Tristan et Iseut

Dr Helen Swift
St Hilda’s College
HT 09, Wks 2-8.
 Iseut: ambiguous ancestry
• Classical and Celtic antecedents:
– woman as feminine victim;
– woman as active intelligence (Grainne).
• Character secondary to Tristan:
– ‘foil’ to Tristan;
– prominence and authority in Béroul;
– question of title cf. Erec et Enide
 Iseut: ambiguous subject
• ‘Subject to’:
– political pawn between Ireland and Cornwall;
– object of homosocial exchange.

• ‘Subject of’:
– maintains status as cètmuinter ;
– potential independence from Marc.
 Tryst under the tree (1)
• ‘risky situation’: carnivalesque
• narrator’s admiration of Iseut’s play-acting;
– dextrous play of senblant ;
– verbal skill: double meanings ; use of ‘God’

=> Iseut’s ambivalence:

– intelligence or guile? sagesse or saveir ?
 Tryst under the tree (2)
• Iseut as trickster ?
– amoral trickery;
– comic thrill (Tristan’s reconcilation with Marc);
– displacement mechanism (onto Brengain).
• Iseut as strategist:
– initiates and organizes (esp. in Béroul);
– blames King’s entourage, not King himself.
 Fragment’s final meeting
• Iseut’s calm rationality vs. Tristan’s
bombast;
• Iseut’s focus vs. Tristan’s distracted rant;
• Iseut’s sangfroid vs. Tristan’s trembling

Iseut as strategic thinker

Tristan as responsive doer
Iseut as courtly heroine

• physical beauty
• moral purity
• wit and invention
• sympathetic, even
piteous

= Béroul’s Iseut ?
Ambiguous oath: consent to escondit
(vv. 3159-3277)

• Iseut pale and swooning: pasme soi, sa

color a perse ... (v. 3170)
– sympathy with her anxiety;
– fear for her ignorance.
• Iseut recovers sangfroid: sa color vient, si
aseüre (v. 3178)
– marvel at remarkable recovery;
– admiration of verbal dexterity;
– questioning of proposed plan: we don’t know!
 Three incongruous details
• Iseut’s emotional blackmail:
– Tote la paine et tot l’ahan (vv. 3289-91)
• Iseut’s unexplained acquisitiveness:
– Gart moi l’argent (v. 3311)
• Iseut’s reference to herself in relation to
King Arthur:
– ... la bele Yseut s’amie (v. 3400)
Ambiguous oath: escondit enacted
(vv. 4197-4216)

• high comedy or high romance?

– Yseut rist […] / De l’uel li guigne (v. 3874)
– Color rosine, fresche et blanche (v. 3911)
• dramatic tension regarding knowledge:
– audience ignorant of Iseut’s plans;
– Iseut appears increasingly isolated.
• comic eruption into solemn oath:
– entre mes cuises (v. 4205, cf. v. 4213)
 Tristan’s and Iseut’s ambivalence

• Béroul re-works audience expectation:

– story of lovers destined to be triste ?
• Béroul re-crafts ‘generic’ boundaries:
– juggles threads of romance, myth, and comedy.
 character ambivalence …

Next week:
Marc: senpres est ci, senpres est la