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