Shatter («Spanish and Portuguese Arthurian Literature» 427).

Horacio's adherence to convention is discussed by Schmidt (140-41); his lacklustre character is examined in Wright («Going in Circles»).

This entire description recalls the medieval «love physiology», which follows Ovid's Ars amatoria: the arrow or dart, inflicted by Amor, enters the heart through the eyes, because the two people in question are necessarily paragons of beauty whose glance strikes a «mortal» blow that sets the heart afire (the Tristan legend substitutes the potion for the dart). Both spend hours brooding separately over the attraction, trying to decide when and how to declare their love. The «love sickness», which involves all the usual physiological symptoms of the onset of a sudden ardent love, can be cured by only one «doctor» (the lover), in whose presence, however, it paradoxically grows worse. The conceit, of which an excellent description is found in Chrétien de Troyes's Cligés (ca. 1176), was by no means limited to medieval literature and was actually used by Molière in L'École des femmes (Act II, Scene 5).

Colby describes the portrait in medieval literature and its classical antecedents.

It is to Brangien that Iseult's mother entrusts the love potion which she has destined for Iseult and Mark. In some versions Brangien serves it by mistake to Tristan and Iseult, while in others she simply fails to guard it closely enough.

The lovers' deception and delight therein is particularly evident in Ildroul's version of the legend. The fragment begins with the scene that was most frequently represented in medieval art: King Mark, hidden in a tree, spies on the lovers below, who, having seen his shadow in the pond, contrive to make him believe they are only friends.

In attempting to identify Tristana's lover by extorting information from the cab driver, Don Lope invents details which he rightly assumes his unsuspecting informant will correct. In what may be one of the more humorous allusions to the Tristan legend, Don Lope says: «Parece de estos italianos que tocan el arpa» (1571).

Chamberlin claims that music accounts for the novel's structure, adding that within the work «there is considerable interest in and textual integration of music» (83). On the importance of music in the Tristan legend, see Jackson.

On the triangle formed by Francesca, Paolo, and the older Malatesta, see Wright («Corporal Fragmentation» 150, note 22). Wright further observes that the narrator's indication that Tristana and Horacio consummate their love when they shift the scene of their rendezvous to his studio («Y desde aquel día ya no pasearon más» [1569]) echoes Francesca's same transformation when she notes that they abandoned their reading: «quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante» (canto V, verso 138).

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Thomas's famous «Salle aux Images» scene describes Tristan's state of mind during the lovers' separation (see Gottfried/Thomas 315-18). For Friar Róbert's description of the grotto and the images (a passage missing in the extant fragments of Thomas's poem), see Schach, Chapters 79-80.