah Rukh Khan, is an Indian film actor, as well as a film producer and television host. Often referred to as "the King of Bollywood", Khan has acted in over 70 Hindi films....
). Eventually, Pardes sends Arjun back to India to lure the beautiful Ganga (Mahima Chaudhary) as a bride for his selfish, shallow son Rajiv (Apoorva Agnihotri). Arjun falls for Ganga, and struggles to remain loyal to his cousin and beloved uncle. The film features the Bollywood hit "I Love My India". The 2002 French animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
film Tristan et Iseut is a bowdlerized version of the traditional tale aimed at a family audience.
The most recent Tristan film is 2005's Tristan & Isolde
Tristan & Isolde (film)
Tristan & Isolde is a 2006 romantic drama film based on the medieval romantic legend of Tristan and Isolde. It was produced by Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, directed by Kevin Reynolds and stars James Franco and Sophia Myles, with an original music score composed by Anne Dudley...
, produced by Tony Scott
Tony Scott
Anthony D. L. "Tony" Scott is an English film director. His films include Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Spy Game, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Unstoppable...
and Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
, written by Dean Georgaris, directed by Kevin Reynolds, and starring James Franco
James Franco
James Edward Franco is an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author, painter, performance artist and instructor at New York University. He left college in order to pursue acting and started off his career by making guest appearances on television series in the 1990s...
and Sophia Myles
Sophia Myles
-Early life:Myles was born in London. She is the daughter of Jane, who works in educational publishing, and Peter Myles, a retired Anglican vicar in Isleworth, west London. Her maternal grandmother was Russian, and she refers to herself as "half-Welsh, half-Russian". She grew up in Notting Hill,...
. In this version, Tristan is a Cornish warrior who was raised by Lord Marke after his parents were killed at a young age. In a fight with the Irish, Tristan defeats Morholt, the Irish King's second, but is poisoned in the process. The poison dulls all his senses and his companions believe him dead. He is sent off in a boat meant to cremate a dead body. Isolde, dismayed over her unwilling betrothal to Morholt, leaves her home and finds Tristan on the Irish coast. She tells Tristan that she is called Bragnae, which is the name of her maidservant. Isolde takes care of him and hides him from her father. They spend long days together and come to care for each other. Eventually they confess their feelings for one another and consummate their love. Tristan's boat is discovered and Isolde's father begins a search for a Cornish warrior in Ireland. Isolde helps Tristan escape but cannot leave with him. Tristan returns to England and learns of a tournament between the Cornish tribes for the hand of the Irish princess named Isolde. He agrees to participate to win the princess as Marke's wife. After winning the tournament and discovering that the princess is the woman who had rescued him, Tristan is devastated but decides to bury his feelings because her marriage to Marke would end decades of bloodshed. Eventually Tristan cannot stand to be apart from Isolde any longer and they start their adulterous relationship. Later they are found out but Marke frees them after hearing their story. Tristan, however, returns to defend Marke against a rebellion. He dies a hero with Isolde at his side.
External links
- Overview of the story
- Tristan texts, media and art
- Bedier: Tristan and Iseult
- Béroul: Le Roman de Tristan
- Thomas d'Angleterre : Tristan
- Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan
- Transcription and page images of the Auchinleck manuscript
- The libretto for Wagner's opera, bilingual English and German
- Tristan page from the Camelot Project
- Bibliography of Modern Tristaniana in English Tristan and Iseult, audio version
