Tristan: With the Surviving Fragments of the 'tristan of Thomas', Paperback

One of the great romances of the Middle Ages, Tristan, written in the early thirteenth century, is based on a medieval love story of grand passion and deceit. By slaying a dragon, the young prince Tristan wins the beautiful Isolde's hand in marriage for his uncle, King Mark. On their journey back to Mark's court, however, the pair mistakenly drink a love-potion intended for the king and his young bride, and are instantly possessed with an all-consuming love for each another - a love they are compelled to conceal by a series of subterfuges that culminates in tragedy. Von Strassburg's work is acknowledged as the greatest rendering of this legend of medieval lovers, and went on to influence generations of writers and artists and inspire Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

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Gottfried von Strassburg was one of the greatest medieval German poets, whose courtly epic Tristan und Isolde is the classic version of this famous love story. The dates of his birth and death are unknown, and the only information about him consists of references to him in the work of other poets and inferences from his own work. Although unfinished, Gottfried's work is the finest of the medieval versions of the Tristan legend and one of the most perfect creations of the medieval courtly spirit.