Sur l’organisation du ‘Tristan en prose’ (review)

Damien de Carné’s ambitious and expert analysis aims to overturn the longstanding criticism of the Prose Tristan as an unwieldy, derivative mix of material that lacks the artistry and coherence of the Lancelot–Grail cycle. Basing his study of structure in the romance predominantly on Version II, Carné analyses interlace as a compositional strategy (Part I), the comparison of Tristan with Lancelot (Part II), and the Prose Tristan’s subversion of the Lancelot–Grail material (Part III). Concerning interlace, he argues that the romance falls into three clear types of content, each with a characteristic compositional strategy and discourse: the biographical material, featuring a largely linear structure to establish Tristan’s background and early life in Cornwall; the material of chivalric adventure, which deftly uses interlace to recount Tristan’s integration into the Arthurian world; and the intertex-tual material, in which Tristan’s story combines with the grail quest. Thus instead of being an inexpert and rambling collection of old and new material, the Prose Tristan skilfully matches structural principle with type of content. Part II examines how the romance gradually but systematically presents Tristan as Lancelot’s equal, how Tristan approaches and finally enters the Arthurian world, and how his growth into the hero of his own romance ultimately diminishes Lancelot’s dominance in Logres. Through a carefully orchestrated series of overt and masked comparisons, Tristan’s path and reputation gradually approach Lancelot’s, and his success challenges the organization that governs Arthur’s world. In Part III Carné explores the romance’s subversive use of intertextuality to counter the stultifying and anti-romantic assumptions of the grail quest. For Carné, the Prose Tristan’s author uses the confrontation of Tristan’s story with that of the quest to undermine the latter and restore to chivalric romance the vitality and flexibility that it had before the quest substituted mysticism for romance, predestination for fate, and a closed system for the flexibility of chivalric adventure. Carné sees the Tristan’s inclusion of the grail story as a type of textual suicide. In the end Tristan’s story cannot survive the clash, but neither can the assumptions of the quest narrative. Carné closes his study with discussion of the pessimism that governs the end of Tristan’s romance as content from the Mort Artu succeeds the quest story and overlaps the lovers’ deaths. While Carné sometimes confuses the reader with terminology and overlapping organizational principles (designating both a three-part and a two-part structure, for example, or three discourses as well as three major subdivisions of the narrative), his analysis is persuasive, detailed, and abundantly supported by an impressive range of primary and secondary material. This analysis illustrates well the type of substantial study facilitated by the appearance of critical editions of the past twenty years, and it contributes significantly to our understanding of the Prose Tristan.