49 pages • 1 hour read
Gottfried von StrassburgTristan
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1209A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Rivalin and Blancheflor”
Content Warning: The source material references suicidal ideation.
Rivalin, a knight and feudal lord, attacks a duke named Morgan, forcing him to retreat to his castle. After a prolonged siege, the two negotiate a year-long truce. Following the settlement, Rivalin travels to England to spend time at the court of King Mark and learn his customs.
Rivalin is warmly received in Mark’s court and takes part in a festival not long after his arrival. He participates in a variety of knightly competitions and wins the admiration of Blancheflor, King Mark’s sister. Rivalin likewise falls in love with her, but they are both too bashful to reveal their feelings for one another. After a different king invades Mark’s kingdom, Rivalin helps Mark in battle and sustains an apparently fatal wound from a lance. Blancheflor is overwhelmed by grief, and with the aid of her nurse, she gains admittance to Rivalin’s room disguised as a beggar. She and Rivalin confess their love for each other; Rivalin miraculously recovers, while Blancheflor becomes pregnant.
The two continue to see each other until one day Rivalin receives news that Morgan has invaded his realm. Rivalin is killed in battle, and Blancheflor dies soon after in childbirth.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Rual li Foitenant”
Rivalin’s loyal marshal, Rual li Foitenant, settles a peace with Morgan. To keep Morgan from learning that Rivalin has an heir, Rual has his wife pretend that the child is theirs. They name him Tristan on account of the sad circumstances surrounding his birth. They raise him as their own son, and as a boy he is marvelously gifted, highly educated, and well-mannered.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Abduction”
One day, Rual takes Tristan and his other two sons to the market, where foreign merchants are selling their products. There, Rual leaves Tristan with his tutor, Curvenal, and returns home. A few sailors are taken aback by Tristan speaking to them in their language, and they invite him to play chess aboard their ship. They are deeply impressed with Tristan and believe they can use his talents to their advantage.
As Tristan is absorbed in a game of chess with Curvenal, the pirates gently sail away from the port. Tristan and Curvenal panic when they realize that they are at sea, and the sailors release Curvenal in a small rowboat. Curvenal makes it back to shore and alerts the marshal, and they pray for Tristan’s release. Meanwhile, the sailors panic when a storm lasts for several days. Believing that they face divine retribution for the kidnapping, they release Tristan at Cornwall. Tristan laments his ill fortune but soon finds two pilgrims and briefly joins them on their way. He hides his identity from them, only telling them he got lost while out on a hunt.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Hunt”
Tristan and the two pilgrims come across the hunting party of King Mark of England and Cornwall, and Tristan leaves the pilgrims, telling them the group is the one he lost earlier. After the men of the hunting party kill a deer, Tristan shows them how to skin it and cut it up. Tristan’s skill and manners impress the men, and they invite him to the court to present the deer to the king. Wishing to conceal his true identity, Tristan tells the men that he is the son of a merchant and has come to this part of the country to learn foreign customs.
Tristan directs the company as to how to present the deer to Mark, and he leads them in music as they arrive at the castle. Mark and all of the courtiers are deeply impressed. Mark celebrates Tristan and offers him a position as his chief huntsman, which Tristan accepts.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Young Musician”
Tristan becomes a loyal courtier to Mark. One day a musician is playing and invites Tristan to play some music. Tristan’s mastery of the harp and his singing in different languages leave Mark’s court in awe of him. This display of talent makes Tristan even dearer to Mark.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Recognition and Reunion”
Rual spends three years searching for Tristan, by which point Rual has grown poor and haggard in appearance. In Denmark, Rual happens to come across the two pilgrims Tristan met earlier, and they tell him where they saw Tristan.
Rual sails to Cornwall, and after hearing news that a countryman is waiting for him, Tristan goes to meet him. They reunite affectionately, and Tristan introduces Rual to Mark. Mark greets Rual warmly and gives him new clothes. After taking a bath, Rual joins the court for a feast. Rual tells Mark and the court about Tristan’s real identity and the history of Rivalin and Blancheflor.
Tristan is sad to hear about the death of his father, but Rual says that between him and Mark, Tristan now has two fathers. Mark encourages Tristan to stay at Cornwall and promises to put everything at Tristan’s disposal.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Tristan’s Investiture and Gottfried’s Literary Excursus”
Tristan is magnificently attired for his knighting, which he undergoes in a big ceremony with others. Mark gives him words of encouragement.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Return and Revenge”
Tristan, tormented by his knowledge of his father’s killing, asks Mark’s leave to return to his hereditary lands of Parmenie to observe the state of affairs there. Mark grants his permission. Furthermore, Mark says that he will not take a wife, so Tristan can rest assured that he himself will inherit Mark’s kingdom.
Once in Parmenie, Tristan tours the land, and the local lords pledge their loyalty to him. To better secure his claim to the territory, Tristan decides to go to Brittany to reclaim his fief from Morgan.
The knights attending Tristan wear armor under their traveling clothes and come across Morgan on the hunt. When Tristan asks Morgan for his fief, declaring that he is Rivalin’s son, Morgan responds that Tristan has no claim to it because he was born out of wedlock. The two argue over this point before Tristan kills Morgan with his sword. A battle ensues; Tristan and his men are outnumbered, but Rual arrives with reinforcements, and they send their enemies fleeing.
Although he is glad to have avenged his father, Tristan regrets that he will have to choose between Mark and Rual. His ambitions lead him to decide to return to Mark in Cornwall, but he declares before an assembly that all of the money from his lands will go to Rual and that Rual’s sons will be his heirs. In spite of this, Rual and the lords of Parmenie are sad that Tristan intends to leave.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
The circumstances surrounding Tristan’s birth, along with his name, foreshadow his tragic fate as a lover. Tristan’s name is a play on the French word for “sad,” which is “triste.” That he bears this name from the start implies that his destiny is predetermined, establishing the theme of Tragic Fate Versus Free Will. However, while there are times when Tristan is sad or unlucky in this section, such as when he is taken by pirates and then left in Cornwall, or when he learns of the identities and deaths of his biological father and mother, he mostly experiences good fortune. Tristan soon regains his composure and his upbeat temperament after his misfortunes, in part because he immediately gains the favor of anyone he meets in the course of his journeys. His eager sociability and his many talents impress others and make them generous toward him. Tristan, under the tutelage of Rual and Curvenal, becomes an ideal courtier, excelling at everything from music to combat.
Tristan thus appears to be bound for a bright future—even singled out by God. When pirates kidnap him, God seems to intervene in his favor, sending a storm so that the pirates decide to free Tristan. Thus, while in danger, Tristan appears to be favored by fate (or by divine providence, which would have been viewed as much the same thing in this era). In fact, in an instance of dramatic irony, the people of Mark’s court talk about how inappropriate his name is for him, saying, “God has heaped his bounty on this child for a life of sheer delight” (91). Tristan’s establishment of himself in a secure position lends further credence to this perspective. By the end of this section, Tristan is the lord of his own realm of Parmenie, and he is also set to inherit Cornwall and England from Mark. Mark favors Tristan to the point that he declares his intention never to marry to ensure that Tristan will remain his rightful heir. Tristan appears destined to add the role of a powerful and respected king to that of a brave knight, a loyal friend, and a man of marvelous gifts.
Nevertheless, the narrator makes it clear early on that Tristan is bound for a life of sorrow, or at best of Mixed Fortunes: “Thus these two opposites, constant success and abiding misfortune, were paired together in one man” (111). For all Tristan’s apparent success, the narrator here presents him as a paradigmatic case of ambivalent destiny. This pairing of opposites paves the way for the story’s exploration of courtly love—a synthesis of pleasure and pain, virtue and sin, honor and shame, etc.
Rivalin and Blancheflor’s affair is more explicit still in establishing Tristan’s interest in love, with certain details of their affair later recurring in the relationship between Tristan and Isolde. For example, the roles that Rivalin and Blancheflor play, insofar as they keep their love affair hidden from Mark, mirror the roles that Tristan and Isolde will adopt later in the story. However, it is Rivalin and Blancheflor’s fate as tragic lovers that most clearly foreshadows the fate of Tristan and Isolde. Even the manner of their deaths are similar. Like his father, Tristan will die from a wound in battle after previously recovering from a similar wound, while Isolde dies of grief after learning of the death of her lover, just like Blancheflor.
This section also introduces one of the most frequently recurring motifs of the story: the disguises that characters adopt. Blancheflor disguises herself as a beggar to gain admittance to Rivalin’s room after he is wounded in battle, and Tristan pretends to be the son of a merchant after the pirates release him at Cornwall. Disguises are used to circumvent certain prohibitions, like those separating men and women, and to evade suspicion and escape danger.
