The plot outline and the main characters in Gottfried’s Tristan in the narrative sequence
 

• Rivalin  Canelengres, lord of Parmenie vs. Duke Morgan, his overloard
• Feudal conflict with Morgan (justified? just war? is any war just?)
• Rivalin and King Mark of Cornwall at the glorious court
• Mark and his sister Blancheflor
• Rivalin’s and Blancheflor’s offspring: Tristan
• Rivalin’s marshal: Rual li Foitenant, Tristan’s foster father
• Tristan and the Norwegian merchants (falcons and the chess board)
• Tristan as a new messiah?
• Tristan and the pilgrims
• Tristan and King Mark’s huntsmen
• Tristan and King Mark’s courtiers
• Tristan as musician
• Tristan as polyglot
• Tristan’s loss of his alleged father, Rual
• Tristan learns of his real father’s death
• Tristan gains a new father in his uncle, King Mark
• Mark basically entrusts Cornwall to Tristan
• Tristan returns to Parmenie and murders Morgan: Accusation of being a bastard, and Tristan’s precarious existence
• Tristan fights against Morold
• Tristan’s wound – another time that a wound symbolizes something most powerful
• Tristan as Tantris, perhaps the seeming return of Christ to Ireland (p. 142: reference to 40 days and 40 nights)
• Tristan as Isolde’s teacher
• Tristan’s fortune at King Mark’s court changes; he needs to secure Isolde’s hand for King Mark
• Fight against the Dragon and against the Irish Seneschall (note the use of the tongue)
• The Splinter: Isolde demonstrates her decoding skills
• The Proof and the Love Potion
• Isolde’s hatred changes to love (p. 199)
• The discourse on the nature of love
• Isolde’s plot to have Brangaene killed (again the symbolism of the tongue)
• Gandin from Ireland: the game of language. Tristan triumphs
• Marjodoc discovers the first traces; the signs turn against the lovers
• Battle of the wits, Mark vs. Isolde and her helpers
• Melot and the garden scene: deciphering the signs in the shadow
• The Ordeal: Isolde speaks the language of her heart, and God listens
• Petitcreiu: Tristan begins to confuse the signs again, and so the essence of love
• Banishment and the Cave of Love
• Mark discovers the lovers, and misreads the signs
• Tristan departs, Isolde’s sorrowful monologue, she has joined the community of the true hearts
• Tristan and Isolde Whitehand: again, signs and language of love confuse everyone