The Romance of Tristan and Iseult Book

A classic myth, but maybe not the best version.

Tristan and Iseult is a big deal: it's said to be a major influence for the romance between Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet, and pretty much the majority romantic love stories after the 12th century. This myth was passed down verbally and has been committed to text by several different authors. Bédier argues that his version is adapted from the original poem, which may or may not be historically accurate. The style is conversational as if a bard is telling it aloud, which is probably an attempt to retell the story as closely as possible to the Cornish poem Bédier argued was the original. No matter the accuracy, the story as he writes it is interesting and tragic. It would have been more interesting and tragic if it didn't start by telling you what is going to happen, but for some reason classics don't believe in the importance of the element of surprise.

One thing that this book got me thinking about was persuasion of the reader through perspective. As long as a book clearly "sides" with a character as a good guy, the reader generally accepts that the character is someone they should root for. But these people were awful. If we set aside the "forbidden love" /affair moral conundrum, there's still the fact that Tristan and Iseult go around killing or almost killing several people just to keep their boot knocking secret. Nobel and fair hearted? Not so much. But I bet most people don't even notice T&I are a-holes, because the narrator keeps talking about how awesome and doomed they are.