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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TOO-TUM |
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TRISTAN, or TRISTRAM , one of the most famous heroes of medieval romance. In the earlier versions of his story he is the son of Rivalin, a prince of North West Britain, and Blancheflor, sister to King Mark of Cornwall
Cornwall
Tintagel
secret of healing. Tristan causes himself to be placed in a boat with his harp, andcommitted to the waves, which carry him to the shores of Ireland. There he gives himself out for a minstrel, Tantris, and as such is tended and healed by Queen Iseult and her daughter of the same name. When recovered he makes a plausible excuse for leaving Ireland (pretending he has left a wife in his native land) and returns to Cornwall. His uncle receives him with joy, but the barons of the court are bitterly jealous and plot his destruction. They persuade Mark that he should marry, and Tristan, who has sung the praises of the princess Iseult, is despatched to Ireland to demand her hand, a most dangerous errand, as Gormond, incensed atthe death of Mor8lt, has sworn to slay any Cornish knight who sets foot in Ireland. Tristan undertakes the mission, though he stipulates that he shall be accompanied by twenty of the barons, greatly to their disgust. His good fortune, however, does not forsake him; he lands in Ireland just as a fierce dragon is devastating the country, and the king has promised the hand of the princess to the slayer of the monster
secret , but one day, through the medium of a splinter from his sword, which had remained fixed in MorSlt's skull, and been preserved by the queen, the identity of Tantris and Tristan is made clear. The princess would slay him, but is withheld by her mother, who sees they have need of Tristan's aid to unmask the seneschal. This is done in the presence of the court; Tristan is pardoned, formally declares his errand, and receives the hand of Iseult for his uncle King Mark.Tristan and Iseult set sail for Cornwall, Iseult accompanied by her waiting-woman, Brangaene (who, in some versions, is also a kinswoman), to whose care the queen, skilled in magic arts, confides a love-potion. This is intended to be drunk by king and queen on their bridal night and will ensure their undying love for each other. Unhappily, on the voyage, by some mistake (accounted for in different ways), Tristan and Iseult drink the love drink, and are forthwith seized with a fatal passion each for the other. From this moment begins a long- drawn
One episode, in especial, has been most charmingly treated by the poets. Mark, in one of his fits of jealousy, banishes Tristan and Iseult from the court; the two fly to the woods, where they lead an idyllic life, blissfully happy in each other's company. Mark, hunting in the forest, comes upon them sleeping in a cave, and as Tristan, who knows that the king is in the neighbourhood, has placed his sword between them, is convinced of their innocence. Through a cleft in the rock a ray of light falls upon Iseult's face, Mark stops up the crevice with his glove (or with grass and flowers
refuge
wall
We need have little wonder that this beautiful love-story was extremely popular throughout the middle ages. Medieval literature abounds in references to Tristan and Iseult, and their adventures were translated into many tongues and are found depicted in carvings and tapestries. Probably the story was first told in the form of short lais, each recounting some special episode, such as the lai known as the cheevrefeuille; how old these may be it is impossible to say. Professor Zimmer, in his examination of the story, sees reason to believe that the main incidents may repose on a genuine historic, tradition, dating back to the 9th or loth century, the period of Viking rule in Ireland. The name of Iseult's father, Gormond, is distinctly Scandinavian; she, herself, is always noted for her golden hair, and it is quite a misrendering of the tradition to speak of her as a dark-haired Irish princess. In the German tradition she is die lichte, Iseult of Britanny die schwarze IsSlt; it is this latter who is the Celtic princess. The name Tristan is now generally admitted to be the equivalent of the Pictish Drostan, and on the whole, the story is now very generally allowed to be of insular, probably of British, origin. Some time in the lath century the story was wrought into consecutive poems. The latest theory, championed with great skill by M. Bedier, is that there was one poem, and one only, at the root of the various versions preserved to us, and that that poem, composed in England, probably by an Anglo-Norman, was a work of such force and genius that it determined for all time the form of the Tristan story. The obvious objection to this view is that a work of such importance, composed at so comparatively late a date, is scarcely likely to have perished so completely as to leave no trace; if there were one poet held as an authority, the name of that poet would surely have been mentioned. Moreover the evidence of the author of the principal Tristan poem preserved to us points in another direction. This poet was an Anglo-Norman named Thomas; and, although little over 3000 lines of his poem have been preserved, we have three translations; a German, by Gottfried von Strassburg; a Scandinavian, by a certain Brother Robert; and an English, by Thomas, sometimes identified with Thomas of Ercildoune, though this is doubtful. With the help of the extant fragments and these translations we can form a very good idea of the character and content of Thomas's work, a task now rendered far more easy by M. Bedier's skilful reconstruction (cf. vol. i. of his edition of Thomas). It was certainly a work of great merit and charm. As authority Thomas cites a certain Breri, who has now been identified with the Bleheris quoted as authority for the Grail and Gawain stories, and the Bledhericus referred to by Giraldus Cambrensis as famosus ille fabulator. This is what Thomas says: " Seignurs, cest cunte est molt divers, E pur go 1'uni par mes vers E di en tant cum est mester E le surplus voil relesser. Ne vol pas trop en uni dire! Ici diverse la matyre. Entre ceus qui solent cunter E del cunte Tristran parler, Il en cuntent diversement : Oi en ai de plusur gent. Asez sai que chescun en dit E co qu'il unt mis en escrit, Mes sulun 90 que j'ai of Nel dient pas sulun Breri Ky solt les gestes e les cuntes De tuz les reis, de tuz les cuntes, Ki orent este en Bretaingne." (THOMAS, i, 377). These are not the words of a man who is following a complete and authoritative poem; judging from the context of the other references to Bleheris he was rather a collector and versifier of short episodic tales, and it seems far more natural to under-stand Thomas as having wrought into one complete and consecutive form the various poems with which the name of Breri was associated, than to hold that that, or a similar, work had already been achieved by another. Thomas's work, fortunately, fell into the hands of a true poet in the person of Gottfried von Strassburg, whose Tristan and Isolde is, from a literary point of view, the gem of medieval German literature. Gottfried is a far greater master of style than Wolfram von Eschenbach, and his treatment of some of the episodes, notably the sojourn in the woods, is most exquisite. He did not live to complete his poem, but happily he carried it up to the point where the original
Besides the version of Thomas, we have a fragment by a certain Beroul, also an Anglo-Norman, and a German poem by Eilhart von Oberge, both of which derive from a common source. There also exists in two manuscripts a short poem, La Folie Tristan, relating how Tristan, disguised as a fool, visits the court of King Mark. This poem is valuable, as, presuming upon the sufficiency of his disguise, Tristan audaciously gives a resume of his feats and of his relations with Iseult, in this agreeing with the version of Thomas. The "Gerbert" continuation of the Perceval contains the working over of one of two short Tristan poems, called by him the Luite Tristran; the latter part, probably a distinct poem, shows Tristan, in the disguise of a minstrel, visiting the court of Mark. Here the tradition is more in accordance with Beroul. Besides the poems, we possess the prose Tristan, an enormous compilation, akin to the prose Lancelot, where the original story, though still to be traced, is obscured by a mass of later Arthurian adventures. The interest
Certain points of difference between the poetical and the prose versions should be noted. Tristan is here the son of Meliadus, king of Loonois; his father does not die, but is decoyed away by an enchantress, and the mother, searching for her husband, gives birth to her child in the forest and dies. Meliadus marries again, and the second wife, jealous of Tristan, tries to kill him. Mark has another nephew, Andret, who is Tristan's enemy throughout the romance. Mark himself is a cowardly, treacherous and vindictive character. Some of the early printed editions follow the original version of Tristan's death, now found in one manuscript only (B.N. 103), the majority represent him as having been stabbed in the back by Mark in the presence of the queen, as we find in Malory, who drew the larger portion of his compilation from the prose Tristan. It should be noted that Tristan is never more than superficially connected with Arthur, an occasional visitor at his court; though in its later form ranked among the Arthurian romances, the Tristan is really an independent story, and does not form a part of the ordinary cyclic redaction. The Italian prose text, La Travola ritonda differs from the French in adhering to the original version, and is classed by N. Bedier among the derivatives from Thomas. Like the story of Perceval that of Tristan has been made familiar to the present generation by Richard Wagner's noble music drama, Tristan and Isolde, founded upon the poem of Gottfried von Strassburg; though, being a drama of feeling rather than of action, the story is reduced to its simple elements; the drinking of the love-potion, the passion of the lovers, their discovery by Mark and finally their death. End of Article: TRISTAN, or TRISTRAM If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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