quick poll

[svalar_unnir]

How should I spell Tristan's girlfriend's name?

Comments

[doomandnachos]

I said Isolde, 'cause that's how I normally see it spelled. Of course, I am outside the medieval-lit-academic world, so that spelling might be seen as terribly plebian. ;D

Also, mad kudos to you for bypassing the no-polls-for-basic-LJ-accounts scheme. I salute you!

[svalar_unnir]

I think Isolde is standard English spelling, though probably not Middle English (heck that probably has 16 more variations). Though this is an Old French class, and my professor spelled it Ysolt in his book. Gah.

: D Thank you!

Something I thought about at the bus stop yesterday: why does your icon have a peach shouting 'eat peaches!' Wouldn't he be shouting to not eat peaches?

[doomandnachos]

Hmmmm, then. Do you have a specific edition of the Tristan legend you're referencing in your work, one you can just steal that spelling from?

Also, perhaps the Angry Peach is suicidal. He is awfully angry. And Taylor drew this for me as an example of the work she used to do at a farmer's market, so there you have the unfunny explanation. :D

[svalar_unnir]

Nah, it's more on the level of referencing the issues of the general story (illicitpossiblyincestuouslove!) than dealing with a text. Haha, a quick survey of my Old French book, with all of the manuscript fragments, gives Ysolt, Yseut, Ysiaut, and Ysoud, and sometimes it varies within the text.

Aw, Angry Peach, don't be suicidal!

[o_susannah]

I say Iseut because when I read Beroul's version, that's how it was.

[svalar_unnir]

Oh, that bawdy fellow.

I see Iseut a lot in French. Though I'm writing in English. For a French class. : x

[ajodasso]

Whichever you most prefer. That's the Stubborn Academic viewpoint on the matter. For example, I stubbornly spell the name of the Green Knight as Bertilak, in spite of the number of folks who seem to think it's Bercilak, and I also default to Oliver for Roland's companion instead of the somewhat-baffling Olivier. In other words, I tend to default to what is in the original manuscript text. "Olivier" is a modern French version of the name that's in the MS - Oliver is exactly as it's written in Anglo-Norman. Where the Bercilak permutation of Bertilak comes from, I have no clue - although it could be that, palaeographically, some people feel that the t in the MS may actually be a c. However, as a palaeographer myself, I stubbornly insist it's a t. It doesn't look like a c to me.

(Also, if you're not quite so opinionated yourself, you could just default to whatever spelling they use in the edition of the text you're working with.)

[svalar_unnir]

I think, for simplicity's sake, I'm just going to go with Isolde. It's not necessarily the most elegant, but it's what my brain defaults to, and probably the most common in English (as I'm not going to go with the French "Tristran" either). The problem with our text is that it's a compilation of various manuscript fragments which gives Ysolt, Yseut, Ysiaut, and Ysoud. Though now that I look at it, it's interesting that the modern preference is for "I" while the medieval preference is for "Y."

(Bertilak is much nicer than Bercilak, anyways)