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Béroul

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Béroul (or Beroul; Norman Berox[1]) was a Norman or Breton poet of the mid-to-late 12th century. He is usually credited with the authorship of Tristran (sometimes called Tristan), a Norman language version of the legend of Tristan and Iseult, of which just under 4500 verses survive in a manuscript of the 13th century. His name is known only from two references in the text of the poem.[1]

Tristran is the earliest representation of the "common" or "vulgar" version of the legend (the earliest surviving "courtly" version being Thomas of Britain's).[2] The first half of Béroul's poem is closely paralleled by and related to Eilhart von Oberge's treatment in German from the same century,[3] and many of the episodes that appear in Béroul but not Thomas reappear in the later Prose Tristan. Because of its early date, Béroul's Tristran has been used extensively for the purpose of textual criticism, especially in the effort to reconstruct the "Ur-Tristan," the hypothetical first ancestor of all the subsequent Tristan and Iseult Romances.[4] Stylistically, the poem belongs to the transition in Old French literature from epic to romance.[5] While not as popular as Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, Béroul's text remains widely acclaimed for its style and thematic content.[6]

Béroul's poem survives in a single manuscript now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which is missing the first and final sections of the poem. The manuscript also has several lacunae.[7][8] The text's condition is poor—possibly corrupt—and debate over the history of the story's transmission, number of authors, and role of scribes continues.[9] Modern questions of authorship now center on whether one or two authors are responsible for the majority of the text—claims of multiple authors, fashionable in the beginning of the 20th century, have not gained wide acceptance.[10][11]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b Illingworth 2001, p. 4.
  2. ^ Lacy 1991, pp. 35–37.
  3. ^ Illingworth 2001, p. 3.
  4. ^ Beroul 1978, p. 11.
  5. ^ Beroul 1978, pp. 25–32.
  6. ^ Lacy 1999.
  7. ^ Sargent-Baur 2004, p. 335.
  8. ^ Beroul 1978, p. 13.
  9. ^ Illingworth 2001.
  10. ^ Reid 1965.
  11. ^ Bédier 2013.

References

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  • Bédier, Joseph (March 2013). "Original Preface by Gaston Paris". The Romance of Tristan and Iseut. Translated by Edward J. Gallagher. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60384-900-5.
  • Beroul (July 27, 1978). The Romance of Tristan. Translated by Alan S. Fredrick. Penguin Classics. ISBN 9780140442304.
  • Illingworth, Richard N. (2001). Keith Busby (ed.). "The Composition of the Tristran of Beroul". Arthurian Literature (XVIII). Great Britain: 1–77. ISBN 0859916170.
  • Lacy, Norris J., ed. (1991). The New Arthurian Encyclopedia. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0824043774.
  • Lacy, Norris J. (Spring 1999). "Where the Truth Lies: Fact and Belief in Béroul's Tristran". Romance Philology. 52 (2): 1–10. doi:10.1484/J.RPH.2.304306. JSTOR 44741635.
  • Reid, T. B. W. (July 1965). "The Tristran of Beroul: One Author or Two?". The Modern Language Review. 60 (3). Modern Humanities Reaserch Association: 352–358. doi:10.2307/3720672. JSTOR 3720672.
  • Sargent-Baur, Barbara N. (July 2004). "Accidental Symmetry: The First and Last Episodes of Beroul's Roman De Tristran". Neophilologus. 88 (88): 335–351. doi:10.1023/B:NEOP.0000027440.33948.5a. S2CID 161181219.


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