Career: Active in Alsace, possibly at the episcopal court in Strasbourg, in the years around 1200.
Publications
Verse
Tristan, edited by Friedrich Ranke. 1930, also edited by Rudiger Krohn, 1981; as Tristan und Isolde, edited by Reinhold Bechstein, revised by P.F. Ganz, 1978, also edited by Hermann Kurtz and Wolfgang Mohr, 1979; as Tristan and Isolde, translated by Edwin H. Zeydel, 1948; as Tristan, translated by A.T. Hatto, 1960; a shortened version, as The Story of Tristan and Iseult, translated by Jessie L. Weston, 1899.
Critical Studies:
Gottfried von Strassburg by Michael S. Bates, 1971; The Anatomy of Love: The ”Tristan” of Gottfried by W.T.H. Jackson, 1971; A History of Tristan Scholarship by Rosemary Picozzi, 1971; The Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg: An Ironic Perspective by Ruth Goldsmith Kunzer, 1973; The Poetics of Conversion: Number Symbolism and Alchemy in Gottfried’s ”Tristan” by Susan L. Clark and Julian N. Wasserman, 1977; Medieval Humanism in Gottfried’s Tristan und Isolde by C. Stephen Jaeger, 1977; Gottfried’s Tristan: Journey Through the Realm of Eros by Hugo Bekker, 1987; Gottfried von Strassburg and the Medieval Tristan Legend: Papers from an Anglo-American Symposium edited by Adrian Stevens and Roy Wisbey, 1990; Tristan in the Underworld: A Study of Gottfried von Strassburg’s ”Tristan” Together with the ”Tristran” of Thomas by Nell Thomas, 1991; Complete Concordance to Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan by Clifton D. Hall, 1992; History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried’s Tristan by Mark Chinca, 1993; Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan by Mark Chinca, 1997.
In the flourishing of courtly literature in Germany around 1200 Gottfried von Strassburg must be counted among the most profound narrative poets, and certainly the most enigmatic. Of his life nothing is known but his name and designation; he did work in Alsace, but his social position, whether aristocratic or bourgeois, cannot be determined, although the latter seems most likely; nor any patron identified. Manifestly he enjoyed a clerical education, but his attitude towards the chivalric culture of aristocracy and in manners of religion remains elusive. His courtly romance Tristan, the supreme poetic account of the ill-fated lovers Tristan and Isolde at the court of Marke, king of Cornwall, remains incomplete, and breaks off (probably because of Gottfried’s death) at v. 19 548. Running through this romance are complex strands of reflection and commentary on matters literary, social, ethical, and religious which render difficult any unitary interpretation according to customary categories.
Tristan, a romance in rhymed couplets, shows Gottfried’s sovereign command of Latin poetics and vernacular narrative techniques, within the traditions of clerical historical writing. The stylistic richness of the work’s verbal figures matches the dialectic artistry with which the story unfolds its model of a love-force which transforms human existence, and the poem gives a masterful presentation of the social and aesthetic functions of courtly ceremony.
Contemporary literary references indicate that Gottfried’s romance was composed between 1200 and 1220. It is recorded in a strong, early tradition from the 13th century, with 11 manuscripts complete (to the break-off point) and 16 fragments. Later poets, Ulrich von Turheim and Heinrich von Freiberg wrote continuations, praising Gottfried warmly.
The Tristan story has its origins in the Celtic realism of the heroic age in Britain in the fourth to sixth centuries, but the relation of Celtic myth to medieval romance is elusive. No extant insular text gives definite information about the early shaping of the legend, and its literary origins are to be found rather in the early continental texts of Brittany and France. Gottfried presents in general the adventure sequences familiar in diverse European Tristan texts since the late 12th century, including a German version by Eilhart von Oberge (usually dated 1170-75). He claims to follow specifically the account of Thomas of Brittany, whose extant text, dated between 1155 and 1190, while fragmentary, in essence complements the unfinished German work in a most valuable way: its significance in the interpretation of Gottfried’s poem is debated. Gottfried himself insists on the authenticity of his source as guarantee of the moral truth and validity of his work in contrast to that of disreputable minstrels. Such professional polemic underlies, too, his important literary review of contemporary German courtly poets, including Hartmann von Aue and Heinrich von Veldeke, Wolfram von Eschenbach (whom he does not name) and Walther von der Vogelweide.
Tristan is born the orphan son of Riwalin and Blanchefleur, his story a variant of the widespread theme of the Fair Unknown; the tragic love of Tristan’s parents anticipates the entanglements of his own love for Isolde, who is his queen and the wife of his uncle, when the two, joined by mischance through a love potion, feel driven to abuse the bonds of court, society, and religion in order to nurture their illicit love. After episodes of mounting hazard and bold deception Tristan finally succumbs to the contradictions of his plight and flees the court, vainly seeking solace for his psychological torment in the company of another Isolde.
In contrast to the protagonist of Arthurian romance, Tristan does not develop through experience towards maturity. From the outset he displays his consummate skill in every sphere of chivalric life and culture; frequently he assumes the role of spilman (entertainer), and deceptions play a major role in the narrative. Tristan’s artistic accomplishments serve in a sense to indicate his status as outsider in the courtly world, for he avails himself constantly of a certain independence from norms that pertain to those who are fully integrated into society. Hand in hand with this aesthetic orientation is his indifference to martial values (despite, of course, his mastery of arms and strategy). Often the events reflect material familiar from medieval fabliaux, comic tales which reward cunning and delight in the bawdy and irreverent, The many episodes are linked in a tectonic pattern of analogies and contrasts which reflect the mystical, paradoxical power of the love that dominates the romance.
Indeed, high ideals are Gottfried’s constant concern in this narrative which deals with the conflict between the individual and society. In numerous reflective passages the poet probes chivalric aristocratic society, its military ethos, its values, and its use of religion (in, for example, a blatant piece of trickery which serves as critique of trial by ordeal). In episodes which focus upon the vacillating insensitivity of Marke, the all-too-human centre of social authority in this fictional world, he explores the implications for feudal society of unregulated love. Through the use of allegory (in the introduction and the Cave of Lovers, where in a cathedral-like natural setting the couple finds a paradisal bliss outside of society which is short-lived) he postulates a mystical community of edele herzen (noble hearts) who embody the power of this fateful love. Gottfried addresses himself to this elite audience of ”noble hearts” who alone are culturally and ethically capable of apprehending the nature of the love which is depicted in the romance as an overwhelming, paradoxical force. This passionate love, absolute and compulsive, is in flagrant conflict with the normal standards of law, religion, and ethics. Through its dialectic of liebe unde leit (the joy and suffering of love), this love force raises the exceptional individual to an autonomy beyond the social constraints which encompass human beings in medieval courtly society, but it leads finally to self-loss and death. The poet’s attitude to this love is imparted in subtle allusion and demands discerning critical analysis: the love of Tristan and Isolde may briefly defy society in their moments of aesthetic and erotic fulfilment, which give listeners to their tale great solace, but the lovers must in the end experience bitter deprivation. Gottfried’s romance is perhaps the most radical exploration of the potential of the individual in medieval literature.
