Béroul

(ca. 1150–1190)

   This Anglo-Norman writer, whose identity is mostly shrouded in mystery, is credited with the creation of a unique French Tristan romance that seems to have drawn from an oral-literary source (estoire) lost today.We know Béroul’s name from two self-references in the text (Berox, vv. 1268 and 1790), and he might have composed his verse narrative for his patron, Richard de Lucy, duke of Cornwall (d. 1179). It has come down to us only in one fragmentary manuscript of 4,485 lines in octosyllabic couplets, written in the second half of the 13th century. The romance sets in at that point when the two lovers (see TRISTAN AND ISOLDE) meet on a moonlit night in the garden under a pine tree from which King Marc is spying on them. They recognize the king, however, because of his shadow, and skillfully deceive him in pretending to have met for political and social reasons only. Later the lovers are caught by King Marc and three of his barons because blood stains on his bed and on Yseut’s (Isolde’s) betray them. The lovers are bound and thrown into prison, and are supposed to be burned alive, but on the way to the stake, Tristan escapes through a chapel and awaits an opportunity to free his beloved as well.

   Before Yseut can be burned, the leper Yvain suggests to King Marc that turning the queen over to him and his fellow lepers as a sex object for their enjoyment would be a more severe penalty than burning her at the stake. King Marc agrees, and while the lepers lead Yseut away, Tristan rushes up to them, frees his beloved, and seeks refuge with her in the Morrois forest. The couple, however, lead a miserable existence there, only ameliorated by their love for each other. One day Marc discovers them in their wooden cabin, but since he observes them sleeping partly clothed, not in loving embrace, and particularly being separated by a sword, he is suddenly convinced of their innocence. While the lovers realize that they have been discovered without being killed, the effect of the love potion is waning (being exhausted after three years), so they desire to return to the court. Marc announces that he will allow Yseut to come home, though he banishes Tristan from his country. But Marc forces Yseut to swear an oath to prove her alleged innocence, which allows Tristan to appear in the disguise of a leper and to carry his beloved on his shoulders across a swamp to the site of the ceremony. This represents the intended opportunity for her to declare that no man other than the king and the poor leper has ever lain between her thighs.King Arthur,who is present at the scene, intervenes and forces Marc to accept this oath as valid. Tristan’s worst enemies, three barons at Marc’s court, continue to plot against the protagonist and try to catch him in flagrante, but Tristan kills them all.At this point in the account, Béroul’s narrative breaks off.

   Bibliography

   ■ Béroul. Tristan et Yseut: les premières versions européennes. Edited by Ch. Marchello-Nizia. Paris: Gallimard, 1995.

   ■ ———.Roman de Tristan. Translated by Norris Lacy. The Garland Library of Medieval Literature 36. New York: Garland, 1989.

   ■ Burch, Sally L.“ ‘Tu consenz lor cruauté:’ The Canonical Background to the Barons’ Accusation in Beroul’s Roman de Tristan,” Tristania 20 (2000): 17–30.

   ■ Grimbert, Joan Tasker, ed. Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook. New York: Routledge, 2002.

   ■ Pensom, Roger. Reading Béroul’s Tristran: A Poetic Narrative and the Anthropology of Its Reception. Bern: Lang, 1995.

   ■ Reid, T. B.W. The Tristran of Beroul: A Textual Commentary. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972.

   Albrecht Classen