Arthur en Europe à la fin du Moyen Âge. Approches comparées (1270–1530)

0533135 - ÚČL 2021 RIV FR eng M - Monography Chapter
Jaluška, Matouš
You Can Tell a Lord by His Servitors. An Attempt at Reading the Old Czech Tristram.
Arthur en Europe à la fin du Moyen Âge. Approches comparées (1270–1530). Paris: Garnier, 2020 - (Ferlampin-Acher, C.), s. 171-182. ISBN 978-2-406-09869-0
Institutional support: RVO:68378068
Keywords : Old Czech epic * Arthurian romance * close reading * new historicism * Virgin Mary * vernacular literature
OECD category: Specific literatures

The chapter provides a reading of the Old Czech Arthurian romance Tristram and Izalda in the perspective of purported lateness and peripheral nature of Czech courtly epic. It is shown that the conflict of moral duty and amorous desire underlying the story of Tristram’s adultery at the court of King Mark, Izalda’s husband, is presented mainly in light of its political and societal implications, unveiling basic dysfunctions of the king’s rule and his inability to establish a centre that would be able to exercise power in the periphery, being that Ireland (Izalda’s homeland) or a “Slovene country” that Mark tries to conquer in the romance’s first couplets. Thus, the original religious ending of the romance, in which all the tensions are finally appeased by establishing a monastery dedicated to the Virgin Mary where Tristram and Izalda have been buried and Mark himself takes vows as a monk, can be read as a political and societal happy ending that brings peace to the periphery and firmly locates the whole story in the past.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0311610