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The Tristan Legend: a Barometer of Love and Art in the Victorian Period Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1976 The rT istan Legend: a Barometer of Love and Art in the Victorian Period. James Alton Cowan Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Cowan, James Alton, "The rT istan Legend: a Barometer of Love and Art in the Victorian Period." (1976). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 3009. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/3009 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or "target” for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. 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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA St. John's Road, Tyler’s Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR 77- 10,361 COWAN, James Alton, 1939- THE TRISTAN LEGEND: A BAROMETER OF LOVE AND ART IN THE VICTORIAN PERIOD. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1976 Literature, English Xerox University Microfilms,Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 THE TRISTAN LEGEND: A BAROMETER OF LOVE AND ART IN THE VICTORIAN PERIOD A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by James Alton Cowan B.S., East Carolina University, 1961 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1969 December, 1976 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. Thomas L. Watson under whose direction this project was completed, for his guidance and suggestions and to my committee in general for their patience and understanding. I would also like to thank Dr. Maxwell Quertermous who suggested this topic long ago and has followed faithfully my endeavors therein; Dr. Nolan LeCompte and Miss Cecile LeBlanc, whose loyalty and encouragement made the project possible; and Dr. Alfred Delahaye, Mrs. Faye Ott Rifkind, and Miss Mary Anne Bergeron, who helped in count­ less ways. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................ii ABSTRACT .................................................... iv INTRODUCTION ............................................. vi CHAPTER I BACKGROUNDS: VICTORIAN LOVE AND ART AND THE MEDIEVAL TRISTAN ......... ........... 1 CHAPTER II THE MORAL APPROACH: ARNOLD AND TENNYSON ........... 34 Arnold’s "Tristram and Iseult".................... 36 Tennyson's "The Last Tournament".................. 55 CHAPTER III THE AESTHETIC RESPONSE: SWINBURNE AND SYMONS VIA W A G N E R ....................................... 78 Swinburne’s "Queen Yseult" and Tristram of Lyonesse .......................... 92 Symons’ Tristan and Iseult and "Iseult of Brittany".................................. 126 CHAPTER IV THE NATURALISTIC VIEW: HARDY ....................... 155 CONCLUSION................................................. 181 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................... 195 VITA ........................................................204 iii ABSTRACT Because the Victorians not only rediscovered but often re-interpreted it, the Tristan legend offers one barometer to the changing Victorian attitudes toward love and art. Unlike their contemporary, Wagner, they were unable to reduce the story to its elemental passion, erotic love; instead, they found in it an irreconcilable conflict between domestic and passionate love, a conflict which they transmuted into the Victorian conflict between didacticism and aestheticism in art, until, in Hardy's naturalistic version, those distinctions collapse. Arnold ("Tristram and Iseult") and Tennyson ("The Last Tournament") take a moral approach to the legend. Arnold betrays a fascination with the passionate lovers, Tristan and Queen Iseult, but reserves his primary sympathy for the representative of domes­ tic love, Iseult of Brittany. He not only creates for her a do­ mestic milieu complete with two children, offspring of Tristan, but also makes her the heroine of his poem. Tennyson subordinates the Tristan story to his larger design in the Idylls: the dev­ astation inherent in breaking the marriage vows. In his hands, the passionate lovers become a savage parody of Lancelot and Guinevere, the first of Arthur's subjects to break the vows. By contrast, and largely by implication, the loyal Iseult of Brittany emerges as the most sympathetic character of the origi­ nal legend. Swinburne (Tristram of Lyonesse) and Symons (Tristan and Iseult) react aesthetically to the legend. Writing under the influence of Wagner, they respond chiefly to the beauty of passionate love. Swinburne recognizes that erotic love may be an illusion and therefore grants Tristan complete fulfillment only in his encounter with the sea. But domestic love, epito­ mized by Iseult of Brittany, is a more dangerous illusion, resulting in bitterness, jealousy, and destructiveness when it is not satisfied. Symons finds in domestic love a poignant beauty all its own, but eventually sees passionate love as superior. In general, he paints the beauty of love in conflict: passionate love in conflict with honor, domestic love in conflict with generosity and selflessness. Hardy (The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall) finally obliterates, or at least blurs, the distinctions between domestic and passionate love. Writing from a naturalistic perspective, he sees both types of love as doomed to disillusionment and eventual failure. As in Greek tragedy, fate operates externally (through the potion and the symbol of the sea) and internally (through character) to destroy the possibility 6f fulfillment in either type of love. Because his version seeks no ideal in love, Hardy represents a step toward modern realism in the depiction of love. Not love itself but the struggle to wrest from trying circum­ stances a moment of love is, for Hardy, the real glory. INTRODUCTION One of the remarkable achievements of the Victorian age, whose writers often sought inspiration from the past, was the rediscovery of the Tristan legend. For nearly four hundred years this legend had lain dormant, rarely even alluded to, though English readers knew one version of the story from Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Suddenly in the middle of the nineteenth century this tale of passionate love fell on fertile ground, probably because it presented two types of love in conflict: domestic and passionate. Not only could moralists like Arnold and Tennyson find in the story a type of love to condemn— the passionate, in the illicit affair of Tristan and Queen Iseult— but they could also point to its destructive effects on both the lovers and those around them, especially Iseult of the White Hands, Tristan’s wife, whom he deserts for Oueen Iseult. The passionate love of Tristan and Iseult violated their beliefs about marriage and social sta­ bility; on the other hand, Iseult of the White Hands provided them an exemplar oF social order and marital fidelity. The aesthetes found the legend appealing for just the opposite reason. Writing under the influence of Wagner, whose opera Tristan und Isolde capped the revival of interest in the Tristan legend, Swinburne and Symons recognized and celebrated the beauty of passionate love, Fated though it might be. Even when they detected beauty in do­ mestic love (Symons, in particular), they did not moralize that love but simply
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