"Apart the lovers could neither live nor die; for it was life and death together; and Tristan fled his sorrow through seas and islands and many lands."
The above quotation is an excerpt from the The Romance of Tristan and Iseult as retold by Joseph Bedier. I read this text last year in my ENG 203H class with Dr. Joseph Navitsky. The theme for the class focused on the history of romance in literature. I now include The Romance of Tristan and Iseult in my list of favorite books. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this text which led me to create my final project of the class around this book. In my final project, I had to compare two texts and analyze the romance tradition in each. I decided to compare The Romance of Tristan and Iseult and Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. Although these texts may seem to starkly contrast, I argued that these two texts demonstrated how the romance tradition preserved certain ideals from medieval to modern times.
The purpose of my paper was to show how the romance tradition includes an obstacle to love. Although authors alter the plot of a romance, I argued they have preserved the obstacle to love over time. I wrote this paper because I wanted to demonstrate to my teacher the knowledge I acquired throughout the semester. I hoped to prove I learned a lot about the romance tradition and practiced text analysis. Moreover, this final project was important for my grade and I wanted to ensure an A. I wrote for my teacher and therefore I assumed my audience was more educated on the topic than I. Due to this assumption, I included less background information and more analysis. I wanted to gain the respect of my professor by providing new insight into themes in the romance tradition.
Consequently, I used formal language and researched carefully. I used descriptive words to examine textual implications. Although I included excerpts from the texts, I could have included more analysis and offered a stronger conclusion. I stated the importance of comparing The Romance of Tristan and Iseult with Interview with the Vampire was to note that obstacles to love are innate to the romance tradition. However, I failed to point out to my reader why this is important. Therefore, many improvements could be made to this paper and after considering rhetorical analysis, I have a better understanding of how to improve.
