Tristan and Iseult

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tristan and Iseult, one of the most popular stories of the Middle Ages. From roots in Celtic myth, it passed into written form in Britain a century after the Norman Conquest and almost immediately spread throughout northern Europe. It tells of a Cornish knight and an Irish queen, Tristan and Iseult, who accidentally drink a love potion, at the same time, on the same boat, travelling to Cornwall. She is due to marry Tristan’s king, Mark. Tristan and Iseult seemed ideally matched and their love was heroic, but could that excuse their adultery, in the minds of medieval listeners, particularly when the Church was so clear they were wrong?

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Laura Ashe 10 episodes
  Associate Professor of English at Worcester College, University of Oxford
• Juliette Wood 11 episodes
  Associate Lecturer in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University
• Mark Chinca 2 episodes
  Reader in Medieval German Literature at the University of Cambridge

Reading list

• Early Fiction in England: From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Chaucer
  Laura Ashe (ed.) (Penguin, 2015) Google Books →
• The Romance of Tristan
  Beroul (trans. Alan Fedrick) (Penguin, 1978) Google Books →
• The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian legend in Medieval Welsh literature
  Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman, Brynley F. Roberts (eds.) (University of Wales Press, 2008) Google Books →
• The Arthur of the French: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval French and Occitan Literature
  Glyn S. Burgess & Karen Pratt (eds.) (University of Wales Press, 2006)
• Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan
  Mark Chinca (Cambridge University Press, 1997)
• The Lais of Marie de France
  Marie de France (trans. Glyn S. Burgess) (Penguin, 1999) Google Books →
• A Companion to Arthurian Literature
  Helen Fulton (ed.) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) Google Books →
• The Arthur of the Germans: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Dutch Literature
  W. H. Jackson & Silvia Ranawake (eds.) (University of Wales Press, 2000)
• Tristan with the 'Tristran' of Thomas
  Gottfried von Strassburg (ed. A. T. Hatto) (Penguin, 1967) Google Books →
• Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook
  Joan Tasker Grimbert (ed.) (Routledge, 2002) Google Books →

Related episodes

• The Mabinogion
  
  10 May, 2018 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Icelandic Sagas
  
  9 May, 2013 830 German and related literatures
• The Holy Grail
  
  15 May, 2003 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Gerald of Wales
  
  4 Oct, 2012 940 History of Europe
• Le Morte d’Arthur
  
  10 Jan, 2013 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• The Nibelungenlied
  
  1 Dec, 2022 830 German and related literatures
• Romeo and Juliet
  
  17 Feb, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  
  18 Apr, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Mary, Queen of Scots
  
  2 Jul, 2020 940 History of Europe
• Chivalry
  
  13 Feb, 2014 940 History of Europe
• The Odyssey
  
  9 Sep, 2004 880 Classical and modern Greek literatures
• Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem
  
  21 Nov, 2019 900 History
• Is Shakespeare History? The Plantagenets
  
  11 Oct, 2018 820 English and Old English literatures
• Beowulf
  
  5 Mar, 2015 820 English and Old English literatures
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  
  21 May, 2020 820 English and Old English literatures
• Eleanor of Aquitaine
  
  28 Jan, 2016 940 History of Europe
• Abelard and Heloise
  
  5 May, 2005 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Athelstan
  
  1 Jul, 2010 940 History of Europe
• St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
  
  27 Nov, 2003 270 History of Christianity
• The Druids
  
  20 Sep, 2012 290 Other religions

---

Programme ID: b06sny88

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06sny88

Auto-category: 800 (Literature)