A Study Of The View Of Loyalty In LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN ET ISEUT

LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN ET ISEUT(1)tells a heartbreaking love story,in which Tristan completes the conversion of his main identity and concept,from the feudal knight to the love of Iseut,from the view of loyalty to the king to his love.The conversion is inseparable from the social and historical background and cultural tradition of the Middle Ages,so this paper will take the social-historical criticism theory as the breakthrough point to study the cause,process and significance of the conversion of Tristan’s view of loyalty.Social-historical criticism is a critical method to observe,analyze and evaluate literary phenomena from the perspective of social history.It pays more attention to the study of the relationship between literary works and social life,focuses on the ideological tendency of writers and the social function of literary works.Social history criticism is the oldest and most influential one in today’s criticism methods,and it is also the most familiar,habitual or abused criticism method.At the same time,it is a method system in continuous development and still has its vitality.When studying the view of loyalty in LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN ET ISEUT with the method of social-historical criticism,we can regard the conversion of loyalty from king to love with the point of literary and society,analyzing why the view of loyalty would converse and finding out its significance,thus we will understand the transitional nature of knight literature reflected by this conversion.At first,I should define the word “loyalty”.Tristan’s loyalty to King Mark is the one under the requirement of medieval feudal ruler.Such loyalty has three sources: the Germanic military tradition,the feudal system of fief and vassal system which were controlled by economic benefits,and then the Christian thought.But Tristan’s loyalty to Iseut is the one to his love and emotions.Such loyalty is just out of real feeling of the two lovers which contains love and protection.There is no right or wrong in these two views of loyalty,but the difference is that the former is the requirement of feudal thought and the latter is Tristan’s personal pursuit.Second,when Tristan converted his view of loyalty,he troubled with the marriage of King Mark and Iseut.Royal marriage was regard as a tool to multiply offspring and increase believers by Christian spirit and the realistic interests of the feudal state and an alliance between families of equal social rank.Therefore,there was no love between Iseut and Mark,and their marriage was the product of the feudal marriage view.The love between Tristan and Iseut belongs to free love.Potion was a catalyst to help them understand love and deepen it.The cheating behavior was their revolt against feudal view of marriage and loyalty whose essence was struggle means.They used three ways to gained King Mark’s trust and protect their love: the terms of address,the skills of expression and the attitude towards him.The conversion of Tristan’s view of loyalty experiences three processes,entangled,guilty and final revolt which reflects the awakening of the protagonist’s personal consciousness,the resistance to the feudal view of marriage and the emphasis on the inner emotions.In the meanwhile,the description of Iseut’s character also reflects female’s cleverness and courage,reconstructs female’s position.Furthermore,the romance of Tristan and Iseut becomes an archetype,which opened the western romantic love story,embodies the transitional nature of the knight literature.The foresaid is the cultural and social reason of the conversion of Tristan’s view of loyalty,and what its influence is to the literary world at that time.