# The Romance of Tristan and Iseult

> The great medieval love story retold with grace and passion: a knight, a queen, a fatal potion, and a love that defies king, honour, and death itself, one of the founding legends of Western romance.

Price: 8.50 USD · in stock

## About
Few stories have haunted the Western imagination as persistently as this one, a tale of love so absolute that it overturns loyalty, law, and life, distilled here into a spare and radiant retelling.What it's aboutTristan, a peerless young knight, is sent to bring the Irish princess Iseult across the sea to become the bride of his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. On the voyage the two mistakenly drink a love potion meant for the wedding night, and are bound to one another by a passion neither can resist nor renounce. What follows is a long dance of secret meetings, narrow escapes, exile, and grief, as the lovers are torn between their overwhelming desire and their duty to a king they both wrong and love. This edition draws the scattered medieval sources into a single flowing narrative, preserving the strangeness and beauty of the original.ThemesThe book turns on the collision of love and honour, fate and free will. The potion raises an ancient question: are the lovers guilty, or merely doomed? Around that question gather the great motifs of courtly romance, loyalty to one's lord, the demands of the body against the claims of society, and the nearness of love to death.Why it still mattersOlder than the Arthurian tales it influenced, the legend of Tristan and Iseult stands behind centuries of literature, opera, and film, and behind our very idea of tragic, all-consuming love. To read it is to touch a source from which much of romance flows, and to find that its emotional power has not faded.Who it's forLovers of myth, medieval literature, and grand romance will feel at home here, as will readers drawn to Wagner, the Arthurian cycle, or any story where passion and fate are inseparable. It rewards anyone willing to be swept up.

## Specifications
- language: en
- format: paperback