Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan

With the Tristan material, the prototypical design of a passionate love that conflicts with all other values of life was formed in the narrative literature of the Middle Ages. It was tirelessly varied in its reception and has been shaped as a kind of modern myth ever since. Gottfried von Strasbourg is the author of one of the most effective, provocative and aesthetically fascinating versions. It is still the focus of medieval research and, among its many variants, it continues to attract the interest of a wider literary public. The present, newly edited introduction collects the basic data on the history of the material, the poet, his literary environment and his reception and introduces the current, still controversial discussion about this novel. It does so on .