Read for masters course in Literature, so this review will take an academic bent. My rating is purely based on my enjoyment level of the text.

The value of this reading comes instead in how we can use it to examine the psychology of romance in Western literature and culture as influenced by the lore of Tristan and Iseult. This text pre-dates Romeo and Juliet by aproximately 300 years. It is certainly the primary inspiration for the repeated theme of star-crossed lovers within Romeo and Juliet and within the romance genre as a whole. What I found most interesting was the theme of abandonment of autonomy in the pursuit of romantic love, and how romance served as a purifying force for all actions committed by the lovers to the point that they committed serious betrayals of trust to those around them but instead were deified for their actions rather than vilified for them.