Talk:Tristan

Tristram not Tristan
Pre-wagner the name was Tristram. Every piece of artwork, poem, writing and even recreated round tables hold the Tristram name and not Tristan. No mention of the Falklands naval vessel Sir Tristram or the race horse Sir Tristram in references. Tristan is a relatively common family name compared to Tristram, which is far rarer. the lead name for the article should be Tristram, not Tristan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.169.48.220 (talk) 10:35, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Not a stub
This article is fairly detailed. Shall we drop the now? -- llywrch 19:12, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Dropped, as part of Not a stub; see stubsensor Rx StrangeLove 00:37, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Phrasing
In the article it says: "Richard Wagner composed what is now considered one of his better operas, Tristan and Isolde." Now, opinions vary but a lot of people consider Tristan and Isolde to be the summit of Western Classical Music - isn't "one of his better operas", well, a little understated? Gerry Lynch 12:13, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Critics tend not to rank Wagner's mature operas according to overall greatness, and there is no clear consensus that Tristan is a better work than Meistersinger, the Ring, or Parisfal. But you're right, it does sound mundane as stated.  This is more objective anyways: Richard Wagner's 1859 opera Tristan and Isolde, based on the Tristan legend, is a landmark in the development of western music and the first large-scale application of his 'music drama' theory of operatic construction. Skiptog 15:23, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Mark an "evil tyrant"?
I'd be interested to learn more about different portrayals of Mark in the various Trystan legends, but certainly in Wagner he's quite a sympathetic character. Even Trystan regrets having betrayed him. Quartier Latin  1968  15:17, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Though Isolde (Iseult) was the wife of King Mark of Cornwall, the poets called King Mark "a felon" for trying to prevent her for choosing her own lover. The bards maintained that even married ladies should be free to take lovers, as under the old pagan system. Because King Mark imprisoned his wife's lover, and tried to kill him, poets branded King Mark "a felon" and a "traitor." (See Walker, Barbara. (1983) The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. NY: Harper Collins.) Nyrobi  16 January 2006
 * As credible as that book sounds, Mark's depiction really depends on the source. The earlier poets, like Beroul, Thomas of Britain and Gottfried von Strassburg, tended to be more sympathetic to him, and have Tristan and Iseult both feeling sorry for betraying him. But in the Prose Tristan, he is a treacherous villain with few likeable (or interesting) characteristics. This was the version of him taken up in Malory, so many modern writers working from Malory portray him accordingly. Wagner was working from the German poets, so his Mark is much more sympathetic.--Cuchullain 00:57, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Tristan pages
Tristan pages are very confused at this point. We now have this page and an Iseult page (which covers both Iseults), as well as a Tristan & Isolde page, which mostly repeats information found here. Tristan and Isolde is a disambig page, and Tristan and Iseult redirects back here. There are no separate pages for the various poems by the different authors (though Wagner's opera is at Tristan und Isolde. Interlanguage links are even more muddled. Obviously much of this confusion is the result of Iseult's diversely spelled name, but we need to organize these pages. My suggestion is this:


 * Put information about the legend and its development at Tristan and Iseult; redirect Tristan and Isolde, Tristan & Isolde and all other variants to it.
 * Redirect the character names of Tristan and Iseult (and variants) to Tristan and Iseult. This way we could centralize information and avoid inconsistancy and repetition.
 * If that don't fly, Iseult and redirects could be kept separate because there are several characters of that name, they could all be discussed there; I'd be more skeptical about Tristan.
 * Because most authors of Tristan (Gottfried von Strassburg, Thomas of Britain, Beroul, and Eilhard von Oberge) are known chiefly (or solely) for that work, discuss their work at the author's page, as we have been doing.

After solving these issues, it will be easier to improve the pages.--Cúchullain t / c 00:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Which source/author should be used for the Tristan and Iseult article about the legend? There are variations of the story depending on the author of the information. If a compilation of the different authors is to be used, how about taking out the "The enduring nature of Tristan and Isolde" section from the Tristam page and bits from the Iseult article and placing them in the new article? Stoa 04:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I was thinking a summary of the major events that occur in all (or almost all) the works. This would include Tristan's arrival at Mark's court, the battle with the Morholt, the wound from the poisoned spear, etc. Then we could go into the sources and the relationship between them without having to rehash everything. I'll probably just start from scratch; that "enduring nature of Tristan and Isolde" section is kind of un-encyclopedic.--Cúchullain t/ c 01:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Is that merge rather than cleanup? Or a category?  Coriolise 17:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * What do you mean? --Cúchullain t/ c 21:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I may be misinterpeting the Wiki terms, but it seems to me the article itself is pretty clean, now.  But I accept without having looked at all of it that the arrangement of the several articles is not as it should be.  That seems to me to be a matter of merging several articles, rather than cleaning up one.  Sorry if that is pedantic, but the tag may direct attention in the wrong place.  Coriolise 14:49, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The article(s) are in a very poor state, hence the cleanup tag. Anyone who is curious or confused can just go to this talk page.--Cúchullain t/ c 01:06, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

The horse running on
"Also, according to Celtic myth, Tristan owned a horse named Bel Joeor." Is the name significant, or indeed having a horse? If so it needs a remark, if not, it is oddly placed at the end of that section. Coriolise 10:57, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

A few necessary changes
As a big Arthurian enthusiast, I notiticed that the Wikipedia pages covering the Tristan pages were woefully inadequete.

I hope you don't mind, but I took it upon myself to effectively rewrite much of it tonight. Right now I'm relying on my own store of knowledge, with some help from some notes I have taken, as well as the UT catalog, and Wikipedia itself!

I intend to fully annotate my additions on Monday, when I will be able to re-check out some of the books I originally got this information from.

So, please don't delete anything because it lacks a citation just yet!


 * Ok. The info that was placed in the article is very good and much needed. I did though edit some things that you placed in the article such as spelling, wikifying (stuff that can't wait till Mon.), and I removed some phrases that are somewhat POV. I also removed any info that was already mentioned in the author's page and did not need to be repeated here. Don't worry, I didn't take anything out because it didn't have correct citation. I hope you will continue your work on this article. Stoa 06:35, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Your additions are quite good and much needed. But would anyone have a problem with moving them to Tristan and Iseult? As I suggested above, I think that will help the organization of these articles.--Cúchullain t/ c 07:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for cleaning up my text. I knew some of the spelling and grammer was embaressingly bad.


 * I will add citations for all of my facts as soon as possible, but some questions on how to do that: should I reference each fact with the book that I found it in, or do I have to give the exact page?


 * Further, would adding a bibiography or works cited by a necessary, or would it be redundant if I already added the citations?


 * And how do you get those little numbers in superscript?


 * As for the suggestion about moving this to T&I, like alot of medeaval chauvinist literature, the legend was named after the male lead back then, and many people use the term "Tristan" or "Tristan Legend" to describe both the specific charecter, and the stories surrounding him.


 * Perhaps a page entitled "Tristaniana" it IS a real word, used by scholars to refer to Tristan material like the term "Arthuriana" for Arthurian texts.
 * I was wondering if that was a real word :). As for the citations, you can place the info on here and we can see how we can wikify them. Stoa 16:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've begun referencing the article, but right now I am limited to simply giving the info of the book from the UT catalogue. For info from the New Arthurian Encyclopedia I gave the card catalogue stats for the first reference and used NAE and the particular article there after. If I need to jump through any more MLA hoops, just let me know.


 * The referencing is very much a work in progress right now, obviously.

Tristan and Iseult/Tristaniana
Okay, I made a page for the legend: /Tristan and Iseult. I haven't included any of the new information that was recently added on in there yet; I thought to wait until we have all of that sorted and finalised then we can add it on and rename the page. The intro in the new page probably needs to be expanded and background info about the characters needs to be included, among many things. We can also take some info from the Iseult page and include it there. Stoa 20:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not so sure about using the words "Tristanian" or "Tristaniana". It's not nearly as prevalant as "Arthurian" and "Arthuriana". We should just stick with "Tristan and Iseult" or "Tristan legend".--Cúchullain t/ c 20:30, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should title the root article "The Tristan Legend" or "The Tristan ans Iseult Legend" if you want to be gender unbiased ;)There could then be larger articles on Tristan (charectar) as well as Mark Iseult etc.Very few people will know the term "Tristaniana" though it is fun to say.
 * I don't think the name should matter so much since we can always have redirect pages. It would be easier though, if we named it Tristan and Iseult or Tristan and Isolde since those terms are more likely to be searched than Tristaniana.


 * Also, can you please sign your comments on the talk page? Thanks. Stoa 03:46, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


 * My apologies. I'm new to wikipedia and didn't know I had to "sign" my name. ::::````dudeman5685
 * No problem. I'm glad to see you've set up an account! FYI, you can just sign by typing 4 tildas( ~ ) after your post, there's also a signature icon over the edit box that does it for you.--Cúchullain t/ c 05:08, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
 * It should be "Tristan and Isolde" as that is the term most widely used in the English speaking world. As an aside, whoever wrote Tristan and Isolde first appeared in Northern France is wrong. They first appeared in the medieval tale of Thomas of Britain, who was a norman but living in Britain.--Chani 16:00, 17 April 2006 (GMT)
 * Apparently, a page about the legend already exists (Tristan & Isolde). We can add the new info there, and maybe expand the introduction and "Origins" section using the info from here. Stoa 16:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I said that before. But I think the article name should be Tristan and Iseult (no ampersand, the French version of Iseult's name). There's very little useful information at Tristan & Isolde, and some of it is wrong. I think we should just clean up the version you have at User:Stoa/Tristan and Iseult and then have it moved to Tristan and Iseult.--Cúchullain t/ c 20:04, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm planning to renovate the Tristan & Isolde page and just wanted to make sure there are no objections prior to doing so. I plan to include this information in between the "origins" and "modern adaptations" sections on the Tristan & Isolde page. I am going to take out the second paragraph in the origins section since it seems irrelevant and uninformative—the article could do w/o it. I think keeping the information that User:Dudeman5685 recently added (i.e the different sources where the legend is mentioned, etc) needs to go on the new page. The info seems to be more appropriatly placed where it is now on the Tristan page since it covers where Tristan as a character originated, and little about the actual legend. I also plan to remove the "enduring nature of Tristan and Isolde" section on the Tristan page because it seems too personal for Wiki; I might add a link to the legend page there instead. Finally, I plan to move the Tristan & Isolde page to Tristan and Iseult to avoid any confusion with the movie, opera, etc. Stoa 00:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Tristram as a name
I was looking for Henry Baker Tristram but by typing "Tristram" I was redirected to this page. Can anybody please add a disambiguation page. Misheu 11:25, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Can someone please disconnect 'Tristram' from 'Tristran'?

Just now I wrote this: Talk:Tristram --79.182.122.67 (talk) 16:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Pictish connection
I suspect this section is original research. If there are independent sources for this argument, they should be added and the section should be reframed in a more neutral way. Otherwise, it should go. Nareek 13:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Section: The Tristan and Isolde Romance

 * "   Main article: Tristan and Iseult


 * The romantic narrative of the Tristan and Iseult love affair predated and most likely influenced the Arthurian romance of Lancelot and Guinevere. The legend tells of the love affair between Tristan and Iseult of Ireland (the promised bride of Tristan's uncle), and the events and trials that the lovers go through to cover up their secret affair. He also appeared out of the blue hell to make everyones life a living shit stain. Tristan recently created a new wikipedia tab which describes his unreal facts about himself to make people seem highly of himself."

What on earth is this, and why is this section even necessary? The note about the romance preceeding Arthurian legends is covered in the Tristan and Iseult page, I believe. Can we do away with this odd little section? Imtinuviel (talk) 13:12, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Bisexual?
Acording to LGBT themes in mythology, this character is bisexual? I havn't done any research yet, but tagged it as there is no mention here of any relationsips with the same sex.

Does anyone know where this comes from (even if disputed)?YobMod 13:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

France and Brittany
The article speaks of Brittany "in the north of France". You must remember that, in that time, Brittany was an independant Celtic nation, far more independant than Ireland. And still being in everyday family relation with the sister nations, specially Cornwall and Wales, when the relations with France were often violent.

From an English, British, American or French angle, we find too often this misunderstanding. 2.10.174.35 (talk) 15:56, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 09:16, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

A useful list of all kinds of things of interests that can serve as prompts for writing the article
http://www.circleoflogres.com/tristan_isolde/index-tristan_isolde.html