The tale of Tristan and Isolde traces back to at least the 12th century with its lost origins perhaps going back much further to some ancient Celtic legend. The story has been a durable one for storytellers with a lineage tracing a line from its Anglo-Norman romantic literature to a famous Wagner opera all the way up to a 2006 James Franco film.
Part of that lineage of adaptation is the only absolutely unique French version yet discovered. The reason for the unique quality of the French version has much to do with the fact the it appears to have been based upon a completely unknown pre-existing source material that has yet to be found. The other primary existing for its exclusive quality is that only one copy of the manuscript is to known to exist and even it is incomplete. Then there is the fact that the Anglo-Norman writer usually credited as its author—known as Beroul only a result of two references to himself contained with the manuscript—is otherwise almost a totally mystery.
Retitled simply The Romance of Tristan, the manuscript is believed to have been composed sometime after 1250 A.D. and may have been written at the request of a literary patron known as Richard de Lucy, duke of Cornwall. The manuscript is comprised of 4,485 lines composed as octosyllabic couplets and commences at the point in the tale when the secret meeting at midnight between Tristan and Isolde (here named Yseut) is furtively being watched by the nefarious King Marc. What follows is a rather lurid tale of deception, sex trafficking in a leper colony, the degenerative effects of a love potion on a couple growing apart, a surprise revelation in court that a leper is actually Tristan in disguise and, of course, what medieval romance would be complete without an appearance by King Arthur himself in the role of presiding judge at the trial. The Romance of Tristan is a fairly bloody affair with an equally healthy dose of suggestive sexuality, making it the perfect French version of the romantic legend.
