The Romance of Tristan and Iseult

Author: Joseph Bédier

Time Period: 1001 CE–1500 CE; 1851 CE–1900 CE

Country or Culture: France; Western Europe

Genre: Legend

Overview

Stories of romantic love, of doomed lovers and righteous quests, the tales of Tristan and Iseult have been central to Western culture for nearly a millennium. Although there is no scholarly consensus on the origin of these stories, early versions of the romance appear in Welsh, Persian, and Celtic literary traditions (among others). The vast influence of this legend is one of the many reasons Joseph Bédier, a French literary critic, sought to compile a semiauthoritative version of the romance. His (The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, first published in 1900, is an attempt to tell the legend as it might have originally been told.

As Bédier tells it, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult is a long narrative made up of many short stories. Filled with themes of love, adventure, and intrigue, the legend focuses on Tristan, a character facing tribulation from the start of his life. He is born into an embattled royal family, and with her dying breath, his mother names him Tristan, meaning “child of sadness.” In his youth, he is kidnapped, eventually coming into the household of his uncle, King Mark. Yet, there is also optimism in Tristan’s life—he is the king’s favorite, especially once they realize they are related, and he is skilled at many noble arts. Tristan and the king love each other so deeply that the king, rejecting the need for an heir, desires Tristan take the crown. However, pressured by his dukes, the king eventually sends Tristan on a quest to bring him back a wife.

Tristan’s quest sets the stage for the introduction of Iseult. On the ride back to King Mark, Iseult is at first distraught over leaving her home, until she and Tristan accidentally drink a love potion that was intended for the royal wedding night. Instantly, the two fall in love, a love that will bring them “Passion and Joy most sharp, and Anguish without end” (23). This grandiose statement is almost an understatement; the remainder of the legend is filled with heartbreak and violence as they struggle to be together, only to be repeatedly forced apart.

Fair uncle, who loved me orphaned ere ever you knew in me the blood of your sister Blanchefleur, you that wept as you bore me to that boat alone, why did you not drive out the boy that was to betray you? Ah! What thought was that! Iseult is yours and I am but your vassal; Iseult is yours and I am your son; Iseult is yours and may not love me.

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult

The legend is also a revealing look at the concept of love in Western culture. Historically, the story represents a transition in which romantic love eclipses the model of feudal love that existed primarily to secure property and power. The legend reveals, however symbolically, a period governed by men and tradition, one that is oppressive in many ways to women. A feminist analysis uncovers the social and cultural arrangements that define these gender roles and questions how Iseult challenges the structures that govern her romance with Tristan. Rather than simply looking at past cultural traditions, the best feminist analysis shows how literature contributes to the formation of gender roles and our contemporary understanding of women. An engaging narrative of a cursed romance in the context of patriarchy and the courtly world, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult remains a fundamental story in the development of Western literature.

Summary

Tristan is born into a world of both blessings and tragedies, of warring kingdoms, confused identities, and split families. His mother dies in childbirth, and he is hidden to protect him from royal enemies before he is finally kidnapped and set afloat on the ocean alone. Through all these trials, his wit and skills keep him alive, and he eventually finds his way to his uncle, King Mark. The king takes the young boy in and they develop a strong and lasting love, one that deepens when they realize their family relation.

Tristan proves his love to King Mark several times, the first of which involves defeating a monstrous knight from Ireland. Tristan is wounded and poisoned in the fight, but he manages to use his characteristic wit to save himself, tricking the unsuspecting Iseult, the knight’s niece, into curing him with her significant skills in medicine. Although Tristan leaves Iseult to return to King Mark, they are destined to meet again. It is not long before King Mark, facing the demands of several dukes who are jealous of Tristan, decides that he needs to take a wife and produce an heir. Two birds arrive at his window carrying a strand of gorgeous, golden hair, and the king declares that he will marry the lady to whom the hair belongs. Tristan, recognizing it as Iseult’s, departs to find her.

Tristan is not able simply to win Iseult’s companionship, but instead relies on a combination of clever tricks and brute strength, slaying a dragon and winning over Iseult’s father in the process. Although another man attempts to claim credit for the dragon’s death, Iseult detects the lies and outwits the man, and Tristan is able to depart with her. Iseult’s own feelings about her departure do not matter to any of the men involved, and when Tristan eventually travels back to King Mark with Iseult by his side, the future queen weeps for the home she is leaving behind. Secretly, however, her mother brews a powerful love potion, giving it to Iseult’s companion with instructions to slip it to Iseult and King Mark on their wedding night.

The queen’s “potion of might” (22), however, does not reach its intended destination. Tristan and Iseult, thinking the potion is wine, drink it themselves on their voyage back to King Mark. This turns out to be a fatal mistake for Iseult, for “she had not found wine—but Passion and Joy most sharp, and Anguish without end, and Death” (23). The love of Tristan and Iseult is both all-consuming and forbidden. They are destined to be continually drawn together and torn apart. They have some luck hiding their affair from King Mark, even meeting in the king’s orchards for a brief period when Tristan is banished from the castle. However, Tristan is eventually tricked and their affair revealed by a group of jealous barons and a magical dwarf.

When King Mark learns the truth of the affair, he sentences both Tristan and Iseult to death. Tristan manages to escape, leaping from a temple window and being carried to safety by a god-sent wind. Iseult has similar fortune, as she is sent away with a group of lepers rather than being burned alive, and Tristan is able to save her. For a brief period of joy and love, they live together in the wilderness. There, although “their faces sank and grew white, their clothes ragged,” the two “loved each other and they did not know that they suffered” (44). Eventually, however, the king learns where they are hidden. He finds them asleep with Tristan’s blade between them, a symbol the king takes to mean that they have remained celibate out of respect for him, though the blade’s position is a mere coincidence. He decides not to slay them, instead taking Tristan’s blade and leaving his own. When the lovers awake, they see the king’s blade and Tristan is moved that he has spared them. Tristan decides that the proper thing to do is to return Iseult to King Mark and go off alone into the world.

Iseult, imprisoned again in the castle, proves her innocence to the king by swearing allegiance on holy relics and holding a hot iron without injury, a trick she accomplishes with the help of a disguised Tristan. Soon after, one of Tristran’s friends gives him a fairy dog with a magical bell that, when rung, relieves all sadness. He sends it to Iseult, but deciding that she should not be happy if he is not, Iseult throws the dog into the sea. They send each other coded messages, construct elaborate disguises, and do anything else they can to achieve brief moments of contact and communication. After some time, however, Tristan takes a wife, Iseult of the White Hands, his affection for whom is based mainly on her shared name with his true love.

Eventually, Tristan is poisoned in battle and realizes that his death is approaching. He sends an old friend to bring Iseult to him, instructing the friend to raise a white sail if Iseult is aboard the ship on its return. Unbeknownst to him, however, Iseult of the White Hands overhears him confessing his true love and is driven mad by jealousy, for “a woman’s wrath is a fearful thing, and all men fear it, for according to her love, so will her vengeance be” (85). When finally the ship arrives, white sail high, Iseult of the White Hands lies and tells Tristan that it is flying a black sail. Tristan takes this to mean that Iseult is not returning to him and dies after calling her name four times. Iseult rushes to shore moments later and, upon learning that Tristan is dead, lies beside him and likewise dies in grief. King Mark learns of their deaths and, taking pity on their love, buries the lovers together. From their grave grow flowering, intertwined briars that can never be cut down.

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