Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde ed. by Jutta Eming, Ann Marie Rasmussen, and Kathryn Starkey (review)

The papers published in this beautifully illustrated volume were first presented at a conference held at the Duke University, NC, in April 2007. As the title signals, the emphasis rests on the two concepts of visuality and materiality in the pan-European narrative of Tristan and Isolde. While the first term addresses the question how fictional figures see and are seen, the latter considers the presentation of the literary material in its manuscript form and in other illustrations (wall paintings, stained glass windows, tapestry, ivory carvings, etc.).

The volume is divided into three sections, the first dealing with courtly bodies, seeing, and emotions, followed by a rather vaguely entitled section on media, representation, and performance, and the third considering visual culture of Tristan. The authors come both from Europe and the United States. We find brief biographical blurbs for each at the end of the volume, just before the most welcome index. Although the papers were first presented at a conference, there are no cross-references, and one wonders about the absence of any mutual engagement, although the focus mostly rests on Eilhart von Oberg's Tristrant and Gottfried von Straßburg's Tristan, both extremely well-known today.

Jan-Dirk Müller discusses Gottfried's strategy to have his protagonists come out into the light at critical junctures, and to disappear in the dark again when secrecy is sought. Visuality hence proves to be, as he illustrates convincingly, a major strategy, with many critical moments taking place in the grey zones, so to speak, especially when the lovers Tristan and Isolde try to hide from the public gaze. The best example proves to be the love cave which the lovers have to leave once they realize that Mark has discovered them and signaled that to them through covering one of the windows, blocking out some of the sunlight, which also impinges their honor. Haiko Wandhoff concentrates on the love cave as a metaphor of literature in itself, requiring from the reader/listener to seek meaning, discovering it in the dark or the depth of the text. But while Tristan and Isolde prove to be deep readers, able to read between the lines, King Mark always remains a superficial reader who longs for love but cannot ever find it himself because he stays an outsider. Literature and art thus have to be identified, as Wandhoff claims, as media where love can be found, but not a lover. James A. Schultz probes the reasons for love and where it gains its motivation from, but concludes that the Middle High German poets basically refuse to explicate it comprehensively, or evade the full and final answer to these difficult questions. I am not sure whether we will get very far with this curt assessment, highly abstracted from Eilhart's and Gottfried's text, and it might be worth revisiting each individual case when characters fall in love to analyze more deeply whether there are not more ways to approach the topics. In order to establish further perspectives regarding visuality, Ludger Lieb discusses relevant cases in Minnereden (rhymed couplet texts on courtly love) where the gaze proves to be of greatest significance, which supports the observation that in Gottfried's Tristan visuality also matters greatly.

In the next section Michael Curschmann examines the historical development of Tristan illustrations from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, which subsequent authors will pick up as well and extend considerably. While the general observations might not yield new insights, his characterization of the historical change of the functions carried by the images does, leading from myth to emblem to panorama, at least in Swinburne's work. Elke Koch attempts to examine again the material framework of Hans Sachs's sixteenth-century staging of the Tristan romance, and focuses, for example, on the role of the herald as...