"Medieval Icelandic Bodies in Tristram ok Ísodd"
In the Old French and Middle High German Tristan romances, the hero suffers from a number of physical traumas that symbolize his emotional suffering. In the Old Icelandic version of this work, the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, however, the hero’s injuries are both more lurid and suggestive, but the saga treats them more as spectacle than as symbol. This attitude towards the hero’s wounds is shaped by the use of the grotesque in the construction of male bodies in the Old Icelandic family sagas.
