Tristan démembré : l’impossibilité de trancher
Unbound Tristan: the Unsettling Conondrum

Summary/Abstract: This title may surprise at first sight. What connection can exist between the idea of the mutilated body and the few Tristan manuscripts, a myth famous for praising the idyllic love of a young and physically harmonious couple but whose morals may be considered extraordinary? I suggest in this essay that Béroul’s Tristan does not celebrate a unique form of love as it uses the image of deformed bodies to weave a narrative on a plot that cannot work nor go the distance without them. After showing how the image of the deviant body occupies every page, I propose to consider what this omnipresence of other bodies tells us about how to interpret the text itself. In other words, the body of the text and its form, i.e. the mutilated shape of the manuscript of Béroul’s Tristan, are directly connected.

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