Poetry · Character

Iseult

The Irish princess whose love for Tristram survives his marriage to another and her own to a king.

major

Also known as The young surviving Iseult

First appearance: i

As a major figure in Poetry, Iseult is not background color—the story leans on what they do once the chapter opens.

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Iseult of Ireland is bound to Tristram by a passion older and stronger than the political marriage that delivers her to King Marc, and Arnold's narrator circles her as the figure whose image no artist can restore — 'the ineffable smile of her eyes.' Her tragedy is that she is loved and loving in a world where love cools: the poem's speaker watches Tristram's eye grow cold to mere beauty and knows the drift toward fatigue and dejection is coming. She matters because her constancy is the counterweight to Tristram's restlessness, the still point around which the Tristram poems' grief turns.

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See Iseult in i

Character Web

8 connections

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Relationship types

Romantic
Other

Character groups

Tristram and Iseult
Persian epic heroes
Empedocles on Etna

+3 more in the full Character Web

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Narrative arc

Story tension across the book.

Setup
Breaking point
Aftermath
Closing

In "Longing," the emotional peak occurs as the speaker shifts from passive despair to an active, desperate ple…

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Relationships

Tristram
romantic · positive
Iseult and Tristram are tragic lovers bound by a love potion, caught between passion and… How this plays out →

Relationship notes

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See Iseult in i