#tristan Gottfried von Strassburg

[ladyjuquia]

「Meeting the ❝Idol❞」

Lady Juquia and Gottfried von Straßburg - Let’s talk about a Knight from the past and his tragic tale that would inspire us 'til today!

➵ My Take on Gottfried von Straßburgs Look is based on two Paintings that exist of him fused with my own imagination I had of him when reading his comments, drawn by @glacescup I always felt he had something angelic and yet down to earth onto him, someone who sings about Love in a grounded voice…

Paintings:

First by Glacescup, Second is in the Codex Manesse, Third one is by E. v. Luttich

[sixty-silver-wishes]

so in my arthurian literature class a few years ago, we read gottfried von strassburg’s tristan and isolde, and I can’t stop thinking about how FUNNY it is

a list of dumb things that happen in gottfried von strassburg’s tristan and isolde:

tristan manages to sneak into ireland calling himself "tantris," and somehow fools isolde and the queen (also named isolde; there are three people named isolde in the whole book) and the only way isolde finds out it's him is because she's able to match his sword with the wound in her uncle's skull, and not, you know, because tristan just switched the two syllables in his name around. she spends a whole paragraph trying to figure this out

tristan can speak five different languages and the best thing he can come up with is fucking tantris

isolde and her mother are supposed to be like super advanced healers but they somehow can’t immediately figure this out

one of tristan’s skills is being a really good liar. but no we got TANTRIS. do you see why I’m mad about this

this whole story started in the first place because tristan got abducted by norwegian pirates while playing chess on a boat, and he doesn't even notice he's been kidnapped at first

a whole two pages on how to skin a deer carcass, as well as extensive etymology for obscure hunting terms

tristan saying he's not good at playing the harp, only for his epic harp playing to be described in lengthy detail

tristan being depressed until he meets his friend's dog, then wanting to get the dog for isolde, then going on a huge side quest where he fights a giant so his friend will give him the dog

the whole love triangle where tristan has to choose between isolde and someone else also named isolde with basically the same personality

in the wagner opera adaptation, brangane deliberately switches the love and death potions. meanwhile in gottfried’s source text, she literally just forgets she was supposed to deliver a love potion so isolde and mark could drink it, mistakes it for wine, and gives it to tristan and isolde

tristan and isolde spend the entire journey to cornwall having sex

the whole sideplot where marjadoc and melot are trying to catch tristan and isolde having an affair so they dump flour all over the ground

there’s a dragon for some reason

in conclusion, you can guess why I was so disappointed when I watched the wagner opera

[child-of-hurin]

How right he was who said that however one guards against it, the eye longs for the heart, the finger for the pain. The eyes, those lodestars of the heart, long to go raiding to where the heart is turned: the finger and the hand time and time again go towards the pain.

— Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan translated by A. T. Hatto (1960)

[talesfromtheenchantedforest]

Isoldes (of Ireland), ranked

5. Gottfried von Strassburg. 0/10, a real bottom-of-the-barrel Isolde. All of her compelling qualities are ported onto other characters so that she can embody the empty shell of idealized femininity: she doesn’t have the medical skill to heal Tristan, her mother does; she doesn’t have any political savvy, Brangien does. Insipid, limp, fickle, boring. Also, and this isn’t strictly related to her, but it is emphasized that she HATES Tristan prior to the potion, and I vastly prefer the versions where they develop a real friendship before the potion turns them into lust-drunk maniacs.

4. Eilhart von Oberge 4/10, a mixed bag. You see where Gottfried got some of his Isolde’s worst characteristics — the pettiness, the fickleness, both when Tristan does something extremely minor like not halting for her sake, and the awful post-wedding-night trying to murder Brangien thing. But she also keeps many of her fun qualities — her medical skill, her deductive reasoning (the detective work to figure out that the Lord High Steward didn’t kill the dragon! Finding Tristan by tracking down his non-Irish horseshoes!). You tried, Eilhart, but you didn’t try hard enough.

3. The Prose Tristan. 7/10, this Isolde is really cooking with gas. She’s giving Tristan a run for his money in the writing-emo-songs department, which sounds honestly insufferable for everyone around them but they seem happy, so like good for them. When called out by Mark gives him a real “yeah, I AM in love with Tristan, and I sure hate you, the fuck are you gonna do about it,” which we love for her. Points docked for attempted Brangien murder, however.

2. Le Morte D’Arthur. 9/10, the Isolde that first made me not normal about Arthuriana. She’s willing to do anything to save Brangien. She holds a castle against Palamedes while he lies down outside the gates and mopes. She writes heartfelt letters to Guenevere. She has a very sweet relationship with Dinadan and lets him pour out his heart about how much he hates love.

1. Béroul 10/10 no notes. Ten steps ahead of Mark at every turn and hilarious about it. Engineering the scenario wherein she will be able to swear honestly that no man ever been between her thighs except Mark and “the leper who made himself a beast of burden and carried me across the ford, and my husband King Mark” by ordering Tristan, in the guise of a beggar, to get down on his knees and “turn your face away and your back toward me, and I will straddle you like a man,” in case we were in any doubt about what they get up to in bed. An icon. A legend. The greatest tragedy of the Arthurian manuscript tradition is that we only have fragments of this one.

[litinart]

isolde by aubrey beardsley (1895)

[opera-ghosts]

Mr. Wagner died on 13. February! Thank you for your wonderful Musik!! “…höchste Lust!”

Here a picture of Thomas Salcher as Tristan “Tristan und Isolde”

Salcher started his career in Augsburg, among his colleagues was Anny Konetzni… In Augsburg he sang in the first German production of Verdi’s „Il Battaglia di Legnano“… He moved on to Stuttgart, later he joined the ensemble of the Deutsches Theater Wiesbaden.

[queer-ragnelle]

Beginner’s Guide to Medieval Arthuriana

Just starting out at a loss for where to begin?

Here’s a guide for introductory Medieval texts and informational resources ordered from most newbie friendly to complex. Guidebooks and encyclopedias are listed last.

All PDFs link to my Google drive and can be found on my blog. This post will be updated as needed.

Pre-Existing Resources

Hi-Lo Arthuriana

♡ Loathly Lady Master Post ♡

Medieval Literature by Language

Retellings by Date

Films by Date

TV Shows by Date

Documentaries by Date

Arthurian Preservation Project

The Camelot Project

If this guide was helpful for you, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi!

Medieval Literature

Page (No Knowledge Required)

The Vulgate Cycle | Navigation Guide | Vulgate Reader

The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle

The Marriage of Sir Gawain

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

The Welsh Triads

Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory

Squire (Base Knowledge Recommended)

The Mabinogion

Four Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes

Owain (Welsh) | Yvain (French) | Iwein (German)

Geraint (Welsh) | Erec (French)| Erec (German)

King Artus

Morien

Knight (Extensive Knowledge Recommended)

The History of The King's of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth

Alliterative Morte Arthure

Here Be Dragons (Weird or Arthurian Adjacent)

The Crop-Eared Dog

Perceforest | A Perceforest Reader | PDF courtesy of @sickfreaksirkay

The Fair Unknown (French) | Wigalois (German) | Vidvilt (Yiddish)

Guingamor, Lanval, Tyolet, & Bisclarevet by Marie of France

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Grail Quest

Peredur (Welsh) | Perceval + Continuations (French) | Parzival (German)

The Crown by Heinrich von dem Türlin (Diu Crône)

The High Book of The Grail (Perlesvaus)

The History of The Holy Grail (Vulgate)

The Quest for The Holy Grail Part I (Post-Vulgate)

The Quest for The Holy Grail Part II (Post-Vulgate)

Merlin and The Grail by Robert de Boron

The Legend of The Grail | PDF courtesy of @sickfreaksirkay

Lancelot Texts

Knight of The Cart by Chretien de Troyes

Lanzelet by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven

Spanish Lancelot Ballads

Gawain Texts

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle

The Marriage of Sir Gawain

Sir Gawain and The Lady of Lys

The Knight of The Two Swords

The Turk and Sir Gawain

Perilous Graveyard | scan by @jewishlancelot

Tristan/Isolde Texts

Béroul & Les Folies

Prose Tristan (The Camelot Project)

Tristan and The Round Table (La Tavola Ritonda) | Italian Name Guide

The Romance of Tristan

Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg

Byelorussian Tristan

Educational/Informational Resources

Encyclopedias & Handbooks

Warriors of Arthur by John Matthews, Bob Stewart, & Richard Hook

The Arthurian Companion by Phyllis Ann Karr

The New Arthurian Encyclopedia by Norris J. Lacy

The Arthurian Handbook by Norris J. Lacy & Geoffrey Ashe

The Arthurian Name Dictionary by Christopher W. Bruce

Essays & Guides

A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes edited by Joan Tasker & Norris J. Lacy

A Companion to Malory edited by Elizabeth Archibald

A Companion to The Lancelot-Grail Cycle edited by Carol Dover

Arthur in Welsh Medieval Literature by O. J. Padel

Diu Crône and The Medieval Arthurian Cycle by Neil Thomas

Wirnt von Gravenberg's Wigalois: Intertextuality & Interpretation by Neil Thomas

The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac by Jessie Weston

The Legend of Sir Gawain by Jessie Weston

[morrigan-reads]

Some Freely Available Arthurian Content

in my ongoing endeavour to dive down the rabbit hole that is arthuriana, i've been in pursuit of as much free and easy to access stuff as i can find. (shoutout to @fuckyeaharthuriana's big list, which has made this way easier!)

i haven't necessarily seen links to everything i have managed to put hands on, so i'm going to link a few things here in case they're helpful to anyone else. (plus then i can come back to this post in a few weeks when i've forgotten which things i've already tracked down, i have gone to download jaufry three times in the past month, before realising i already grabbed it. this should help, but probably not.)

Free to Download:

Geraint filius Erbin: [x] no idea the pedigree of this translation, but i think this is the one.

Tristan (Gottfried von Strassburg): Part 1: [x] Part 2: [x] an older prose rendering, but check below for a more modern one.

Jaufre: [x] this has sweet gustave dore art (hence my trying to download it so often.)

Vulgate Cycle: [x] an abridged version of the lancelot, grail, and morte. an unabridged translation of the grail quest is here: [x] unabridged morte below.

La Pulzella Gaia: Part 1: [x] Part 2: [x] a fan translation. very readable tho.

Cantare di Astore e Morgana: [x] another fan translation.

Eachtra an mhadra mhaoi/Eachtra Mhacaoimh-an-iolair: [x] some irish stories!

Layamon's Brut: Part 1: [x] Part 2: [x] Part 3: [x] an older translation, but most of the widely available translations though more modern are only the arthurian portion.

Open Library:

so, these aren't free to download, but if you make a free archive.org account you can check them out digitally for an hour. just be sure not to read this thread on reddit, because it'll tell you how to break the DRM and download them permanently.

there's a tonne more stuff on there, and you can check it out for free! just like a library. i'm a fan. here are just a few bits and pieces.

Erec/Iwein (Hartmann von Aue): [x]

Tristan (Gottfried von Strassburg): [x] includes fragments of the tristan of thomas of england.

Lanzelet: [x]

Vulgate Morte: [x]

Lancelot do Lac: [x] an abridged translation of the non-cyclic lancelot.

Prose Tristan: [x] an abridged translation.

Diu Crône: [x] my fave, not gonna lie.

The Knightly Tales of Sir Gawain: [x] this is a collection of gawain stories (my beloved ladies' knight.) contains the carl of carlisle, the adventures at tarn wadling, golagros and gawain, the avowing of arthur, and dame ragnell - plus some more!

Bonus: Le Morte d'Arthur: Norton Critical: [x] Armstrong: [x] Lumiansky: [x] i know everyone knows how and where to read some version of malory. but these three are my personal faves. the norton critical is, by my understanding, the standard edition of the text. the armstrong and lumiansky are modern english versions, but translations unlike the retellings of most people. i have the lumiansky in print (because it was, like, ten dollars second-hand) and i quite enjoy it, and the dorsey armstrong is also very good (i haven't actually read it cover to cover yet, but i have enjoyed all i have read of it!)

i will come back and add anything new and interesting i find links to! currently trying to find a clearnet link to some dissertations that i have institutional access to through my uni that contain translations, and i'm actually working on some translations of my own that i plan on releasing for free somewhere eventually.

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (8/18/24) Aubrey Beardsley (British, 1872-1898) Isolde (1895) Color lithograph on wove paper, 22.8 x 14.2 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Gift of John Bonebrake)

Beardsley's drawings are admirably suited to the technical possibilities of industrial reproduction. Ambitious and supremely gifted, the young artist developed a perverse and playfully theatrical style partly inspired by Greek vase painting. The Irish princess, Iseult of Ireland (also Iseult La Belle or Iseult la Blonde, "Iseult the Fair"), is the daughter of King Anguish of Ireland and Queen Iseult the Elder. She is a main character in the Tristan poems of Béroul, Thomas of Britain, and Gottfried von Strassburg and in the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner.

[tillman]

Btw biggest recommendation please read gottfried von strassburgs tristan it is hands down my favorite piece of medieval literature hell maybe literature at all. Gorgeous tale. Dont fucking touch the verse translation though its god awful you can not translate german poetry to english like that.

[etinorcadiaego]

Richard Barber on early iterations of Tristan and Iseult in The Knight and Chivalry (2000), pp. 105-106.

Barber references A.T. Hatto's translation of Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan: With the Surviving Fragments of the 'Tristan' of Thomas and Alan Fedrick's translation of The Romance of Tristan (Béroul).

[Yet the romances need not necessarily have taken this particular course. The earliest exemplars are retellings of Classical history, and the first 'Celtic' romance is the Tristan, is a tale of what we would now call passionate love. It exists in two early versions, both fragmentary, by Béroul and Thomas, poets writing in the middle years of the twelfth century, one Norman, one Anglo-Norman. Later writers confused the story of Tristan and Iseult with the ideas of courtly love, but the original version is not courtly. Its idea of love as an overwhelming, dark, supernatural and tragic force is at loggerheads with the troubadours' concepts. Indeed, in the troubadours' terms, Tristan actually loses pretz by falling in love with Iseult; and there is little cortesia in his actions. We are in a new world, a world of myth rather than manners. The figures of Tristan, Iseult and Mark are close to their Celtic kin of the Irish legends. The tension in Tristan arises from Tristan's dual allegiance: to Iseult through love, to Mark through duty, exactly the conflict which the troubadour poets so carefully avoid. Here the bonds of love and the bonds of the feudal world are in open opposition, and the scrupulous, not to say artificial, constructs of the poets'philosophy of love are swept away by its reality.

The fate of the story of Tristan and Iseult is instructive. It disappeared in the thirteenth century into a huge compilation of other romances, the Prose Tristan, on which Malory drew for his account of Tristram in the Morte Darthur. By the time the story reached him, the tension between Mark and Tristram is caused not by Isode, but by the wife of one Sir Segwarides, whom they both love before Isode is wedded to Mark. Isode is no more than Tristram's lady; the passion that sings through earlier and later versions of the tale has vanished. It is not a suitable subject for chivalric romance, because chivalric love does not make passion its ideal; instead, devotion, fidelity, service are its lodestars, inherited from the troubadours' concern with those restraints which prevent love from becoming passionate.]

[lordgrimwing]

tagged by @zannolin

three ships: Elrond/Celebrian, Elrond/Gil-galad, Gil-galad/Elrond/Celebrian (what can I say? I like them)

first ship: Red Alert/Inferno (not counting the very distant things of my youth from before i was in fandom)

last song: The Minstrel by Blind Guardian

last movie: I so rarely watch movies. probably either Rain Man or The Hobbit: The battle of five armies

currently reading: The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien, The Wicked King by Holly Black, and The Story of Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg (English translation from the Stanford University Library)

currently watching: My Lady Jane, and Ring of Power season 2 as soon as it comes out at the end of the month!

tagging: @totallynotadisplacer, @thescrapwitch, @eclectickefi, and @niennawept

[child-of-hurin]

With this they both grew aware (as is inevitable in such matters) that their thoughts for each other ran somewhat in the direction of Love, and they began at once to behave in affectionate accord and watch for time and opportunity for their whispered conversations. Love’s huntsmen as they were, again and again, with question and answer, they laid their nets and their snares for one another, they set up their coverts and lurking-places. (...) ‘Lameir is what distresses me,’ answered Love’s falcon, Isolde

— Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan translated by A. T. Hatto (1960)

[talesfromtheenchantedforest]

completely obsessed with the swallow drama in Gottfried's Tristan, this has such monty python energy

[lesbianboyfriend]

🎤 jules. i've wanted 2 get into arthuriana for ever and ever and i was reading a margaret atwood story today that mentioned something so that is why i am asking u this there are so many books and so many translations. where do i start with this business. people say the once and future king and/or le morte d'arthur is a good place to begin but is this true.. what do u recommend. also how are youuu how was your dayyy

hiii margot!!! gna answer this to the best of my ability but disclosure this is also my first foray into arthurian lit! i am taking a class on it rn so i’m mostly reading what the prof assigns hehe

that being said we started with le morte d’arthur and i do think that’s a good place to start! we didn’t read the whole thing, just the first and last two sections. the writing style wasn’t always my favoritee as it was very. straightforward but it was definitely a good overview of like. the span of arthurian legend and i would def like to read the rest of it. i will say we read the original translation by william caxton and he was. a bit annoying at times but idk what other translations are out there!

rn we are reading selections from chrétien de troyes’ arthurian romances and i really like them!!! i prefer his writing style to malory but it is definitely more episodic stories about different knights and doesn’t offer the same overview as le morte d’arthur. sir gawain and the green knight is also a great episodic knight story

i haven’t read the once and future king—i’ve also heard it’s a good place to start but i unfortunately can’t speak to that. from my experience i’ve found reading at least the beginning and end of malory to be a good intro and i’m sure the rest also provides a great foundation. i do think the beauty of arthuriana is that it’s not bound to like. one overarching canon so you can just kind of fuck around and find what you like. our next reading is gottfried von strassburg’s tristan which i am excited for!!

hopefully this was at least somewhat helpful hehe ^_^ and i am doing good!!! i just spilled chocolate on my white shirt which is sad but it’s just a pajama shirt. i had my first tutoring client in the writing center today and i think it went well!! and i am listening to the bvert playlist and it’s soooo good you have such wonderful music taste <333 kisses!!!

[dianessunflower]

Tristan und Isolde in The Good Fight 6x04

i was not always an opera fan but i am always a fan of art referencing art. so when Tristan und Isolde popped up in season 6 of The Good Fight, you can imagine i was intrigued.

again, i wrote two threads on twitter, and i'm reposting here in lieu of there never being another thursday ep of TGF ever again (crying hours).

by Spanish artist Rogelio de Egusquiza's Tristan and Isolde (Death). 1910, oil on canvas, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

anyways, T&I is an opera in 3 acts by Richard Wagner with a German libretto, based on a 12C romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. known for tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour, harmonic suspension & chromaticism (very basically, using tones outside major/minor scales).

i will say from the outset i am not a Wagner fan (google it, but also it's rather ironic given what happens in this ep), but i have been to the villa where he lived in Lucerne (great views). (Walter Benjamin called Wagner an example of "bourgeois false consciousness" lolol)

anyway back to T&I… he wrote it while having an apparent affair with Mathilde Wesendonck 👀🍵 but it was also written after his discovery of Schopenhauer, a German philosopher who also influenced Tolstoy.

his point was to write tragedy, not romance, and his work marks the departure from tonal harmony in 20C EU classical music. the opening is called the Tristan chord—listen to the dissonance, nothing being resolved.

T&I uses harmonic suspension—creating musical tension and expectation in the listener through prolonged unfinished cadences. but he does so throughout the whole work, like introducing a cadence in the prelude and not resolving until Act 3 Finale.

and um, this deferred resolution is frequently interpreted as symbolising both physical sexual release and spiritual release (aka death ahah). there is also a day/night, life/death theme going on—opposites attract.

to return to Schopenhauer and the general storyline of T&I, it's really premised on the idea of unfulfilled longing and unachievable desires. make of that what you will.

[pre-finale addendum] i never really thought T&I was a direct metaphor, but more about how love doesn't always triumph. tragedy.

the important thing about the T&I plot is that it's a chivalric romance with certain elements, based on ancient Celtic myth, though the opera itself is based on a Medieval German retelling:

the brave hero (you're my hero)

the forbidden/doomed lovers (can your love survive outside the bubble)

and of course, the love potion, which makes Isolde fall in love with Tristan whom she had previously sworn hatred for after he killed her uncle. it SHOULDN'T make sense, and yet Diane and Kurt fall in love anyway.

the love potion is magic, but it is also poison (this is where it could become a metaphor* for PT108). and it doesn't just slowly poison them, eventually in the opera it poisons everything and leads to the lovers' downfall.

****(ftr, i do not think PT108 itself is poison & certainly not in reference to a depression treatment)

there are interesting doubles in T&I, mostly that Tristan's first wound is healed magically by Isolde, but later he's mortally wounded when Isolde doesn't reach him in time.

(Rogelio de Egusquiza, Tristan and Isolde (Life). 1910, oil on canvas, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum)

i think we see this flipped in TGF. in s1-2, Di has been wounded emotionally by Kurt and eventually they reconcile. but in s6, Di has been depressed and had multiple near death experiences, and yet Kurt doesn't seem to be able to reach her.

hence the quote: 'Here he lies, the great man, in thrall to the world’s most wonderful delusion—love.' and like the opera, the harmonies won't resolve until the very end.

[post-finale note] i did realise that when the Liebestod is playing while Diane and Kurt are talking on the sofa after the gala dinner that it does resolve. the answer was always there, that they would resolve together.