Beroul

Béroul

Author of a late twelfth-century Tristan romance, written in Anglo-Norman French and preserved in fragmentary form. It belongs to what is generally called the version commune or the version primitive of the Tristan legend. That is, it is presumed that this text belongs to a more primitive, noncourtly stage of the legend, whereas that of Thomas d'Angleterre integrates the work thoroughly into the current of courtly love. Béroul's text is an extensive fragment.

It relates the encounter of Tristan and Isolde under the tree in which her husband, Mark, is hiding; the episode in which the dwarf spreads flour on Isolde's floor in order to detect Tristan's footprints (in the event he visits her at night); the scene in which Tristan, having been taken prisoner, asks permission to enter a chapel and pray, whereupon he leaps to freedom from a window; Mark's delivering Isolde to a colony of lepers, for their pleasure and her punishment; the lovers' life in the forest (including Mark's discovery of them and his erroneous conclusion that they are guiltless) and their eventual repentance, caused by the waning of the love potion that they had drunk long ago; and the long episode in which Isolde is tested and in which she exonerates herself by swearing an equivocal oath.

The structure of the work is cyclical. Tristan and Isolde, despite their best intentions, repeatedly fall back into their sinful ways. Mark becomes suspicious, initially refuses to believe he is being betrayed (by both of them: Isolde is his wife, and Tristan is both his vassal and his nephew), and is finally convinced. The lovers resolve to reform. After a period of abstinence on their part, the cycle repeats itself. This is a highly ironic and ambiguous text. Appearances are always deceiving: when the lovers appear most innocent, they are consistently the most guilty. When Mark thinks them innocent, he is being tricked, or else he is misinterpreting the evidence. Even the lovers' desire to reform is motivated by less than noble impulses: they have no particular desire to live a life of Christian purity and virtue, but they are willing to make the effort if that will return them to a life of luxury at the court.