Tristan et Iseut

Dr Helen Swift
St Hilda’s College
MT 11, Wks 1-8.
 Questions about Marc
• Minor figure or pivotal character?
– determining influence upon lovers;
– hinge between love plot and political context.
• Relation to medieval French traditions?
– epic or romance king, or fabliau cuckold?
• Relation between chivalric and Celtic
traditions?
– blend of romance, Classical, and Celtic
(Welsh, Irish …) myth.
 Marc’s mixed inheritance (1)
• Medieval French ‘genres’:
– emblematic epic gesture (vv. 1338, 3123);
– lack of romance court ceremonial;
– all a bit ‘odd’: not fit either tradition…;
– technically a fabliau-esque cuckold.
=> Upshot of mixed presentation:
– Marc = serious + comic
– Marc = laugh at ( ≠ lovers = laugh with)
 Marc’s mixed inheritance (2)
• Celtic influences:
– association of Marc and Tintagel;
– Marc < Welsh march (‘horse’).
• Tale of horse’s ears:
– Celtic folklore?
– Classical enchantment (Metamorphoses)?
=> Upshot of mixed presentation:
– Folkloric associations work to detriment of
Marc (but in favour of lovers)
 Marc as developed by Béroul
• ≠ Folie Tristan (Marc as fool, gull, foil)
• victim of potion, like lovers:
– complex suffering and emotions (≠ Thomas);
– tension between weakness and good nature;
– forced into position of ignorance and
incomprehension;
– anger as expression of befuddlement.
=> Upshot of complicated representation:
– oscillating audience response.
 Marc’s multiple identities
• reflects potion’s ambiguating effect;
• shown behaving in contradictory guises:
– Marc the unreasonable vs. Marc the just
– Marc the competent king vs. Marc the bullied
incompetent
– Marc the vacillator vs. Marc the decisive

=> Identities played out in course of fragment.

 Marc the unreasonable (1)
• effect of furious anger e.g. after tryst:
– rapidly roused to rage and violent intention;
– ferocity against dwarf:
• displacement of punishment onto third party;
• desire for revenge through burning.

• illegitimate cruelty e.g. sentencing lovers:

– conduct described as fel et engrés (v. 862)
• shocking incongruity;
• executing illegitimate justise;
• under the barons’ ( = felons’) sway.
 Marc the unreasonable (2)
• emotions overcome reason e.g. Chapel:
– visible signs of mautalent, duel, and ire.
• other characters’ perspectives on Marc:
– lovers in forest fear him fel et engrés (v. 2124);
– Iseut predicts violent response (v. 66);
– Gouvernal knows Marc’s fits of anger (v. 969);
=> audience response:
– alienation? condemnation? understanding?
 Marc the just and competent
• fel et engrés = response to exceptional
circumstances, so not wholly responsible;
• fair and courtois, showing mesure:
– counters forester’s expectation of anger;
– courteous response to Tristan as messenger.
– offers charity to Tristan as leper.
• embodiment of good kingship:
– protectio, defensio, warrantia;
– maintains restored peace in Cornwall.
 Marc as vacillating vs. decisive
• ‘vacillating’ vs. ‘decisive’ ≠ clear opposition:
– decisiveness sometimes negative;
– in climate of epistemological uncertainty.
• witness shifting mind in soliloquies:
(1) after tryst, vv. 265-319:
– vocabulary of knowing / misperception;
– spurious savoir deduced through syllogism.
(2) in forest hideaway, vv. 2001-38:
– self-deluding mental processing.
 Marc’s own mind vs. others’ influence
on decision making
• Arthur’s diagnosis of Marc’s flaw:
Tu es legier a metre en voie (v. 4144).

• Marc’s susceptibility to claims of ocular proof:

– believes Frocin’s reported witness of lovers
abed;
– accepts barons’ reported witness as definitive
knowledge (savoir)
 Marc’s ambivalence
Illogical, unreliable judgment, irrational fury,
but courteous, competent, charitable.
• victim of particular external circumstances;
• victim of own internal character flaws.

=> singularly engaging character because of

pitiable predicament: he never gets to
know the truth.
 Marc’s character used to
articulate themes e.g. judgment

Next week:
‘It must be love? Contextualizing
amor in Béroul’