SOURCE: McDonald, William C. “The Fool-Stick: Concerning Tristan's Club in the German Eilhart Tradition.” Euphorion: Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 82, no. 2 (1988): 127-49.

In the following essayt, McDonald interprets the symbolic significance of Tristan's club in Tristant and in later adaptations of the legend the followed Eilhart.

Although critics have examined the Tristan poems of Eilhart von Oberge (fl. ca. 1170) and his followers through a wide variety of methodologies and critical approaches, a pervasive motif has largely gone unexplored: the large stick carried by the protagonist when he is dressed as a fool is placed in high relief. The function of Tristan's club engages our attention here, not least for its contribution to reception theory. Eilhart, whose poem affords very early access to the episode of Tristan's folly¹, introduces the club as the hero's distinguishing feature for his final adventure of love. Tristan, in exile, wishes to see Isolde again...