Béroul

Tristran is the earliest representation of the "common" or "vulgar" version of the legend (the earliest surviving "courtly" version being Thomas of Britain's).Lacy The first half of Béroul's poem is closely paralleled by and related to Eilhart von Oberge's treatment in German from the same century,Illingworth and many of the episodes that appear in Béroul but not Thomas reappear in the later Prose Tristan. Because of its early date, Béroul's Tristran has been used extensively for the purpose of textual criticism, especially in the effort to reconstruct the "Ur-Tristan," the hypothetical first ancestor of all the subsequent Tristan and Iseult Romances.Beroul Stylistically, the poem belongs to the transition in Old French literature from epic to romance. While not as popular as Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, Béroul's text remains widely acclaimed for its style and thematic content. Poem survives in a single manuscript now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which is missing the first and final sections of the poem. The manuscript also has several lacunae.Beroul The text's condition is poor—possibly corrupt—and debate over the history of the story's transmission, number of authors, and role of scribes continues. Modern questions of authorship now center on whether one or two authors are responsible for the majority of the text—claims of multiple authors, fashionable in the beginning of the 20th century, have not gained wide acceptance.