The Romance of Tristan and Iseult (Dover Books on Literature & Drama)
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult (Dover Books on Literature & Drama)
Customer Review: B dier and Belloc’s Great Epic
The style of this epic story is a crossing of the dragons and chivalry of King Arthur, with the romance and tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. But Tristan & Iseult predate them both. Many versions of the story exist; the origins are in 12th century Norman writings. French scholar Joseph B dier published his reconstruction of the original story in 1900. Hilaire Belloc, the French-born English writer, provided us with this definitive English translation of B dier’s work.
I came to find this book through my interest in the writer Hilaire Belloc, and I met him through his friend G.K. Chesterton. Belloc’s work was typically Christian apologetics, political, history, mystery, poetry, essay, or farrago. This was a wide range of writing, and Tristan & Iseult stretched it further. His early biographer Robert Speaight told us that Belloc had a special love for his translation of Tristan & Iseult. Continuous words came from Belloc in order to keep food on the table; much of it was tremendously good and some of it was tiresome, but this story was one that he wanted preserved if ever a “Collected Works of Hilaire Belloc” were gathered. An epic story suited his temperament and his life story.
Belloc’s text makes use of some archaic grammar and paragraph structure, which help the mood of this kind of story; but sentences are short and simple, and so easy to read. The terseness of the text reminds me of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. And like the hero Beowulf, Tristan is a warrior who cannot be conquered.
The Romance of Tristan & Iseult is a story with knights and ladies, dragons and magic, lepers and hermits, castles, forests, and sea. There is no perfect role-model in a story like this. Most every character is presented as good and evil; but one can recognize what is right and what is wrong, even as one makes excuses for the wrongs.
Customer Review: Great Read.
I find The Romance of Tristan and Iseult a good read for anyone interested in Medieval literature, or romance; or both for that matter. It’s well ahead of its time in that it is a story of two lovers forced apart by circumstance and whose love affects others around them as well as themselves, centuries before Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. There is only one downside I can see, though. It is the lack of description of battles in the story; the author doesn’t tell much about the fights or what happens in them, only that they occured. But all in all an endearing story.
Tags: Literature book, Cheap Fiction book, Cheap Literature book, Fiction book, Literature and Fiction book
