overcharged, are significant less in themselves than through the systems of oppositions
into which they fit. Repetitions bordering on redundancy, anaphora, antitheses, and
rhetorical questions occur almost too frequently. Thomas, however, is capable of realistic
depiction, as in the description of London, the doctors who treat Tristan, or the storm.
The death scene is characterized by a rhythm wedded to the circularity of desire that
conveys, in the echoing of certain rhyme pairs (confort/mort, amur/dulur,
anguissus/desirus), the very essence of love.
Thomas makes good the ambitious program articulated in the epilogue: to complete a
narrative (l’escrit) in which all lovers, whatever their manner of loving, can find pleasure,
recall their own passion through the exemplary destiny of Tristan and Iseut, and perhaps
escape—for that seems to be the moralist’s ultimate goal—the torments and deceits of
passion.
Emmanuèle Baumgartner
[See also: BÉROUL; FOLIES TRISTAN; PROSE TRISTAN; TRISTAN
ROMANCES]
Thomas d’Angleterre. Le roman de Tristan par Thomas, ed. Joseph Bédier. 2 vols. Paris: SATF,
1902–05.
——. Les fragments du roman de Tristan, poème du XIIe siècle, ed. Bartina H.Wind. Geneva:
Droz, 1960.
——. Thomas of Britain: Tristran, ed. and trans. Stewart Gregory. New York: Garland, 1991.
Baumgartner, Emmanuèle. Tristan et Iseut: de la légende aux récits en vers. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1987.
Fourrier, Anthime. Le courant réaliste dans le roman courtois en France au moyen âge. Paris:
1960, pp. 19–109.
Hunt, Tony. “The Significance of Thomas’ Tristan.” Reading Medieval Studies 7(1981):41–61.
THOMAS GALLUS
(d. 1246). A regular canon of the abbey of Saint-Victor, Paris, Thomas went to Italy in
1218 or 1219 to assist in the creation of a community of regular canons at Saint-André at
Vercelli. He was elected prior of Saint-André in 1224 and abbot in 1226. In 1243, he was
forced to leave Saint-André due to the Guelf-Ghibelline conflict. He took refuge at Ivré,
where he died in 1246.
Gallus was above all else a commentator on biblical texts and on the works of Pseudo-
Dionysius the Areopagite, thus following in the path laid down by two illustrious
predecessors at Saint-Victor, Hugh and Richard. He wrote three commentaries on the
Song of Songs and over the course of two decades produced glosses, commentaries, and
translations concerned with the works of Pseudo-Dionysius. He glossed the Celestial
Hierarchy and Mystical Theology, made an Extractio of the entire corpus, and then wrote
Explanationes for the whole corpus as well. His work on the Pseudo-Dionysian writings
continued the earlier work of Hugh of Saint-Victor and made the works and thought of
Pseudo-Dionysius accessible to western thinkers at the high tide of scholasticism in the
13th century.
Grover A.Zinn
The Encyclopedia 1725