Tristan

Tristan, Tristram, Tristrem, Trystan. Cornish knight, lover of Iseult, whose story became attached to the court of King Arthur. Modern commentators trace several antecedents of Tristan's name, the earliest being the ‘Tristan Stone’, a monolith near Fowey, Cornwall, 30 miles S of Tintagel, with a Latin inscription (6th cent.?) to Drustanus. The Welsh Triads (12th cent.) associates Drystan, a name of apparent Pictish origin, with a person named March. Drystan, in turn, has been linked to Drust or Drustan, an obscure Pictish king who died in 780. Marie de France's Lai du Chèvrefeuil (c.1160) depicts an already existing Tristan-Iseult union but does not place it at Arthur's court. About the same time Thomas of Britain did place the lovers within Arthuriana in his Anglo-Norman verse Tristan, most of which does not survive. Three later texts, Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan (c.1210), Eilhart von Oberg's Tristrant (c.1175), and Béroul's Tristan (c.1170), shape the narrative as it has survived since medieval times. Tristan is sent to Ireland to bring back Iseult, betrothed to his uncle, King Mark, whom the girl has never seen. Iseult's mother, hoping that her daughter will find love in an arranged marriage, prepares a potion which she entrusts to a nurse, Brangwain. En route the young people drink the potion by mistake and soon consummate their love. Many intrigues and digressions follow, but Iseult eventually returns to Mark while Tristan goes into exile. While abroad in Brittany, Tristan marries but does not sleep with Iseult of the White Hands, who jealously tells her mortally wounded husband that the true Iseult is not on a vessel he is awaiting and so causes him to die of despair before he can finally be reunited with her.

While much of the prestige still accorded the Tristan story comes from its being seen as an important expression of the ideals of romantic love first propounded by the Provençal troubadours of the 12th century, the outlines of its love triangle have many international correlatives, notably in the medieval Arab story of Kais and Lobna. The often-cited Celtic counterparts are Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne [The Pursuit of Diarmait and Gráinne] and the Deirdre story.

Bibliography

See Gertrude Schoepperle , Tristan and Isolt: A Study of the Sources of the Romance (2 vols., London, 1913);
Sigmund Eisner , The Tristan Legend: A Study in Sources (Evanston, Ill., 1969);
Rachel Bromwich , ‘Some Remarks on the Celtic Sources of Tristan’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1955), 32–60;
Raymond Cormier , ‘Remarks on the Tale of Deirdriu and Noisiu and the Tristan Legend’, Études Celtiques, 15 (1976–8), 303–15;
Oliver J. Padel , ‘The Cornish Background of the Tristan Stories’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 1 (1981), 53–81

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