(ca. 1175–ca. 1210)
Eilhart was the first Middle High German poet to introduce the Tristan material to his audience, probably borrowing from a now-lost Old French source, the Estoire de Tristan from ca. 1170. Eilhart, who is named in 11 documents between 1189 and 1207, composed his Tristrant und Isalde about 1190, probably at the court of the duke of Brunswick,Henry the Lion.Henry was married to Mathilde, daughter of the English king HENRY II and his wife, ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE, famous patroness of the arts. It is quite likely that Mathilde brought a French version of the original poem with her, giving Eilhart access to this exciting new literary material. His text, preserved in three fragmentary manuscripts from around 1200 and in three complete 15th-century paper manuscripts, obviously exerted tremendous influence on subsequent generations.GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG referred to Eilhart when he composed his TRISTAN in ca. 1210, and most of the late medieval Tristan versions, especially the 15th-century prose novel Tristrant und Isalde (printed 14 times between 1488 and 1664), were influenced by him as well. The 15th-century Czech Tristram is directly based on Eilhart’s text.
As in all other Tristan versions, Eilhart’s romance describes the love triangle involving the Irish Princess Isalde and her husband Marke, the king of Cornwall, and, above all, Isalde’s secret lover, Marke’s own nephew Tristrant. Their illicit affair is brought about by a love potion concocted by Isalde’s mother who had destined it for her daughter and her future son-in-law,Marke, but, by chance, Tristrant and Isalde drink it. Its power forces the two to stay together for four years, and their love continues thereafter (in Gottfried’s Tristan there is no time limitation). Eilhart follows the lovers’ story until the bitter end, when Tristrant already has married another woman and is mortally wounded from battle. His true beloved, trained in medical sciences, comes to his rescue, but his wife pretends to him that the opposite is the case, whereupon he dies, immediately followed by Isalde’s own death. The role of Fortune and the narrator’s irony characterize Eilhart’s version, which, though lacking in intellectual depth, broadly appealed to a wide audience throughout the centuries, especially because several humorous scenes based on grotesque misunderstandings and violence offer fairly coarse entertainment. Significantly, Eilhart also includes the Arthurian world in his text, whereas Gottfried entirely concentrates on the court of Cornwall.
Bibliography
■ Eilhart von Oberg. Tristrant. Edited by Danielle Buschinger. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 202. Göppingen, Germany: Kümmerle, 1976.
■ Schulz, James A. “Why Do Tristan and Isolde Leave for the Woods? Narrative Motivation and Narrative Coherence in Eilhart von Oberg and Gottfried von Strassburg,”Modern Language Notes 102, no. 3 (1987): 586–607.
■ Thomas, J.W., trans. Eilhart von Oberge’s Tristrant. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
Albrecht Classen