How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Page)
Quote #1
Soon after Rivalen had defeated his enemies, Blanchefleur gave birth to a son, but amid great lamentation died in childbirth. The child born in sorrow was named Tristan. (1.39)
Tristan's name, given to him because of the circumstances of his birth, literally means "sadness." (triste is the French word for "sad.") His name and birth foreshadow the rest of his life, which, because of his ill-fated love for Yseut, will largely be one of suffering.
Quote #2
By mistake, Brangain brought the love potion and handed it to Tristan, who drank and passed it to Yseut. Both thought it was good wine: neither knew that it held for them a lifetime of suffering and hardship and that it was to cause their destruction and their death. (1.44)
Tristan and Yseut's ingestion of the love potion has religious overtones of the Fall of Adam and Eve, in which ingestion of the fruit of knowledge brings about suffering and death on earth. Like Adam and Eve, Tristan and Yseut believe that what they are about to ingest is good, but seem to be mistaken.
Quote #3
If you give her to us lepers, when she sees our low hovels and looks at our dishes and has to sleep with us—in place of your fine meals, sire, she will have the pieces of food and crumbs that are left for us at the gates—then, by the Lord who dwells above, when she sees our court and all its discomforts she would rather be dead than alive. The snake Yseut will know then that she has been wicked! She would rather have been burnt. (4.74)
The leper's vivid description of the suffering in store for Yseut if Mark gives her to the leper colony serves the double function of persuading everyone that life with the lepers is worse than burning, and of making our desire for Yseut to escape her fate that much stronger. The leper thinks that the purpose of suffering is to make people understand their sinfulness. Yseut's suffering will teach her "that she has been wicked."