The Romance of Tristan

By -
The Romance of Tristan, by Beroul

Beroul's Romance of Tristan is a very early version composed around the middle of the 12th century in French verse.  We only have part of it; the extant fragment starts well into Tristan and Yseut's affair and breaks off just before the episode of their deaths.  My translation is in prose and includes summaries of the action before and after the fragment.

Everybody knows the story of Tristan and Yseut, right, so I'm just going to talk about what interested me about this version.  Beroul is very careful to note that the potion is to blame for their irresistible passion for one another.  This potion is efficacious for exactly 3 years to the minute, and as soon as it wears off, they end their affair.  The whole time it's going on, Yseut employs tricks to convince her husband that she is faithful to him--which she is not--and yet this is considered completely justified.  I can't quite tell if it's supposed to be justified because it's all the potion's fault and therefore not "real," or if Yseut is supposed to be really sort of married to Tristan, since he was her first love.  Maybe both.  Later on, they renew their affair and that too is considered justified, so I think it might be both.

Other versions are longer and more elaborate, and I will probably read one later in the year.  I have the prose Romance of Tristan and Gottfried von Strassburg's German Tristan, so there's plenty to chew on.  Right now I'm enjoying The Quest of the Holy Grail, which is fantastic, and after that I have the German Parzifal, which I'm quite excited about.  Oh!  And over the weekend, I picked up a library discard of the 2-volume Everyman edition of Malory to replace my awful old paperback with its small, blobby type.  The library binding is quite hideous but will last forever.  I got the York Cycle of Mystery Plays too!

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 15, 2014 at 4:59 AM

    I didn't realize that Tristan and Isolde's initial love was potion-generated. Plainly I need to revisit the Arthurian legends. :/

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanApril 15, 2014 at 6:38 AM

    Yup, absolutely a potion. It's the old "Mom gives daughter potion to ensure marital happiness, but servant accidentally gives it to the wrong people" gambit!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amateur Reader (Tom)April 15, 2014 at 11:51 AM

    Is this the version of the Tristan story with the robot? Or is that the Gottfried von Strassburg? Or am I just making this up?

    I suppose I do have access to the internet. It's the Thomas of Britain version, so I was completely wrong yet not making it up. Love robot in the love cave. These old stories are strange.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JeanApril 15, 2014 at 12:28 PM

    Luckily, the Thomas of Britain story was the source for Gottfried von Strassburg, and both are in my book. So I will be able to read about the robot and report back on it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ruth @ with freedom and booksAugust 30, 2017 at 6:50 AM

    I don't think I am familiar with this story, but I found a used copy at my library, retold by Joseph Bédier/translated by Hilaire Belloc. I don't know why I haven't read it, yet. I love Arthurian Romances.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more