Exhibitions
Arthurian Legend: Tristan and Isolde
January 2006 - 7 April 2006
The story of Tristan (Tristram) and Isolde (Yseult) rivals that of Lancelot and Guinevere as one of the great romantic love stories of the Middle Ages. It tells how Tristan, orphaned nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, goes to Ireland to be cured of what would otherwise be a mortal battle wound by the skilled Isolde. Mark falls in love with Tristan’s reports of Isolde, and sends Tristan back to Ireland to woo her for him. Isolde accepts. On the return journey from Ireland to Cornwall, Tristan and Isolde inadvertently drink a love philtre intended for Mark and Isolde. The rest of the story concerns Tristan and Isolde’s resulting love and the conflict between this love and the allegiance which both lovers owe to King Mark; Mark’s alternate suspicion of the lovers and the stilling of that suspicion; Tristan and Isolde’s exile; and Tristan’s unconsummated marriage to another Isolde, Isolde of the White Hands, for her name’s sake.
Ultimately, Tristan is again wounded by a poisonous weapon. Only the Irish Isolde can heal him. He sends for her, arranging as a sign that the sail of the ship sent for her should be white if she agrees to come to him, and black otherwise. Isolde comes and a white sail heralds her arrival, but Isolde of the White Hands, motivated by jealousy, tells Tristan that the sail is black. He dies of despair. Isolde arrives and kills herself.
The romance in this form was probably known from about 1150, and formed the basis for two twelfth-century French verse romances, Thomas of Brittany’s ‘courtly’ and Béroul’s ‘vulgar’ version. These in turn constituted the respective sources of the German versions by Gottfried von Strassburg and Eilhart von Oberge. The courtly version is marked by more rational development and action than the vulgar, more logic in the characters’ behaviour and motivation, and a courtly concern throughout for the depiction of the birth, growth and sufferings of love. A French prose Tristan which appeared in about 1230 links the Tristan story with the wider Arthurian legend and is the source of later Spanish, Italian, Russian and English versions of the tale, including Malory’s. Matthew Arnold, John Masefield and Thomas Hardy have been among modern authors to retell the Tristan story.
As an iconic legend which has appeared in many countries in various artistic forms, this display complements the exhibition ‘Icons of Western Literature’ in the Library’s exhibition hall.
