Prose Tristan - Scholarship

Scholarship

Before any modern editions of the Prose Tristan were attempted, scholars were dependent on an extended summary and analysis of all the manuscripts by Eilert Löseth in 1890 (republished in 1974). Of the modern editions, the long version is made up of two editions: one edited by Renée L. Curtis and the other by Philippe Ménard. Curtis' edition of a simple manuscript (Carpentras 404) covers Tristan's ancestry and the traditional legend up to Tristan's madness. However, the massive amount of manuscripts in existence dissuaded other scholars from attempting what Curtis had done until Ménard hit upon the idea of using multiple teams of scholars to tackle the infamous Vienna 2542 manuscript. His edition follows from Curtis', includes Tristan's participation in the Quest for the Holy Grail and ends with Tristan and Iseult's death and the first signs of Arthur's fall. Richard Trachsler is currently preparing an edition of the "continuation" of the Prose Tristan. The shorter version, which contains no Grail Quest, is published by Joël Blanchard in five volumes.

Though part of the larger prose cycles, which dominated all things Arthurian after the early 13th century, the originality of the Tristan en prose is found in the author's use of lyrical poems to express characters' hopes, despair or anger. Various books and articles have studied the lyrical content of the Prose Tristan whether expressed as riddles in verse, letters in verse, songs of mockery or love songs. In this way, the Prose Tristan functions like a musical. Characters placed in extreme situations actually "break into song." All of this is appropriate considering Tristan's traditional link to poetry.

The Prose Tristan had a huge effect on subsequent medieval literature and treatments of the Arthurian legend. Characters like Palamedes, Dinadan, and Lamorak, all of whom first appear in the Tristan, achieved popularity in later works. The pagan knight Palamedes even lent his name to the Romance of Palamedes, a later work that expands on episodes from the Tristan. This material is also preserved in the Compilation of Rustichello da Pisa and numerous later redactions in several languages. The Prose Tristan also influenced the Post-Vulgate Cycle, the next major prose treatment of the Arthurian mythos, and served as the source for the Tristan section of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.