See, for example, Sackett, Friedman, and, especially, the recent articles by Wright.

The rich medieval tradition of the legend, which was greatly simplified by Wagner, is too complex to summarize satisfactorily, but Thompson has made a brave attempt (463- 64). Besides Wagner's opera, Tristan und Isolde (18 59), Galdós must have known one or more of the medieval versions of the legend (see the discussion in my conclusion). Those of Béroul and Thomas d'Angleterre, the two earliest Tristan poems in Old French, are preserved only in fragments dating from the late twelfth century; they represent the two main traditions of the legend, known respectively as the «common» version and the «courtly» version. The Béroul fragment focuses on the lovers' efforts to elude discovery of their relationship while at Mark's court. The extant fragments of Thomas's poem recount the end of the story: Tristan's exile, his marriage to Iseult of the White Hands, and the lovers' death. By a curious coincidence, Cottfried, who claims to have followed Thoma's for his Middle High German adaptation (ca. 1210), recounts the first and middle parts of the legend (Tristan's birth and adolescence and his life at court with Iseult and Mark), only to break off just after the point at which the extant fragments of Thomas's poem begin. In 1226, Friar Róbert adapted and translated Thomas's poem into Old Norse, the earliest extant complete version of the «courtly» tradition (translated by Schach). Eilhart's poem, composed in Middle High German (ca. 1170-1190), is the earliest extant complete version of the «common» tradition. On the origins and development of the Tristan legend from the Middle Ages to the present, see the introduction to my book.

The narrator notes the influence of certain Golden Age works, such as Calderón's plays, on Tristana's mother, and Tristana and Horacio make references to Dante (Francesca da Rimini, Beatrice), to Leopardi, and to other famous love poets. Apart from these explicit references, critics have explored in some detail the implicit allusions to Cervantes's Don Quijote and Tirso de Molina's Don Juan, and have also noted echoes of Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, and Baltasar del Alcázar, among others.

Sánchez cites Cervantes's novel, El celoso extremeño, and his entremeses, El viejo celoso, La cueva de Salamanca, and El juez de los divorcios (115). I would add that Don Lope himself seems to be aware of his tendency to incarnate the «celoso». He tells Tristana and then Horacio that he does not want to play the role of the jealous or tyrannical husband or father («celoso de comedia», «padre celoso», «tirano doméstico», [1567, 1603]). Despite his vow, his calculated efforts to separate the lovers are those of the «celoso», although he is greatly aided by external circumstances: «Lejos el amante y mutilada la señorita, el amor muere de muerte natural» (Pardo Bazán, «Tristana» 1120).

Sánchez (117). I discuss this situation below.

See also Goldin, who describes Galdós's parodying of Calderonian drama and his use of an «ironic shifting perspective on literary and social conventions» (99) reminiscent of Cervantes. For a sustained discussion of the complex role of the narrator in this regard, see Wright («Tan misteriosa autoridad») and Friedman.

Gullón goes the furthest in this direction but devotes only a paragraph to the subject (17), and he betrays a knowledge of the legend that is partial at best, based apparently on the summary provided in the well-known but seriously flawed study by Rougemont. For a recent critique of Rougemont, see Rabine.

Most critics mention only that the heroine's name «derives from the chivalric tradition», of which Don Lope is the rather decadent representative (Friedman 149), or that it suggests generally the world of chivalry and romance evoked by the network of references comparing Tristana to various heroines. Tsuchiya notes that the use of a name of literary significance immediately makes of Tristana an object of creation (60).

Schmidt (137); Wright («Corporal Fragmentation» 142). Wright notes that Tristana is defined not only through contradiction but also through negation: «by what she is not rather than what she is». He adds: «The troubling suggestion in Tristana is that the protagonist is doomed from the start, that a supreme force undermines her efforts to raise herself and tortures her for her promethean longing for more knowledge and freedom» (143).

Among the elements of the Tristan legend that Gullón sees in Tristana are the notion of a fatal passion (from the love potion) and the suggestion that passion wanes with time (from the three-year limitation on the potion's effects). But in only one of the two major versions of the medieval legend (those of Béroul and of Eilhart) is that limitation mentioned, and even there its function seems to be to incite the lovers to end their fugitive life in the woods and to attempt reintegration into society, only to discover that they are utterly incapable of renouncing their love.