ABSTRACT

The beautiful love story of Tristan and Isolde, which originated as a Celtic legend and was adapted by French and German poets in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, eventually found its way to Russia. The sixteenthcentury Povest o Trishchane was written by an anonymous author who based his work on the French Prose Tristan. Composed in Byelorussian, this is the only Slavic version stemming from this source. It exists in a single manuscript written about 1580. The work is a curious mixture of a French romance in terms of content and Slavic folk-tale or legend in terms of style and composition.