Teias de tempos e sentidos: os textos da legenda anglo-normanda de Tristan no século XII

Abstract

This doctoral thesis deals with historical and literary Anglo-Norman sources of the medieval legend of Tristan. Elaborating on the perspective of Paul Zumthor, we identified some of the singularities of writers, readers and listeners, who were involved in the initial making of such texts. They both display aspects of the larger cultural context of the second half of the 12th century and more specific peculiarities of social life in the Anglo-Norman courts as displayed in romans en vers of Béroul and Thomas, the poems known as Folie de Berne and Folie d Oxford, and the lai Chevrefoil of Marie de France, which we see as webs woven by writers and their audiences of listeners and readers. We also worked from Paul Ricoeur s perspective, the temporal horizons and significant signs of the cultural processes that were characteristic of this period and places. We interpreted the particular forms and meanings gradually acquired by each one of the texts in the dynamics between their parts and their whole. A second point at issue is to interpret the essential ambiguities of the narratives, taking into consideration key words such as Memory, Dissimulation and Masking, Hierarchies and Perspectives, referring mainly to the themes of love and power and their interrelations. This literary works witness as if in a mirror the aristocratic ways of thinking and living. We dwell on their interrelations not only as images but also as practices of social life in Anglo-Norman courts in order to achieve a broader understanding of the cherished themes of this transforming world. This thesis aims to be a contribution to a better comprehension of courtly manners and of the complex nature of the history of Anglo- Norman culture and its roles in the construction of European Western civilization