Tristan and Isolde

"William T. Whobrey conducts Gottfried von Strassburg's great medieval epic into the twenty-first century. The reader will come for the elegant translation and stay for the scholarship."
—Alexander Sager, University of Georgia
"William T. Whobrey’s new English translation of Gottfried von Strassburg’s early-thirteenth-century medieval German romance about Tristan and Isolde is a much-needed scholarly addition to the fields of German and medieval studies. . . . Given its artistic merits within the courtly tradition of the Tristan legend, Gottfried’s romance has deserved a new English translation for the twenty-first century. Whobrey has provided just such an edition, having elegantly rendered the German text into a clear and very readable English, a feat that would have no doubt been appreciated by Gottfried himself, given his praise of clarity and unobscured meaning. Whobrey supplements his graceful translation with an informative introduction, a useful glossary of place and personal names, an overview of the manuscripts, both complete and fragmentary, a comparison of the love story’s ending as told by various medieval poets, as well as a selected bibliography. Abundant, yet unobtrusive, footnotes within the translation provide helpful cultural, historical, and literary context, as well as possible alternate readings of the verses based on recent scholarship and on past translations in German or English. Significantly, Whobrey’s edition foregrounds the poet and the medieval German textual tradition in ways not previously accomplished by other English translations of this medieval German romance. . . . Whobrey’s rendition is poised to replace Hatto’s as the standard English translation of this romance."
—Marian E. Polhill, University of Puerto Rico, in Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies