Early French Tristan Poems

Book excerpt: 12th-century French retellings and variations of the story of Tristan and Iseut. The strong and enduring appeal of the Arthurian legends shows no signs of abating, yet many medieval Arthurian texts remain unedited or printed in editions no longer available, while comparatively few of them have been translatedinto English, thus making them inaccessible to the scholarly or general audience unable to read them in the original. The Arthurian Archives series addresses these problems, aiming to provide authoritative critical editionswith parallel translation of essentialtexts for Arthurian studies; each text will be accompanied by a brief introduction, variants and rejected readings, and critical notes. This first volume offers a collection of the French Tristan texts prior to the Prose Tristan; of particular importance is the recently-discovered Thomas fragment, here edited Ian Short. Contents: Béroul, The Romance of Tristan (Norris Lacy); Thomas, Tristan (Stewart Gregory); `The Carlisle Fragment' of Thomas's Tristan (Ian Short) Marie de France, Chevrefeuil (Richard O'Gorman)The Folie Tristan de Berne and the Folie Tristan d'Oxford (Samuel N. Rosenberg)