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Abstract This essay examines the medieval presentation of emotions and selfhood through the lens of romantic love in Marie de France’s Chevrefoil and Thomas of Britain’s Tristran , as well as their Middle High German and Old Norse translations. The focus is on the alteration or destruction of a discrete self through the experience of romantic love. By drawing on both modern scientific understandings and medieval conceptualisations of love, the essay explores how an altered sense of self is central to experiencing and portraying the emotion. However, the exact degree and nature of this alteration varies in the different texts presented here, ranging from complete fusion in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan to mutually supportive entwining in the Old Norse Geitarlauf and Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar .
Isabella Clarke (Wed,) studied this question.