Prose Tristan

Roman de Tristan
Tristan and Iseult drinking the love potion while playing chess on a ship in a 13th-century manuscript copied in France around 1470 as part of the Compilation arthurienne de Micheau Gonnot (BnF, manuscrit Français 112)
AuthorUnknown (self-attributed to "Luce de Gat" and "Hélie de Boron")
CountryKingdom of France
LanguageOld French
DisciplineChivalric romance
PublishedShort version: after 1230
Long version: after 1240

The Prose Tristan (French: [Roman de][1] Tristan en prose) or Tristan de Léonois[2][3] is a 13th-century Old French adaptation of the Tristan and Iseult story into a lenghty prose romance. It was the first to tie the subject entirely into the arc of the Arthurian legend, making the hero Tristan a member of the Round Table. It was also the first major Arthurian prose cycle commenced after the widely popular Lancelot-Grail (Vulgate Cycle), which influenced especially the later portions of the Prose Tristan. It exists in multiple distinct variants, notably the "short" and the "long" versions.

Authorship and dating

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According to its prologue, the first part of the Prose Tristan (i.e., everything before the Grail material) is attributed to the otherwise unknown Luce de Gast, and was probably written between 1230 and 1235. The original "Short Version" or Version I (V.I) was expanded and reworked sometime after 1240[4] to create the more popular "Long Version" also known as Version II (V.II).[5] There have also been other "main" and "unique" versions,[6] including Versions III and IV that appear to have been written independently of Version II.[7]

In the epilogue of V.II, its author names himself as Hélie de Boron, asserting that he is the nephew of the first author of the Arthurian Grail cycles, poet Robert de Boron.[a][8] Hélie claims, like the so-called authors of the Roman de la Rose, to have picked up the story where Luce left off. The claim that they had been translating the work from a Latin original is doubted by scholars.[9]

Plot

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Synopsis

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The Encyclopædia Britannica defines it as "fundamentally an adaptation of the Tristan story to an Arthurian setting [that] complicates the love theme of the original with the theme of a love rivalry between Tristan and the converted Saracen Palamède and represents the action as a conflict between the treacherous villain King Mark and the 'good' knight Tristan."[3] The Bibliothèque nationale de France description calls it "an immense fresco based on the fusion of the two main sources of inspiration for the Matter of Britain: the story of the Cornish lovers, and the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The novel then becomes a tale of chivalry and Tristan is integrated into the Arthurian world, now one of the best knights of the court and a participant in the Quest for the Grail (...) As for the couple formed by Tristan and Isolde, it is comparable to that formed by Lancelot and Guinevere in the Lancelot en prose."[1]

The first part of the work stays closer to the traditional Tristan story as told by the verse authors like Béroul and Thomas of Britain, but many episodes are reworked or altered entirely to fit in the world and sometimes also the timeline of the Vulgate Cycle. The hero Tristan's parents are given new names and backstories, and the overall tone has been called "more realistic" than the verse material though there are moments where characters sing.[10]

August Spieß's painting of Tristan and Isolde being discovered by Mark

Episodes from the earlier Tristan stories where the lovers loved each other in secret are preserved, in particular that of the love potion. The lovers have to separate, and new and multiple adventures are inserted. An important innovation of the novel is that Tristan, pursued by the hatred of King Mark, must take refuge in the kingdom of Logres and the court of King Arthur. From now on, he leads the life of a knight-errant, performing the greatest chivalric exploits that place him among the best Arthurian knights. The separated lovers write letters and lais of love to each other that give this novel a lyrical tone. Iseult, facing dangers threatening her at the court of King Mark, joins Tristan at the castle of the Joyous Gard, lent to them by Lancelot, but continues to suffer from the repeated absences of Tristan who lingers in search of exploits and (in the long version) participates in the quest for the Grail.

Story

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The prose narrative presents a broader view of the history of Tristan and his ancestors, connecting it to the time of Christ: Tristan descends from a lineage descended from Bron, brother-in-law of Joseph of Arimathea. After a long account of the successive unions of his ancestors, the text evokes the moment when Mark becomes King of Cornwall and his sister Helyabel marries the king of Lyonesse (Leonois), Meliadus. When the latter disappears, bewitched by a fairy, Helyabel dies of grief while giving birth to a son who is named Tristan.

With the help of Merlin, Tristan is entrusted to a young nobleman, Governal, who becomes his tutor. Tristan's guardian takes him from Cornwall to Gaul, where he grows up at the court of King Pharamond. The returning Meliadus remarries the daughter of King Hoel of Brittany, who, jealous of Tristan, tries to poison him and forces him to take refuge in Cornwall at the court of Mark, where he completes his knightly training after his father is murdered. His non-martial gifts include playing harp and singing.

As part of King Mark's court, Tristan defends his country against the Irish warrior Morholt. Wounded in the fight, he travels to Ireland where he is healed by Iseult, a renowned doctor and Morholt's niece, but he must flee when the Irish discover he has killed their champion. He later returns, in disguise, to seek Iseult as a bride for his uncle. When they accidentally drink the love potion prepared for Iseult and Mark, they engage in a tragic affair that ends with Tristan being banished to the court of King Hoel. There, he marries Hoel's younger daughter, also named Iseult.

Edward Burne-Jones' The Madness of Sir Tristram (c. 1892)

Eventually, Tristan takes refuge at King Arthur's court. Especially from this point on, the traditional narrative is continually interrupted for side adventures by the various characters and episodes serving to "Arthurianize" the story.[11] Notably, Tristan's rivalry with Palamedes is given substantial attention. Additionally, in the long version, Tristan leaves Brittany and returns to his first love, and never sees his wife (Iseult of Brittany) again, though her brother Kahedin remains his close companion. Tristan is compared frequently[1] to his friend Lancelot in both arms and love, and at times even unknowingly engages him in battles. He becomes a Knight of the Round Table (taking Morholt's old seat) and embarks on the Quest for the Holy Grail before abandoning the idea to stay with Iseult at Lancelot's castle. Other knights too love the two Iseults: Palamedes, but also Kahedin, who dies of this love that Iseult of Ireland refuses to share. Tristan, for his part, believes himself betrayed by Iseult to Kahedin and goes raving mad, wandering the woods for a long time.

Manuscripts which do not include the Grail material preserve the earlier version of the lovers' deaths, while the longer versions have Tristan killed by Mark when he plays the harp for Iseult of Ireland, only to see her die immediately afterwards. In the long version, when the lovers meet again, Tristan is wounded by a lance poisoned by Morgan. He bids farewell to chivalry and his fellow adventurers, Lancelot, Palamedes, and Dinadan, and presses Iseult to his chest with such force that she dies at the same time as he does. The lovers then "lie mouth to mouth" and are reunited in death, as in earlier versions. King Mark, overwhelmed by this spectacle, orders their bodies to be buried together at Tintagel.

Legacy

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The Prose Tristan enjoyed great success until the end of the 15th century and found a place in the most prestigious medieval libraries.[1] It had a far-reaching effect on subsequent medieval literature and treatments of the Arthurian legend. Characters like Palamedes, Dinadan, and Lamorak, all of whom first appear in the Tristan, achieved popularity in later works. The pagan knight Palamedes even lent his name to the Romance of Palamedes, a later work that expands on episodes from the Tristan. This material is also preserved in the Compilation of Rustichello da Pisa and numerous later redactions in several languages, including Italian Tristano Riccardiano, Tristano Panciatichiano, and La Tavola Ritonda. The Prose Tristan also influenced the Post-Vulgate Cycle, the next major prose treatment of the Arthurian mythos, and served as the main source for the Tristan section of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

Scholarship

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Before any modern editions of the Prose Tristan were attempted, scholars were dependent on an extended summary and analysis of all the manuscripts by Eilert Löseth in 1890 (republished in 1974). Of the modern editions, the long version is made up of two editions: one edited by Renée L. Curtis and the other by Philippe Ménard.[12][13] Curtis' edition of a simple manuscript (Carpentras 404) covers Tristan's ancestry and the traditional legend up to Tristan's madness. However, the massive amount of manuscripts in existence dissuaded other scholars from attempting what Curtis had done until Ménard hit upon the idea of using multiple teams of scholars to tackle the manuscript Vienna 2542. His edition follows from Curtis', includes Tristan's participation in the Quest for the Holy Grail and ends with Tristan and Iseult's death and the first signs of Arthur's fall. The shorter version, which contains no Grail Quest, was published by Joël Blanchard in five volumes.

Though part of the larger prose cycles, which dominated all things Arthurian after the early 13th century, the originality of the Tristan en prose is found in the author's use of lyrical poems to express characters' hopes, despair or anger. Various books and articles have studied the lyrical content of the Prose Tristan whether expressed as riddles in verse, letters in verse, songs of mockery or love songs.[14][15] In this way, the Prose Tristan functions like a musical. Characters placed in extreme situations actually "break into song." All of this is appropriate considering the Tristan story's traditional link to poetry.

The Grail Quest has been a source of controversy regarding the Tristan en prose. Instead of writing new material, the author chose to insert (or interpolate) the entire Queste del Saint Graal from the Vulgate Cycle into the Tristan story, thus undermining the sanctity of the Vulgate Queste itself.[16]

Explanatory notes

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  1. ^ Or a "relative of Robert", in some manuscripts (Curtis (1994), p. xvii).

References

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Citations
  1. ^ a b c d https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/litterature/moyen-age-1/d7bd41ad-1f27-4e9b-aeaa-bd0afeb3adf0-tristan-et-iseut/article/f11c2d2f-395a-49a2-ae6c-030d1c32f1f5-roman-tristan-prose
  2. ^ https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/image/2370a2b5-bb09-425c-8ea8-c96970020a35-tristan-leonois-ou-tristan-prose-3
  3. ^ a b https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tristan-medieval-prose-work
  4. ^ Curtis (1994), p. xvi.
  5. ^ Sunderland, Luke, ed. (September 11, 2010). "Responsibility to Reputation: The Prose Tristan". Old French Narrative Cycles: Heroism between Ethics and Morality. Gallica. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 101–137. ISBN 978-1-84615-806-3 – via Cambridge University Press.
  6. ^ Leitch, Megan G.; Rushton, Cory (2019). A New Companion to Malory. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-1-84384-523-2.
  7. ^ Norris, Ralph C. (2008). Malory's Library: The Sources of the Morte Darthur. DS Brewer. ISBN 978-1-84384-154-8.
  8. ^ Curtis (1994), p. xvii.
  9. ^ Baumgartner, Emmanuèle (1958). “Luce de Gast et Hélie de Boron, le chevalier et l’écriture”. In Romania 106 (1985): 326-340; Curtis, Renée L. (1958). “The Problems of the Authorship of the Prose Tristan”. In Romania LXXIX (1958): 314-38.
  10. ^ Curtis (1994), pp. xxii–xxv.
  11. ^ Busby, Keith (1991). "Prose Tristan." In Norris J. Lacy (Ed.), The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, pp. 374–375. New York: Garland. ISBN 0-8240-4377-4.
  12. ^ Curtis, Renée L., ed. Le Roman de Tristan en prose, vols. 1-3 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1963-1985)
  13. ^ Ménard, Philippe exec. ed. Le Roman de Tristan en Prose, vols. 1-9 (Geneva: Droz, 1987-1997).
  14. ^ Lods, Jeannee (1955). "Les parties lyriques du Tristan en prose" in Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société International Arthurienne 7: 73-78.
  15. ^ Fotitch, T. and Steiner, R. (1974). Les Lais du Roman de Tristan en Prose. Munich.
  16. ^ The interpolation of the Vulgate Queste begins in Volume 6 of Ménard's edition. On the medieval technique of manuscript interpolation, see Emmanuèle Baumgartner, "La préparation à la Queste del Saint Graal dans le Tristan en prose" in Norris Lacy, ed. Conjunctures (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 1-14, Fanni Bogdanow, "L'Invention du texte, intertextualité et le problème de la transmission et de la classification de manuscrits" Romania 111 (190): 121-40 and Janina P. Traxler, "The Use and Abuse of the Grail Quest" Tristania 15 (1994): 23-31. Gaston Paris, in 1897, also noted the interpolation of a verse romance of Brunor in Prose Tristan.
Bibliography
  • Curtis, Renée L. (Ed.) (1963–1985). Le Roman de Tristan en prose, vols. 1–3. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
  • Curtis, Renée L. (trans.), ed. (1994), The Romance of Tristan, Oxford ISBN 0-19-282792-8.
  • Lacy, Norris J. (Ed.) (1991). The New Arthurian Encyclopedia. New York: Garland. ISBN 0-8240-4377-4.
  • Ménard, Philippe (Ed.) (1987–1997). Le Roman de Tristan en Prose, vols. 1–9. Geneva: Droz.
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