Thomas of Britain (also known as Thomas of England) was a poet of the 12th century. He is known for his
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...
poem ''
Tristan
Tristan (Latin/ Brythonic: ''Drustanus''; cy, Trystan), also known as Tristram or Tristain and similar names, is the hero of the legend of Tristan and Iseult. In the legend, he is tasked with escorting the Irish princess Iseult to wed ...
'', a version of the
Tristan and Iseult
Tristan and Iseult, also known as Tristan and Isolde and other names, is a medieval chivalric romance told in numerous variations since the 12th century. Based on a Celtic legend and possibly other sources, the tale is a tragedy about the illic ...
legend that exists only in eight fragments, amounting to around 3,300 lines of verse, mostly from the latter part of the story. It is calculated that this represents about one sixth of the original.
Works
Because Thomas has an "obvious dependence" on
Wace
Wace ( 1110 – after 1174), sometimes referred to as Robert Wace, was a Medieval Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy (he tells us in the ''Roman de Rou'' that he was taken as a child to Caen), ending his care ...
's 1155 ''
Roman de Brut
The ''Brut'' or ''Roman de Brut'' (completed 1155) by the poet Wace is a loose and expanded translation in almost 15,000 lines of Norman-French verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin ''History of the Kings of Britain''. It was formerly known as ...
'', ''Tristan'' was written between 1155 and 1160, possibly for
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor ( – 1 April 1204; french: Aliénor d'Aquitaine, ) was Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II, and Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right from ...
, since the work suggests close ties with the court of
Henry II. Beyond this, his identity is obscure; it has been speculated that he is to be identified with the "Thomas" who wrote the ''
Romance of Horn
''Romance of Horn'' is an Anglo-Norman literature ''romans d'aventure'' ("adventure story") tale written around 1170 by an author apparently named "Thomas".Judith Weiss, "Thomas and the Earl: Literary and Historical Contexts for the ''Romance of Ho ...
'', but this is unsupported. It is similar to the Tristan-story ''
Chevrefoil
"Chevrefoil" is a Breton lai by the medieval poet Marie de France. The eleventh poem in the collection called ''The Lais of Marie de France'', its subject is an episode from the romance of Tristan and Iseult. The title means "honeysuckle," a symbol ...
'' by
Marie de France
Marie de France ( fl. 1160 to 1215) was a poet, possibly born in what is now France, who lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an unknown court, but she and her work were almost certainly known at the royal court ...
, but either author could have borrowed from the other, or both from a third source.
[Legge, p. 46]
Although Thomas's own text is fragmentary, later adaptations of his work make it possible to reconstruct what is missing:
*
Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg (died c. 1210) is the author of the Middle High German courtly romance ', an adaptation of the 12th-century ''Tristan and Iseult'' legend. Gottfried's work is regarded, alongside the ''Nibelungenlied'' and Wolfram von Esc ...
's ''Tristan'' (
Middle High German
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. High ...
), left incomplete c. 1210, though fortuitously it covers all those parts of Thomas's work which are lost. Gottfried expanded the story by about a third, while nonetheless remaining fairly faithful to Thomas.
*
Brother Robert Brother Robert was a cleric working in Norway who adapted several French literary works into Old Norse during the reign of King Haakon IV of Norway (1217–1263). The most important of these, ''Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar'', based on Thomas of Bri ...
's
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
''Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar'' (Saga of Tristram and Isond), written in 1226 (prose), condensing the story.
* The Middle English ''
Sir Tristrem
''Sir Tristrem'' is a 13th-century Middle English romance of 3,344 lines, preserved in the Auchinleck manuscript in the National Library of Scotland
The National Library of Scotland (NLS) ( gd, Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba, sco, Naitiona ...
'' (verse, late 13th Century), a much abbreviated retelling.
* The Italian ''La Tavola Ritonda'' (prose, 14th century).
Thomas' version is the earliest known representative of the "courtly branch" of the legend, to which Gottfried's also belongs. This branch differs from the "common" or "primitive" versions of
Béroul
Béroul was a Norman or Breton poet of the 12th century. He wrote ''Tristan'', a Norman language version of the legend of Tristan and Iseult of which a certain number of fragments (approximately 3000 verses) have been preserved; it is the earlies ...
and
Eilhart von Oberge Eilhart von Oberge was a German poet of the late 12th century. He is known exclusively through his Middle High German romance ''Tristrant'', the oldest surviving complete version of the Tristan and Iseult story in any language.''The Arthurian Handbo ...
, in that greater emphasis is placed on pleasing the sensibilities and expectations of a courtly audience. Some scholars have theorized an "Ur-Tristan", an original French version that inspired all later accounts.
Joseph Bédier
Joseph Bédier (28 January 1864 – 29 August 1938) was a French writer and scholar and historian of medieval France.
Biography
Bédier was born in Paris, France, to Adolphe Bédier, a lawyer of Breton origin, and spent his childhood in Réunion. ...
attempted to reconstruct this original from the evidence provided by the later versions.
See also
*
Anglo-Norman literature Anglo-Norman may refer to:
*Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066
*Anglo-Norman language
**Anglo-Norman literature
* Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 106 ...
References
Editions and translations
*Thomas, ''Les fragments du Roman de Tristan'', ed. Bartina H. Wind, Paris/Geneva 1960.
*Gottfried von Strassburg, ''Tristan'', with the suriviving fragments of the Tristran of Thomas, translated
A.T. Hatto, Penguin, 1960.
*''The Saga of Tristram and Ísönd'', translated with an introduction by Paul Schach, University of Nebraska Press 1973.
External links
''Tristan'' of Thomas of Britainin French Wikisource.
Complete text of three fragmentsText of three fragments and modern French translation translated J. Shoaf
at Project Gutenberg.
{{Authority control
Anglo-Norman literature
Writers of Arthurian literature
British poets
British writers in French
12th-century French writers
12th-century poets
Norman-language poets
British male poets
Tristan and Iseult