Part III: Continental Arthurian Traditions
10
The “Matter of Britain” on the Continent and the Legend of Tristan and Iseult in France, Italy, and Spain
In the preface to his epic, La Chanson de Saisnes, Jehan Bodel (d. 1210) distinguishes among the three principal matters, that of France (chansons de geste), Rome (romances of antiquity), and Britain (Breton or Arthurian romances), denigrating the latter as vain et plaisant (“frivolous and pleasant”). Yet by this time the “matter of Britain” was gaining an enthusiastic audience in France, where it had taken hold in the twelfth century and flourished, spreading quickly to Germany, Scandinavia, and the Italian and Iberian peninsulas before re-crossing the Channel back to England, greatly enriched. Although it was originally addressed to courtly, aristocratic circles, from the thirteenth century on it filtered down to the lower echelons of society, especially as the urban classes gained prominence. The appearance of print editions only broadened its readership and increased its popularity.
The matter of Britain is first exemplified on the Continent by the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes and the Old French verse romances of Tristan and Iseult. These works captured the imagination by their appealing blend of “historical” elements (inherited from Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace) and fantastic motifs and themes, most drawn from Celtic legends. Love and chivalry were prominent, and the audience was invited to reflect on the heroes’ attempts to reconcile conflicting personal and professional demands. The great prose romances of the thirteenth century – the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles and the Prose Tristan – developed these predominantly secular themes, but the religious motifs first introduced by Chrétien’s Conte du Graal added a whole new dimension.
Since the matter of Britain on the Continent – a vast subject – is the focus of several different contributors in this volume, we will limit the scope of this chapter to the evolution of the legend of Tristan and Iseult in a few areas that had close linguistic and cultural ties: Occitania and France, Italy, and Spain and Portugal. We shall be able to appreciate the tremendous impact of an important component of the Arthurian legend and the complex network of influences involved in its transmission. It is, of course, somewhat anachronistic to refer to these regions as if they were modern nations, especially since frontiers were, in the Middle Ages, extremely permeable, and the knowledge of French very widespread. Keith Busby has spoken recently of a “medieval Francophonia,” arguing that patterns of manuscript production in different regions of present-day France, Belgium, England, and Italy put into question the very concept of “medieval French literature” (2002: 4). The diffusion of the Tristan legend in southern Europe suggests that this “medieval Francophonia” encompassed parts of the Iberian Peninsula as well.
The story of Tristan and Iseult was originally separate from the Arthurian tradition. Although Arthur appears briefly in the verse Tristans, it is only in the Prose Tristan, where Tristan actually joins the Round Table, that the two legends intersect fruitfully, even though Chrétien had already drawn on the Tristan legend to depict the adulterous passion of Cligés and Fenice and of Lancelot and Guenevere.
France and Occitania
We owe to lyric poets living in Occitania (southern France) the earliest Continental allusions to the legend. Of all the Arthurian characters, Tristan and Iseult are cited most in the poetry of the troubadours and of their northern French counterparts, the trouvères. Poets used them as emblematic figures, standards by which to measure, in hyperbolic terms, their own virtues, celebrating Tristan’s prowess, Iseult’s beauty, their love ardor, and the daring ruses employed to meet secretly. Most allusions are brief – one or two lines – but in Non chant per auzel, Raimbaut d’Aurenga’s poet-lover extends over three strophes the story of how Iseult gave Tristan the “gift” of her virginity and cleverly managed to conceal it from her husband. This allusion, conceived as an exemplary lesson for the poet’s beloved, underscores how the love of Tristan and Iseult, made reciprocal by the potion, differed from the fin’ amor that the typical troubadour celebrated as he labored to seduce his – often recalcitrant – Lady.
The precise sources of the legend are unknown. Scholars have found analogues in the tales of the Celts, and certain motifs may have been borrowed from Hellenic, Persian, and Arabic sources. But the story that has fired the imagination of artists from the Middle Ages onward stems from the versions composed in Europe in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. These texts derive from two “traditions” identified by Joseph Bédier, who also believed in the existence of a non-extant “archetype.” The so-called version commune (common or primitive version) is thought to preserve an earlier state of the legend; it is represented in French by Béroul (between 1150 and 1190) and in German, in a slightly different strand, by Eilhart von Oberg (between 1170 and 1190). The so-called version courtoise (courtly version) incorporates features doubtless influenced by court culture. The Old French verse Tristan composed by Thomas de Bretagne (c. 1170–75) formed the basis for the poems in Middle High German by Gottfried von Strassburg (c. 1210) and in Old Norse by Friar Róbert (1226).1
Since we do not know the exact sources used by these poets, and because they and later writers emphasized different elements, a rough sketch of the legend (based on the early Tristan poems) will serve as a frame of reference for subsequent discussion, both in this chapter and in later ones.
Born to King Rivalin of Lyonesse and Blancheflor, sister of King Mark of Cornwall, Tristan is orphaned early on and raised by his tutor Governal, who becomes his trusted companion. Endowed with both martial and courtly skills (hunting, music), he wins his uncle’s heart on arriving at his court. When the Irish champion Morholt (the Irish queen’s brother) comes to demand the annual tribute, Tristan defeats him, inflicting a fatal blow to the head, where a piece of his sword lodges. Ailing from a poisonous wound received in that fight, Tristan sets himself adrift in an open boat with his harp and arrives by chance in Ireland. Disguised as a minstrel, he is cured by the Queen and Princess Iseult before returning to Cornwall, where Mark’s affection for him causes the jealous barons to urge their lord to marry. Volunteering for the bridequest, Tristan returns to Ireland and slays the dragon ravaging the land. Poisoned by the flames emanating from its mouth, he is nursed back to health by Iseult. Though outraged to discover the telltale notch in his sword, Iseult is persuaded not to kill him. As the dragon-slayer, Tristan obtains permission to take the princess back to Cornwall for Mark, and the two set out with Iseult’s confidante, Brangain, to whom the Queen has entrusted a love potion for the bridal couple.
On board the ship, Tristan and Iseult mistakenly drink the potion and consummate their ill-fated love. In Cornwall, they lead a double life, meeting secretly while trying to thwart attempts by the evil dwarf Frocin and the felonious barons to prove their treachery to Mark, whose affection for the couple blinds him to their disloyalty. In one famous episode, Mark is persuaded to spy on them by hiding in a tree in his orchard, but the lovers spot his reflection in the water and manage to dispel his doubts. Eventually they are caught, and Tristan is condemned to death, while Iseult is turned over to a leper colony. They escape and flee to the Morois forest, where they lead an existence whose harshness is mitigated only by their mutual passion. At one point, Mark learns of their whereabouts, but upon finding them asleep fully clothed and separated by Tristan’s sword, he again persuades himself of their innocence and allows them to return to court. The hermit Ogrin urges them to repent of their sin, but they believe themselves innocent. Although in some versions the lovers’ desire to return to court is set off by the abatement of the potion’s effects after three or four years, their real incentive is to reclaim their rightful roles in society. While Mark is happy to take back his wife, the barons persuade him to exile Tristan and to make Iseult swear her innocence, an ordeal at which King Arthur is present and from which she emerges unscathed thanks to a clever oath that respects the letter, if not the spirit, of the law.
Tristan spends time at Arthur’s court, where he increases his prowess immeasurably and earns the affection of the knights, who accompany him to Tintagel and demonstrate solidarity when Mark attempts to trap Tristan by placing sharp blades around Iseult’s bed. After leaving Arthur’s court, Tristan finds a new home in Brittany, entering the service of Duke Hoël, whose son, Kaherdin, becomes his companion. He eventually marries Hoël’s daughter, Iseult of the White Hands; temporarily bewitched by her name and beauty (and his lust), he feels remorse on his wedding night and is unable to consummate the union. Following this abortive attempt to replace Iseult the Blonde, he has statues of her and Brangain erected in a cave and visits periodically. The Queen languishes in Cornwall where with no news from Tristan she is pestered by Cariado, a suitor who reports on Tristan’s marriage. She also quarrels with Brangain, who reproaches her for her faithlessness and threatens to denounce her. Tristan makes several return visits to Cornwall disguised variously as leper, pilgrim, and fool. Back in Brittany, he is fatally wounded by a poisoned spear. All remedies failing, he sends Kaherdin to fetch the Queen, instructing him to hoist, on the return trip, a white sail if she is aboard, a black sail if she is not. His eavesdropping wife, apprised at last of his relationship and also of this code, informs Tristan that the white sail on the returning ship is black. Tristan, thinking his lover has ceased to care for him, expires on the spot, as does the Queen when she arrives to find him dead. In some versions, a repentant Mark, upon learning of the potion, buries them side by side in Tintagel. From their tombs spring two vines that intertwine.
The extant portion of Béroul’s poem, a 4,485-line fragment composed in octosyllabic couplets and preserved in a single manuscript, recounts the middle part of the legend, from the orchard rendezvous to Tristan’s banishment. This tryst, immortalized by so many medieval artists, establishes the lovers’ unrepentant talent for verbal and visual duplicity and Marc’s touching gullibility. These same qualities repeatedly surge to the fore in cyclical fashion as Marc’s barons strive relentlessly to catch the lovers in a compromising situation that will prove their guilt. But Tristran2 – and especially Yseut – are more than a match for their enemies who, though they are in the right, apparently do not even have God on their side, no doubt because they are motivated by spite and jealousy. One of the most astonishing illustrations of the lovers’ ruse is the “ambiguous oath” that Yseut pronounces near the Mal Pas swamp in the presence of King Artus, called to witness the ordeal. Having arranged to have Tristran, disguised as a leper, carry her across the swamp on his shoulders, she can swear honestly that she has never had any man between her thighs except her lord Marc … and the leper.
As Yseut tells Ogrin, she and Tristran believe themselves innocent because of the love potion, yet they continue to meet and scheme even after the drink’s effects wear off. The surprisingly upbeat tone of the poem stems in part from the lovers’ mischievous delight in their ability to exploit language and appearances to achieve their subversive ends and partly from the narrator’s overt espousal of their cause. But although the “epic” narrator applauds the lovers’ successive victories and their enemies’ every defeat, Béroul himself may not have entirely approved of this unorthodox situation, especially since Marc is, on the whole, an extremely sympathetic cuckold, and the lovers reveal no qualms about betraying him and violating the most sacred social and religious ties. Even when the potion’s effects wane, the lovers regret not their disloyalty to Marc but rather their inability to fulfill their rightful roles in society. Béroul invites us to read between the lines of a work that, while entertaining and even comical on the surface, is deeply troubling in its implications.
Thomas’s poem, composed about the same time as Béroul’s, is very different in tone. It may have been composed for the Plantagenet court, and indeed Artus is depicted as King of England. The various fragments (totaling 3,298 octosyllabic lines) are preserved in ten different manuscripts and represent about a quarter of the original. Judging from the outline to be gleaned from Róbert and Gottfried, both of whom cite this poem as their source, it was Thomas who expanded the love story of the hero’s parents to anticipate that of Tristran and Ysolt. Except for a recently discovered fragment describing the potion scene, the extant pieces recount the last third of the romance, starting with the lovers’ adieu as Tristran goes into exile and ending with their deaths. The episodes in between focus on the acute alienation felt by both Tristran and Ysolt – his various attempts to replace her (marriage, cave of lovers); Ysolt’s quarrel with her confidante; Tristran’s frequent trips back to Cornwall; and the combat in which he receives a fatal wound through the loins.
By a curious coincidence, the extant portions of Thomas’s poem take up the story just before Gottfried’s poem breaks off, and early scholars, failing to note the difference in tone between the two works, believed that Thomas was depicting an ennobling love. However, it is clear that the account of the legend furnished by Thomas, undoubtedly a cleric, is bleak in the extreme. His narrator analyzes the impossible situation of the lovers and their respective spouses: all lack the power (poeir) to realize their heart’s desire (voleir), as Tristran too acknowledges in the famous monologue that nevertheless ends with his resolution to wed, a decision that only accentuates his dilemma and multiplies the misery of all concerned.
Roughly contemporary with the poems of Béroul and Thomas are a few episodic texts that recount variously Tristan’s return visits to Cornwall. In the Folie Tristan de Berne (574 lines) and the Folie Tristan d’Oxford (998 lines), named after the location of the library where each is housed, Tristan’s disguise as a fool enables him to speak freely – and even crudely – to Marc and Yseut as he provides distorted accounts of his past history with the Queen. The particular events he relates in each poem link the Berne Folie to the version commune and the Oxford Folie to the version courtoise.
Another twelfth-century piece was contributed by Marie de France in Chevrefoil, the shortest of her famous lais (a mere 118 lines), which neatly encapsulates the lovers’ plight. Tristram, unable to endure his exile, learns that the Queen will be traveling to Tintagel for Pentecost. Upon spotting her in the procession, he signals his presence by tossing in her path a hazel branch engraved with his name (or a message) signifying that their situation is analogous to that of the honeysuckle entwining the hazel, for they cannot long endure when separated. The visit ends on a joyful note as the Queen expresses the hope of a reconciliation between Tristram and Marc. Tristan also visits Yseut in a short text (1,524 lines) inserted into the Fourth Continuation of Perceval and called Tristan Menestrel because after drawing Arthur’s knights to Marc’s court, he disguises himself as a minstrel in order to win a night of love with the Queen.
The romances of Chrétien de Troyes (Lacy & Grimbert 2005) were composed during the same late-twelfth-century period as the early Tristan poems, but at least one romance, Cligés, reveals in its structure, themes, and rhetoric prior knowledge of Thomas’s poem, although nothing is known of his poem “del roi Marc et d’Iseut la blonde” cited in the prologue of Cligés. Chrétien’s romances themselves had a tremendous impact, particularly on the great prose romances of the following century known as the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles. Chrétien also influenced over twenty twelfth- and thirteenth-century Arthurian verse romances (Schmolke-Hasselmann 1998; Kelly 2006).
Starting in the thirteenth century, the romance that had the greatest impact on the diffusion of the Tristan legend in France, Italy, and Spain was Le Livre (ou le roman) du bon chevalier Tristan de Leonois, commonly known as the Prose Tristan, composed in the second and third quarters of the thirteenth century and attributed – no doubt falsely – to Luce del Gast and Hélie de Boron. Transmitted in two basic versions, it was extremely popular and is extant in more than eighty manuscripts and fragments and in eight printed editions dating from 1489 to 1533. The long version is sometimes called the “cyclical version” because a portion of the Vulgate is interpolated into certain manuscripts. The authors were clearly familiar with the Lancelot–Grail (Vulgate) Cycle and the Lancelot–Queste–Mort Artu, for they set Tristan’s prowess on a level with that of Lancelot and Galahad and grafted his story onto the scheme provided by the Prose Lancelot (see chapter 14).
The Prose Tristan extends the hero’s story both backward and forward in time. It begins with an account of Tristan’s ancestors and relates his sojourn with Governal at the court of King Pharamont of Gaul, where he has two love affairs. After he arrives at Marc’s court, his story follows the verse narratives up to his marriage in Brittany, after which he returns to Cornwall before Marc banishes him for good. But his fate is no longer that of an alienated individual spending a lonely exile pining away for his beloved. He becomes a knight-errant and gains such a sterling reputation measuring himself against Artus’s best knights that he is invited to occupy, aptly, Morholt’s vacant seat at the Round Table. At this point, the influence of the Lancelot–Grail becomes preponderant as Tristan is integrated into the Arthurian orbit and will even participate in the Grail quest.
The authors of the Prose Tristan dilute strikingly the subversive force of the original love story. First, they set up a stark opposition between the virtuous Artus and his brave knights and a thoroughly villainous King Marc and the cowardly Cornish. Second, they multiply the number of characters who fall in love with – and sometimes even die for – Tristan and Yselt, including the Gaulish princess Belide, Tristan’s brother-in-law Kaherdin, and the Saracen Palamedes (a newly invented character). In fact, as is appropriate in a romance where love and chivalry are so intimately linked, Tristan’s amorous interest in Yselt is first aroused at a tournament where Palamedes, a rival knight, hopes to win her through a love-inspired display of prowess. Third, the decision to place the Cornish lovers in a space contiguous with that of the Arthurian kingdom at its height inevitably invites comparison with their Logrian counterparts, Lancelot and Genevre. And, just as in the Prose Lancelot the eponymous hero is celebrated as Artus’s greatest champion, Tristan is endowed here with an analogous social function, thereby muting the subversive impact of his adulterous affair. Finally, the primary love intrigue is virtually dwarfed by the maze of adventures that occupy both Tristan and his fellow knights: “The reader is swept along by a succession of interlacing episodes, repeated motifs, echoes and correspondences, reminiscent of the self-generating narrative of the serialized novel” (Baumgartner 2006: 329; see also her landmark 1975 study).
The changes that the Prose Tristan wrought in the legend suggested a distinctively different ending consonant with the new emphasis on chivalry and destined to become the dominant model in all the countries where this romance was imported. Only one manuscript of the Prose Tristan features the traditional death scene; in all the others, Tristan is treacherously slain by Marc with a poisonous lance as he listens to Yselt perform a lay, and Yselt expires in her lover’s ardent embrace. Tristan, who would have preferred to die in battle, pleads that his arms be presented to Artus and Lancelot.
The popularity of the Prose Tristan in France generated interest in stories about Tristan’s father Meliadus and his descendants. Palamedes, a kind of prequel, is a collection of tales about Meliadus’s generation, including the fathers of Palamedes, Artus, and Erec. Its two parts were often considered independent texts and were published separately in the sixteenth century as Meliadus de Leonnoys and Guiron le Courtois. Rustichello (Rusticiano) da Pisa composed the first version of Palamedes as part of his Roman du Roi Artus or Compilation (c. 1272). It was included as well in the Arthurian compilations of Jehan Vaillant de Poitiers (c. 1391) and Michot Gonnot (1470). The Prose Tristan also spawned a kind of dynastic continuation in the early fifteenth century called Ysaÿe le Triste, which was published in 1522. It recounts the serio-comic adventures of the lovers’ son, Ysaÿe, and grandson, Marc, who set about to restore harmony in the Arthurian realm by eliminating the evil forces and customs. Two other Tristan romances were published subsequently, Pierre Sala’s Tristan (1525–9) and Jean Maugin’s Premier Livre du nouveau Tristan de Leonnois, chevalier de la Table Ronde et d’Yseulte Princesse d’Yrlande, Royne de Cornouaille (1554), which was to be followed by a second book that never materialized.
Italy
In Italy, Tristan was by far the most beloved and widely cited of all Arthurian characters. As was the case in France, lyric poets early on used the celebrated lovers as yardsticks to measure their own experience. Henricus of Settimello made the first reference in a Latin poem (1193) where he compared his own sorrows to Tristano’s greater ones. But the first phase of courtly lyric poetry centered around the court of Frederick II of Sicily (1220–50), where poets enjoyed close ties with the troubadours and, like them, celebrated Tristano’s consummate strength and courage, Isotta’s superlative beauty, and the enduring force of their love. Shortly afterwards, the great master of rhetoric Brunetto Latini, writing in France (and in French), included an elaborate description of Isotta in the section on rhetoric in his Li Livres dou Trésor (1266).
The most famous Italian poets had conflicting attitudes toward the Arthurian legend. In his De Vulgari Eloquentia (1303–4) Dante cited Arthur as evidence of the pre-eminence of French, but in his Divina Comedia (between 1308 and 1321), his allusions to Arthurian literature are pejorative. The best known is his presentation of the sinful passion of two contemporaries from Rimini, Paolo and Francesca (Inferno V), who lament that they fell in love while reading the Prose Lancelot. Although there is no explicit mention of Tristano and Isotta here, some scholars (e.g. Gardner, Hoffman) believe their story is woven into that of Paolo and Francesca, who, as Dante knew, were slain by Paolo’s brother, just as Tristano was slain by his uncle. In any case, Tristano, though not Isotta, figures at the end of Canto V in the list of famous characters undone by love. A bit later, Petrarca, speaking contemptuously of “popular” literature in his Trionfo d’Amore, groups the Logrian and Cornish lovers with the couple from Rimini who lament having been subjugated by love. Similarly, Boccaccio, in his Amorosa Visione, includes them in his Arthurian cavalcade and in the pageant of lovers, but his later allusions to Arthurian figures tend to be cynical or licentious (Gardner 1930: 136–41, 228–32).
Another type of Italian poetry is represented by the Cantari (mid-thirteenth to late fifteenth centuries), popular narrative poems composed in ottava rima, which draw on both oral and written sources. Three are Tristan-related: Tristano’s combat with Lancilotto at the Merlin stone, the lovers’ deaths, and Lancilotto’s vendetta against Marco. In the so-called Cantare dei cantari (c. 1380–1420), the poet lists the subjects in his repertory, which includes the whole course of sacred and profane history, with nine stanzas devoted to Arthurian subjects (Gardner 1930: 265–72).
The Prose Tristan was the basis for all the Italian romances. French was understood by educated speakers, and about twenty percent of the extant manuscripts of the Prose Tristan were actually copied in Italy. The earliest prose romance written by an Italian was the above-mentioned romance composed in French by Rustichello da Pisa, the late thirteenth-century Compilation, whose two parts were translated into Italian as Girone il Cortese and Il gran re Meliadus. The romances composed in Italian were all based on the same unorthodox non-extant redaction of the Prose Tristan. The earliest (late thirteenth century), Tristano Riccardiano, is a Tuscan–Umbrian adaptation of elements from the Prose Tristan combined with new episodes. Nearly half of the extant romance concerns Tristano’s marriage and his adventures in Brittany. The Tristano Veneto and the Tristano Corsiniano are both translations of the Prose Tristan in the Venetian dialect. The Tristano Panciaticchiano is much more eclectic, an “Arthurian medley” made up of five disparate sections (Gardner 1930: 114).
But the undoubted masterpiece of this group is the Tavola Ritonda (Tuscan dialect, second quarter of the fourteenth century), which integrates into an innovative framework elements borrowed from Thomas’s Tristan, the Prose Tristan, Palamedes, Robert de Boron’s Merlin, the Vulgate Queste and Mort Artu, and a source it shares with the Tristano Riccardiano. (See Delcorno Branca’s masterful 1968 study, which includes an episode-by-episode chart comparing this romance with its various sources.) The Tavola, extant in ten manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was obviously very popular. Like Malory, the author plainly wished to provide a summa of the Arthurian cycle. After announcing his intention to speak of both the Old and New Tables, he soon dispenses with this grand plan and focuses on the “Tavola Nuovo” – Artù’s fellowship – before cutting in short order to a comparison of Tristano and Lancilotto. Stating that he will begin with Tristano, who was “the source and foundation of all chivalry,” he will set out his noble lineage and birth, his perfect love and his cruel death, and the very great vengeance taken on his behalf. Although this outline sounds like the Prose Tristan, the emphasis is markedly different in the Tavola, which drastically reduces the number of chivalric adventures and is clearly designed to refocus attention on Tristano and Isotta’s love, portrayed as both overpowering and exemplary.
Tristano is compared to Lancilotto throughout, as in the Prose Tristan, where they are both exemplary knights and lovers. But in the Tavola they also share family ties: Tristano’s mother is Artù’s niece and the cousin of Lancilotto’s father; his father, Meliadus, is Marco’s brother. The marriage of Tristano’s parents was negotiated by Lancilotto, of a generation older than Tristano, whose birth occurs at the moment that the Logrian lovers consummate their love. Lancilotto and Ginevara will eventually be surpassed both in beauty and in the quality of their love. Although the author celebrates Lancilotto, Tristano, and Galeotto (Galehaut) as the most noble knights, he laments that they were neither secret nor wise in their loves; however, he states that Tristano was excused by the potion. The author celebrates the pre-eminence of Tristano and Isotta as lovers because they were initially joined in a “loyal love” and only succumbed to adultery upon drinking the potion, whereas Lancilotto and Ginevara’s love, conceived when they set eyes on one another, was a case of willful excess, which was precisely what undermined Arthurian ideals and spelled the destruction of the Round Table. In the Arthurian hierarchy, Galasso (Galahad) owed his greatness to God’s grace, but Tristano was the best secular knight because he had “a heart in love,” the cornerstone of all chivalry (Grimbert 2005).
Tristano and Isotta’s deaths confirm their superiority as the ending adapted from the Prose Tristan takes on unmistakably christological overtones. Tristano, dying at 33, expresses remorse for his preoccupation with worldly matters but hopes Christ’s precious blood will redeem his sin. The lovers believe they will be forgiven, a likelihood underscored by the pope’s offer of indulgences to all who pray for their souls. Particularly striking is the description of the allegorization of the vine that roots in the lovers’ hearts: it “invites an ecstatic exegesis that blends Dionysian celebration with eucharistic devotion, recreating Tristan as the patron of a new communion of lovers who will drink the wine transubstantiated from his body and blood” (Hoffman 1990: 177). Following Tristano’s death, the Arthurian realm sinks into gloom, and after carrying out their high vendetta against Marco, the knights give in to such excess that the Round Table self-destructs. After its destruction, it is said that Carlo Magno rode into Logres and, upon seeing the statues of Artù’s greatest knights that had been erected after the tournament at Verzeppe, proclaimed that Artù deserved his death, for with five such noble knights, he should have had all Christians and Saracens under his sway.
This intersection of the matter of Britain with that of France, which was to characterize Italian epic during the Renaissance, is seen in the Franco-Italian epic, Entrée d’Espagne (before 1320), where epic heroes are endowed with the amorous and chivalric sensibility of Arthurian knights even while the Breton fables are pronounced inferior, as in Nicola da Casola’s Attila (after 1350). The conflation of the Arthurian and Carolingian cycles naturally anticipates Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (Gardner 1930: 218–20).
Unlike France, which had a relatively stable monarchy, the situation in Italy was quite volatile, especially after Frederick II’s death in 1250. The rise of the city-states (communes) in central and northern Italy may well have influenced the ideology of the Tristan romances. For example, the character of Dinadan, who serves in the Prose Tristan (where he was first introduced) as a critic of both chivalric and amorous ideals, is endowed in the Tavola with a wider range of attitudes and types of discourse that embrace the bourgeois sensibility. It is possible that the author uses Dinadano’s moralizing gloss of Arthurian ideals to verbalize his own criticism (Kleinhenz 1975), but the celebration of Tristano throughout the romance, and especially the ecstatic description at the end, suggests that he was as enamored of the Cornish lovers as many of his compatriots seem to have been.
Spain and Portugal
The diffusion of the matter of Britain in Iberia spans an unusually long period, from the early twelfth century to the sixteenth. In Castile and Léon, Arthurian names were known as early as the 1130s, even before Geoffrey of Monmouth composed his Historia. Moreover, a sculpted image on a column of the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela that shows an ailing Tristan lying in an open boat holding a notched sword upright pre-dates all the extant French verse poems and points to a very early penetration of the legend (Sharrer 1996: 407–8). If the Arthurian legend’s appeal endured well into the Renaissance, it is because chivalry was held in high esteem in Spain, where the Reconquista justified the existence of a class that assured national survival and defense of the faith (Hall 1983: 85).
A number of historical factors favored the diffusion of the matter of Britain on the Iberian Peninsula. The earliest version of the only Occitan Arthurian romance, Jaufré (c. 1170), was written at the court of Alfonso II of Aragon, whose successor, Pedro II (1196–1213), was often compared to Arthur. More importantly, in 1170, Alfonso VIII of Castile married Eleanor of England, the daughter of two great patrons of Arthurian literature, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine (whose grandfather, Guillaume IX, was the first troubadour). In 1254, his great-granddaughter, Leonor of Castile, sister of Alfonso X (Brunetto Latini’s patron), married Edward I, who was the great-grandson of Henry II and Eleanor. Edward was also the patron of Rustichello’s Compilation, which, as we recall, was written in French by an Italian; it would be translated into Castilian about 1293 (Entwistle 1925: 33–4, 50–52).
One point of entry of the Tristan legend into Spain was Catalonia, thanks to the close linguistic and cultural ties between Occitania and the Catalan troubadours, one of whom, Giraut de Cabrera, was the first to cite Tristan, in a poem composed around 1170. But it was the hybrid Galician-Portuguese language, used by the court lyric poets in the western two-thirds of the peninsula from 1150 to 1300, that formed the real bridge between Occitania and Iberia. Although Alfonso X alluded to Tristán, Artus, and Merlin in his Galician-Portuguese poems, the legend was not widely known in Castile until the mid-fourteenth century. The Cancioneiro de Baena, which collects the lyrics of Castilian poets of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, includes many references to Iseo’s beauty and Tristán’s passion and musical skills (Hall 1983: 77).
The earliest substantial Tristan works were five anonymous Galician-Portuguese troubadour narrative lyrics, or romances, the Cancioneiro de Lisboa or Lais de Bretanha (late thirteenth to early fourteenth century). Especially prized was the widely glossed ballad, Herido está don Tristán, recounting the death of the lovers at Marco’s court on the model of the prose romances, “a masterpiece of poignancy and compression” (Lida de Malkiel 1959: 413).
The Hispanic Tristan romances are all related to the French Prose Tristan, most to the same non-extant version from which the Italian romances were generated. There are several small fourteenth-century fragments (one to four folios): two Catalan, two Castilian, and one Galician-Portuguese. A much more substantial Castilian and Aragonese manuscript (131 folios), El Cuento de Tristán de Leonís, dates from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. Two sixteenth-century imprints complete the picture. The first, El Libro del esforçado cauallero don Tristán de Leonís y de sus grandes fechos en armas, appeared in 1501 and was re-edited several times. A sequel dates from 1534, Corónica nuevamente emendata y añadida del buen cavallero don Tristán de Leonís y del rei don Tristán de Leonís el joven su hijo. Just as the Prose Tristan had extended the legend backward to include the hero’s ancestors, this sequel, like Ysaÿe le Triste, extends it forward to recount the adventures of his offspring, Tristán and Yseo. It was to be translated into Italian as I due Tristani (Venice, 1555).
The Castilian Tristans rework the Prose Tristan by refocusing attention on the primitive legend. They omit almost all the adventures in which Tristán does not participate, inverting the order of some, and adding others, and they eliminate both the genealogical “prologue” and the post-mortem “epilogue.” Moreover, unlike in the Prose Tristan, there is no disproportion between the episodes comprising the traditional material (up to Tristán’s marriage) and those originally designed to integrate the lovers’ story into the Arthurian cyclical romances. The author of the Libro devotes the same number of chapters to Tristán the lover as to Tristán the knight, clearly conceiving of the story as a love tragedy: Tristán was destined to be the greatest knight, but another fate intervened – that of being the most enamorado – and enamored, tragically, of his uncle’s wife (Cuesta Torre 1994: 49, 205–7, 217–18).
The Libro tones down the irony and humor of the Cuento by presenting the protagonists in a serious, uncritical manner. It also eliminates or refines incidents involving disreputable characters and – more importantly for our purposes – glosses over the moral implications of the lovers’ adultery by removing references to their sinfulness. In this, it was clearly influenced by the “sentimental romance” genre, which emerged in the second half of the fifteenth century; indeed, it incorporates seven lengthy passages from Juan de Flores’s Grimalte y Gradissa (Hall 1983: 84; Sharrer 1996: 415–17).3 Of course, these modifications could not totally disguise Lanzarote’s and Tristán’s disloyalty toward their respective monarchs, nor could they mask their adultery. The popular imitation of Arthurian romance, Amadís de Gaula (1508), would eschew such difficulties by creating two protagonists who are exemplary in every way. Amadís and Oriana fall in love at first sight, sans philter. They have no other lovers, and their passion, though secret, is not adulterous (Cuesta Torre 1994: 217–18, 224–5).
The sequel to the Libro, the Corónica, reflects even more than its predecessor the new pro-matrimonial ideology. In the first part, the author revises the materia antigua by adding several new chapters to set the scene for the birth of the lovers’ offspring and by changing their ardent passion into a love that is quasi “matrimonial” as Yseo becomes the perfect spouse and mother. The second part, which is totally new, relates the adventures of their children, Tristán and Yseo, after the parents’ death. Tristán will accede to the thrones of Cornwall and Leonís, marry the infanta María, and arrange the marriage of his own sister with his brother-in-law, King Juan of Spain (Cuesta Torre 2002). Thus, an “expurgated” version of the Tristan legend, much removed in spirit from the original French poems, became securely anchored in Spain.
Iberia’s main contribution to the diffusion of the matter of Britain on the Continent was actually the influence it had on Hispanic romances that contain brief allusions to Arthurian characters (such as the Catalan Tirant lo Blanch [1460] by Joanot Martorell and Martí Joan de Galba) and on works that simply imitate Arthurian romance, borrowing familiar themes and motifs and fusing them with the indigenous genre of the sentimental romance, as does Amadís de Gaula. The first four books of the Amadís, which had antecedents in either Castilian or Portuguese, were initially published in 1508, by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, who claimed to have amended the first three books and authored the fourth. Hugely popular, it generated dozens of sequels and translations throughout the sixteenth century, not only in Castilian, but also in French, Italian, English, German, Dutch, and even Hebrew.
In 1605, Miguel de Cervantes published the first part of his Don Quijote, considered by many as the first “modern” novel. In this work, destined to become the most influential of the Spanish Golden Age, Cervantes cited as sources both Orlando Furioso and Tirant lo Blanch, and although he mentions Tristán only once in passing, there are curious similarities with the 1534 Tristán romance (Cuesta Torre 1994: 229–30). Don Quijote was obsessed with chivalric romance, but Cervantes was as critical as he was enamored of it. Surely, there is no better proof of the impact of the matter of Britain on the Continent than the universal appeal of works like Amadís de Gaula and Don Quijote, which were shaped by Arthurian romance.
In this brief survey, we have observed how, in areas that enjoyed close ties, the legend of Tristan and Iseult retained its charm throughout the Middle Ages, undergoing various reincarnations. Beginning in France and Occitania in the twelfth century as a subversive tale whose protagonists blithely violated the most sacred social and religious ties, its impact was somewhat diluted in thirteenth-century France as Tristan, henceforth a knight of the Round Table, became engaged in dozens of adventures. In fourteenth-century Italy, where the lovers were either condemned or exalted, their story, brought decisively to the fore, regained much of its primitive force. Finally, Renaissance Spain was to see the lovers properly integrated into a pro-matrimonial society as loyal spouses and parents.
Notes
1 On the early French Tristan poems, see Grimbert (1995: xv–xxxiii) and Hunt and Bromily (2006).
2 The names of the lovers – and of other Arthurian characters – vary. I adopt in my discussion of each work the most prevalent form.
3 Sharrer notes the influence of Grimalte y Gradissa on a late medieval epistolary exchange, Carta enviada por Hiseo la Brunda a Tristán de Leonís, especially in Tristán’s response to Iseo’s complaint about his marriage, expanded from her letter in the Prose Tristan (416).
Primary Sources
France
Curtis, R. L. (ed.) (1963–85). Le Roman de Tristan en prose, 3 vols. I, Munich: Max Hueber (1963); II, Leiden: Brill (1976); III, Cambridge: Brewer (1985).
Curtis, R. L. (trans.) (1994). Romance of Tristan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Giacchetti, A. (ed.) (1989). Ysaÿe le triste: roman arthurien du moyen âge tardif. Rouen-Maromme: Qualigraphie.
Lacy, N. J. (ed.) (1998). Early French Tristan poems, vols I & II. Cambridge: Brewer.
Ménard, P. (gen. ed.) (1987–97). Le Roman de Tristan en prose, 9 vols. Geneva: Droz.
Pickford, C. E. (ed.) (1977). Guyron le Courtoys. London: Scolar Press.
Pickford, C. E. (ed.) (1980). Meliadus de Leonnoys. London: Scolar Press.
Italy
Allaire, G. (ed. trans.) (2002). Il Tristano panciatichiano. London: Brewer.
Bertoni, G. (ed.) (1937). Cantari di Tristano. Modena: Società tipografica modenese.
Cigni, F. (ed.) (1994). Il romanzo arturiano di Rustichello da Pisa. Pisa: Cassa di risparmio di Pisa, Pacini.
Donadello, A. (ed.) (1994). Il libro di messer Tristano (“Tristano Veneto”). Venice: Marsilio.
Galasso, M. (ed.) (1937). Il Tristano corsiniano. Cassino: Casa Editrice “Le Fonti.”
Heijkant, M.-J. (ed.) (1991). Il Tristano Riccardiano. Parma: Pratiche.
Heijkant, M.-J. (ed.) (1998). La Tavola Ritonda. Milan: Lumi.
Shaver, A. (trans.) (1983). Tristan and the Round Table: A translation of “La Tavola Ritonda.” Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies.
Spain
Cuesta Torre, M. L. (ed.) (1997). Tristán de Leonís y el rey don Tristán el joven, su hijo, 1534. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas.
Cuesta Torre, M. L. (1999). Tristán de Leonís, 1501. Alcála de Henares: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos.
Wright, R. (ed. trans.) (1987). Spanish ballads. Warminster: Aris & Philipps.
References and Further Reading
Baumgartner, E. (1975). Le Tristan en prose: essai d’interprétation d’un roman médiéval. Geneva: Droz.
Baumgartner, E. (2006). The Prose Tristan. In G. S. Burgess & K. Pratt (eds), The Arthur of the French. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 325–41.
Bédier, J. (1902–5). Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, 2 vols. Paris: Firmin Didot.
Branca, D. (1968). I Romanzi italiani di Tristano e la Tavola Ritonda. Florence: Olschki.
Burgess, G. S. & Pratt, K. (eds) (2006). The Arthur of the French. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Busby, K. (2002). Codex and context: Reading Old French verse narrative in manuscript, 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Cuesta Torre, M. L. (1994). Aventuras amorosas y caballerescas en las novelas de Tristán. Léon: Universidad, Secretaria de Publicaciones.
Cuesta Torre, M. L. (2002). El rey don Tristán de Leonís el Joven [1534]. Edad de Oro, 21, 305–34.
Entwistle, W. J. (1925). The Arthurian legend in the literatures of the Spanish Peninsula. London: Dent.
Gardner, E. G. (1930). The Arthurian legend in Italian literature. London: Dent.
Grimbert, J. T. (ed.) (1995). Tristan and Isolde: A casebook. New York: Garland. Repr. London: Routledge, 2002.
Grimbert, J. T. (2005). Changing the equation: The impact of Tristan-love on Arthur’s court. In N. J. Lacy (ed.), The fortunes of King Arthur. Cambridge: Brewer, pp. 104–15.
Hall, J. B. (1983). A process of adaptation: The Spanish versions of the romance of Tristan. In A. H. Diverres, R. A. Lodge, & P. B. Grout (eds), The legend of Arthur in the Middle Ages: Studies presented to A. H. Diverres. Cambridge: Brewer, pp. 76–85.
Hoffman, D. L. (1990). The Arthurian tradition in Italy. In V. M. Lagorio & M. L. Day (eds), King Arthur through the ages, vol. 1. New York: Garland, pp. 170–88.
Hunt, T. & Bromily, G. (2006). The Tristan legend in Old French verse. In G. S. Burgess & K. Pratt (eds.), The Arthur of the French. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 112–34.
Kelly, D. (ed.) & Contributors (2006). Arthurian verse romance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In G. S. Burgess & K. Pratt (eds.), The Arthur of the French. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 393–460.
Kleinhenz, C. (1975). Tristan in Italy: The death or rebirth of a legend. Studies in Medieval Culture, 5, 145–58.
Kleinhenz, C. (1996). Italian Arthurian literature. In N. J. Lacy (ed.), The new Arthurian encyclopedia. New York: Garland, pp. 245–7.
Lacy, N. J. (ed.) (1996a). Medieval Arthurian literature: A guide to recent research. New York: Garland.
Lacy, N. J. (ed.) (1996b). The new Arthurian encyclopedia. New York: Garland.
Lacy, N. J. (ed.) (2006). A history of Arthurian scholarship. Cambridge: Brewer.
Lacy, N. J. & Grimbert, J. T. (eds) (2005). A companion to Chrétien de Troyes. Cambridge: Brewer.
Lida de Malkiel, M. R. (1959). Arthurian literature in Spain and Portugal. In R. S. Loomis (ed.), Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 406–29.
Schmolke-Hasselmann, B. (1998). The evolution of Arthurian romance: The verse tradition from Chrétien to Froissart (trans. M. & R. Middleton). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seidenspinner-Núñez, D. (1996). Tristan in Spain and Portugal. In N. J. Lacy (ed.), The new Arthurian encyclopedia. New York: Garland, pp. 471–3.
Sharrer, H. L. (1996). Spain and Portugal. In N. J. Lacy (ed.), Medieval Arthurian literature: A guide to recent research. New York: Garland, pp. 401–49.