Post date: Nov 14, 2016 11:43:18 PM
I get really excited whenever something even remotely math related comes up in Humanistic Studies class, usually my only moment is when a teacher asks how we can be divided into groups and I am on it with the Modular Arithmetic.
Anyways, in our cultural history class we have been focusing a lot on the return to logic movement that was happening during the middle ages with the rediscovery of Aristotle's texts. Even though not everyone probably received this formal education in logic, I think that there was still this very logical mindset in the middle ages which we have lost a little bit of now. The world used to be filled with a lot of finite answers back then since those were the only questions that they were prepared to ask so everyone was used to a "yes" or "no" or straightforward answer to their problems.
In The Romance of Tristan, I see a lot of polarity with how people view the world. King Mark's three advisors are seen as evil overall. Tristan is good, then becomes bad, and finishes out relatively good. Yseut is always seen as good throughout the story but that ties into more the views of women which is a separate argument to make. The main point I am trying to make is that there only seems to be one prevailing viewpoint of a person at a time and if there's others than the narrator clearly steers the story so that this opposing view is seen as wrong or not popular. The gray area of having mixed emotions about a person does not seem to be prevalent yet.
The second instance where I saw this logical reasoning was in Yseut's plan so that she would not have to lie to the king. Yseut had her lover Tristan dress up as a leper and "rescue" her from a marsh so that he could carry her seductively. Since Tristan (the leper) had "been between her legs" when he carried her then Yseut was not lying when she told the king that only he and the leper had ever been with her like that. After reading that section I had to put the book down in respect for a moment and just think about that because it was a very logical argument. She technically did not lie which is the goal but I enjoyed the high level of logical reasoning that had to go into that plan.
There was also the idea of why was it so important to tell the truth since that does not seem to be as a big a virtue in today's time. I was wondering why she would go through that long and complicated plan when she could lie and get out of it so easily. I think this could tie back into religion and getting into heaven, be what was expected of a queen during this time since she was raised royal, or simply be that lying was not a thing back then so she simply did not acknowledge that as an option.
Overall, I enjoyed this reading and had fun making comparisons of it with modern times.