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| 1 | Albrecht Classen | -- | 674 | 2026-06-03 10:59:08 | | | |
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From the early Middle Ages, but mostly the late twelfth century, the love story involving Tristan and Isolde (also Yseut) attracted much attention, originating in the Celtic world but fully developed first by the Old French poet Béroul (ca. 1160) and Thomas of England, of Britain, or of Brittanny, around 1170. It was rendered into virtually every European language since then and has also appealed to artists and musicians throughout time. We know, for example, of tiles, tapestry, sculptures, paintings, musical tunes, manuscript illuminations, and other visual representations of the intense but highly problematic relationship between these two young people. In essence, while Yseult is married to the King of Cornwall, Mark/Marke, a love potion, a metaphorical symbol of their deep feelings, bonds her with Tristan for the rest of their lives (a limited number of years in the earlier versions). Ultimately, at least in most versions, they are destined to die because of their love, which is incompatible with the social norms of their time, and this Romantic theme has hence also played a huge role in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and is perhaps highly important also today, as expressed by modern movies and music engaging with this love story. This study first traces in rough brushstrokes the history of the reception of this literary theme from the twelfth to the twenty-first century; then, it returns to the various medieval versions to investigate the critical issues contained in this highly popular story, which has never lost its relevance and attraction for audiences throughout time. Since the focus rests on the history of reception, less on comparative literature, the main tradition to be traced will be the German one.
The theme of love profoundly determined the entire world of courtly literature from at least the middle of the twelfth century. While Provencal poets (troubadours) had introduced the topic and modality of this lyrical discourse, followed by the northern French trouvères, the Middle High German Minnesänger, and the Italian (Sicilian and Lombardian) poets [1], courtly storytellers turned their attention to chivalric narratives, which involved both the focus on knightly performance and honor and the focus on love. The account of Tristan and Isolde or Tristan and Yseult assumed a central role in that regard [2], but the story was never exactly the same as in the original source/s (Béroul, Thomas of England) because each storyteller/poet adapted the basic premises and varied the outcome to some extent [3]. During the high and late Middle Ages, the various versions were always rendered in verse, but from the fifteenth century onward, we encounter either prose or dramatic versions. In the late sixteenth century, the Nuremberg cobbler and mastersinger Hans Sachs (1494–1576) created a play of this version, which was based on a prose version in print from 1484, and emphasized much more the tragic outcome than his medieval predecessors: Von der strengen lieb herr Tristrant mit der schönen königin Isalden (1553; Of the Painful Love Between Sir Tristrant and the beautiful Queen Isalde; see also several Mastersongs focused on this theme from 1551) [4]. Even though we consider today Gottfried of Strassburg’s Middle High German version Tristan und Isolde from ca. 1210 to be the true masterpiece, late medieval audiences appear to have preferred the more pre-courtly version by Eilhart von Oberg, Tristrant und Isalde from ca. 1170/1180, which, based mostly on Béroul, enjoyed tremendous appeal through a prose version from 1433. Since its first printing, it was republished ten more times until 1594, here disregarding three lost versions [5] (pp. 362–371). Sachs’s rendering of the complex romance into a compact tragedy thus accommodated the public taste well, performing the intense love affair in a dense and highly emotional form on stage (for an extensive overview, see https://sites.arizona.edu/aclassen/gottfried-von-s/ (accessed on 28 April 2026); for the Tristan tree, a form of literary genealogy, see https://sites.arizona.edu/aclassen/the-tristan-tree/ (accessed on 28 April 2026)).
References
- Akehurst, F.R.P.; Davis, J.M. (Eds.) A Handbook of the Troubadours; University of California Press: Berkeley, CA, USA; Los Angeles, CA, USA; London, UK, 1995.
- Classen, A. Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Middle Ages. In Handbook of Medieval Culture: Fundamental Aspects and Conditions of the European Middle Ages; Classen, A., Ed.; Walter de Gruyter: Berlin, Germany; Boston, MA, USA, 2015; Volume 2, pp. 901–936.
- Stein, P.K. Tristan-Studien; Bennewitz, I., Kroll, B., Weichselbaumer, R., Eds.; S. Hirzel: Stuttgart, Germany, 2001.
- Von der Strengen lieb herr Tristrant mit der Schönen Königin Isalden. Available online: http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Sachs,+Hans/Dramen/Von+der+strengen+Lieb%27+Herrn+Tristrant+mit+der+sch%C3%B6nen+K%C3%B6nigin+Isalden (accessed on 28 April 2026).
- Gotzkowsky, B. Volksbücher”: Prosaromane, Renaissancenovellen, Versdichtungen und Schwankbücher; Bibliographie der deutschen Drucke. Part 1: Drucke des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts; Verlag Valentin Koerner: Baden-Baden, Germany, 1991.
