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"Lord
Tristran, the king thinks
that
I have loved you sinfully;
but I
affirm my fidelity before God,
and
may he punish me
if
anyone except the man who took my virginity
ever
had my love."
"Iseut,
I swear upon my fair head
that
before the year is out,
he
would wish he had never had such a thought."
The following books will introduce you to Tristan (also
spelled Tristran, Tristram) and Isolde (or Iseult, Iseut, Yseut),
who said these words in The Romance of Tristran (trans.
N. J. Lacy).
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- Béroul. The
Romance of Tristan and the Tale of Tristan's Madness
(Alan S. Fedrick, Trans.). Penguin, 1978.
- For romance medieval-style, there was nothing
more popular than Béroul's 12th-cent verse
romance about Tristan's affair with Iseult, an
Irish princess betrothed to Tristan's uncle, King
Mark of Cornwall, but in love with the knight
(Tristan) who came to fetch her to her wedding.
This book is a prose translation with a useful
historical introduction.
- Bédier, Joseph. The
Romance of Tristan and Iseult. Vintage, 1994.
- A classic work of scholarship that attempts to
piece together the original legend from the
fragmentary medieval poems (like Béroul's) and
prose romances which have survived in manuscript.
The story most likely combined Celtic, Welsh, and
even Persian elements.
- Béroul. The
Romance of Tristran (Norris J. Lacy, Trans. and
Intro.). New York: Garland, 1989.
- Fine verse translation, with French original on
facing pages. The quote above shows Iseut's
cleverness in lying while technically telling the
truth: Iseut knows that King Mark, hiding in a
tree, is eavesdropping on her tête-à-tête with
Tristan, so she chooses her words to appear to
affirm her fidelity to the king, although we know
it was actually Tristan who took her virginity.
- Malory, Sir Thomas. Works
(Eugène Vinaver, Ed.). Oxford University Press,
1977.
- Malory's Morte D'Arthur spends many chapters on
the story of "Sir Tristram de Lyones,"
whose love triangle involving "Isode the
Fair" and her husband, King Mark,
foreshadows the tragedy of Lancelot, Guinevere,
and King Arthur.
- The
Romance of Tristan: The Thirteenth-Century Old French
"Prose Tristan" (Renee L. Curtis, Ed.;
World's Classics). Oxford University Press, 1994.
- Malory's work is the best known English version
of this French prose elaboration of the Tristan
legend.
- Thomas of Britain. Tristran
(Stewart Gregory, Trans. and Intro.). New York: Garland,
1991.
- Courtly poem which tones down the coarse sexual
humor and explores the lovers' psychology more
deeply. Along with Gottfried von Strassburg's
German courtly romance (see below), this was the
basis for Wagner's 1865 opera Tristan and Isolde.
Here, Gregory offers a verse translation facing
the French original.
- Gottfried von Strassburg. Tristan
and Isolde. Continuum, 1988.
- Basis for Wagner's popular opera, famous for
Isolde's "Liebestod," sung as she
contemplates joining Tristan in death.
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