The Conflict of Love and Honor: The Medieval Tristan Legend in France, Germany and Italy

The legend of Tristan and Isolt, posing the basic human conflict between an overpowering passion and the demands of morality and honor, offered a rich fund of material for medieval writers. They told the story in various forms for various reasons. Some condemned the love, others exalted it. For one, Tristan is a great hero, destroyed by a passion he cannot control; for another he is an artist inspired by a love that is mostly pain; for another, a knight caught between his love and loyalty to an unworthy king.
In this study, I have concentrated on five medieval versions of the Tristan story - the poems of Béroul, Eilhart, Thomas, and Gottfried, and the prose 'Tavola Ritonda' - because they are the most complete of the works that center on Tristan and because they relate many of the same incidents. This enabled me to make a close comparison of the major episodes, to see how each writer manipulated the material that was available to all, how by varying small details, sometimes shifting the order of events, he was able to create a work that was quite different from the other versions but still told the same story.