Iseult conceives herself an adjunct to Tristram's fate

Anthony H. Harrison, Professor of English, North Carolina State University

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Note 6, Chapter 6, of the author's Swinburne's Medievalism: A Study in Victorian Love Poetry which Louisiana State University Press published in 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.

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That fact is especially patent in her monologue at Tintagel, but she also acknowledges it in private conversations with Tristram. At Joyous Gard she questions her lover:

"What am I,
Love, that have strength but to desire and die,
That have but grace to love and do thee wrong,
What am I that my name should live so long,
With hers whose life was light to Launcelot?" [Poems, IV, 100]

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Last modified June 2000

Last modified 8 June 2007