Sensing Death: Variations in the Sensorium of the Old Norse, Anglo-French, and Middle English Tristans

This thesis investigates the description of sensation in the scenes immediately before, during, and following the death of Tristan in variations in the Tristan cycle from the 12th through the 15th centuries. Using a sensory studies approach, the project considers these scenes as they are translated and transmitted from Thomas de Bretagne’s Tristan to the Old Norse Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar and Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd and into Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the last, great medieval treatment of the Tristan story. The scenes are understood in the context of the texts’ sensoria as defined by their cultural and historical contexts and the texts’ underpinning in philosophical and theological thought on the senses. The thesis project argues that the specific cultural preferences and usages of the senses can be made apparent through the comparison of Thomas’s Tristan, the Norse translations, and Malory’s text. Taken together, they show the importance of considering medieval translation when comparing the appearance of the senses in written artefacts from the Middle Ages. The sensory engagement with texts is deeply tied to the making of meaning and ethics in medieval literary works. The differences in how the senses are prioritized and framed suggest a larger variance within European Christian philosophical and theological thought on the senses and provide a potential framework for exploring this phenomenon in other medieval literary cycles.