Gottfried von Strassburg and the Tristan Myth

Summary

BEHIND THE MYTH OF TRISTAN AND ISOLDE is an Occidental tradition of thinking according to which marriage and love are mutually exclusive. This tradition was already formulated in a provocative way by Andreas Capellanus around 1200 in his theoretical treatise on love, De amore libri tres, and it was given a broader cultural and socio-historical legitimacy in 1939 by Denis de Rougemont. Nowhere has the contradiction between the universally binding demands of society and the autonomously postulated desire of the individual been so sharply formulated as in the Tristan romances. Each of these romances depicts in its own way the story of the adulterous love of Tristan and Isolde, which begins when they unintentionally drink a magical love potion, and the lovers' subsequent ongoing deception of Isolde's husband King Marke and indeed of the entire court; in most of the extant romances this story is preceded by the story of Tristan's parents, also one of illegitimate and ultimately unhappy love, and followed by that of Tristan's relationship with Isolde White Hands, whose rivalry with Tristan's true love (Isolde “la blonde”) ultimately leads to the lovers' tragic end. Each romance endeavors in its own way either to soften the scandal of an idealized adultery into an eruption of demonic forces, as these slumber for example in the love potion, or to formulate it provocatively as a sovereignty of the senses, which cancels the laws of collective order and even renders such laws unjust.