Essay Questions

Discuss how Beroul explores the theme of love and romance.

Beroul’s The Romance of Tristan is a novel that is mostly centered on the love between Iseult and Tristan. Having been living in the king’s palace as one of his soldiers, Tristan is given the task of conquering Iseult and bringing her to get married to King Mark. Iseult’s mother prepares a concoction that is meant to ensure that Iseult and the king fell in love with each other. However, when Tristan and Iseult drink this wine together and the two fall deeply and irrevocably in love.

However, fate does not seem to be on their side as the King is always on their heads. When King Mark finds out about their affair when the two are in the garden, they are forced to denounce their love for each other. Later, when Tristan dies, and Iseult becomes ware of the same, she also dies in his arms due to sorrow. The two are buried, and later when King Mark visits their graves, he notices that flowers are growing towards each other from both of their graves, a sign that is given as a symbol of the love between the two—tragic but true love all the same.

Suffering is central to Tristan and Iseults love story. How is this brought out?

Tristan and Iseult are in love with each other, so much so that they are prepared, eager and willing to undergo any kind of suffering for the sake of each other. At the center of this suffering is there willingness to endure a hard life in the forest away from the luxuries of a palace life paints just how much the two love each other. This suffering is an indication of the depths of the love between this two characters.

Illustrate how deception and treason are presented in Beroul’s novel The Romance of Tristan.

Tristan is tasked with the responsibility of conquering Iseult with a hair of gold and make her King Mark’s wife. Tristan, while there, he kills a dragon, and Iseult is forced to marry King Mark. However, when Tristan and Iseult drink w concoction that Iseult’s mother prepares for her daughter and her to be husband the king, the too fall rather profoundly in love with each other. Iseult, however, despite being fully aware of this fact, decides to marry King Mark. She secretly continues seeing Tristan behind the King’s back—a genuine case of deception and treason. The affair between Iseult and Tristan, the King’s most beloved soldier, continues until later when the King finds out about it. The two love birds then decide to elope and are again found out by the King. However, the tragic nature of their love does not allow them to stay together until death. This is the way in which the author presents the theme of tragic love as well as deception in the novel.