Tristan rides the crest of an ecstatic and mystical passion, craving not so much Iseult as liberating Darkness and self-annihilation. Tristan and Iseult spurn the duality of physical love; the one-ness they seek can only be realised through and beyond death. It is this awesome, and distinctly European, secret of the medieval legend that unfolds over the three acts of Wagner's homonymous musical drama. Thus Denis de Rougemont in the celebrated and controversial L'Amour et l'Occident. He may be right or wrong, but there can be little doubt that what he deals with is – as the English rendering of the very beginning of J. Bedier's version of the legend would have it – ‘a high tale of love and death’.

Before any reference can be safely made to the humble and scholarly tale of this book the pitch must be considerably lowered. Not because this tale is less distinctly European, nor yet because genuinely passionate and romantic love, as distinct from merry sensuality, was invented by the eleventh-century French Troubadours. When erudite men like C. S. Lewis in his Allegory of love and Denis de Rougemont in the above-mentioned work thus define the eras of European Love, they court disbelief – and on this point I firmly side with Niall Rudd (Lines of enquiry, ix). Why, having myself embarked upon the present study somewhat in the spirit of the Wagnerian Liebestod (I mean de Rougemont's interpretation of it, not the one that has Wagner glorifying sensual desire), I have then increasingly and for the most part felt the need to exorcise, or at least keep at bay, that spirit – this I trust the following pages to make clear.