SOURCE: Sticca, Sandro. “Christian Ethics and Courtly Doctrine in Béroul's Tristan et Iseut.” Classica et Mediaevalia 29 (June 1972): 223-48.

In the following essay, Sticca explores how Béroul uses Christian elements—personified by the character Ogrin—to elevate his narrative from an amoral, adulterous story to a tale about a spiritual journey toward redemption.

There are literary critics today who whether out of reluctance to make overt religious affirmations or out of fear to impose predetermined meanings on medieval poetry, have produced a criticism which is both farfetched and eccentric. Although I would refrain from suggesting that, in interpreting medieval literature, individual talent be sacrificed to the demands of tradition, I would maintain that, if literary criticism is to function as an instrument of knowledge, it ought to consider both the socio-religious and aesthetic contexts of the medieval work it seeks to interprete where those contexts pertain.

The...