Okay, I get that Tristram is a great guy. Courageous, merciful (see previous post), cunning, etc. And maybe I’m just having a hard time following all of this (I really have no previous knowledge of medieval literature), but weren’t we just talking about the chaste knight emerging in medieval literature? For example, the Knights of the Round Table? Before the chaste knight, I realize it was accepted that an exceptional knight more or less gets what he wants when he wants it, but it seems that Tristram has done the same., which still I can swallow until he bests the chaste Knights of the Round Table. Isn’t that saying something?
Granted, I haven’t completely finished the reading yet, so if he learns his lesson in the very end I don’t know it yet. And granted, given the choice the lady refuses to leave with Tristram and wants to return to her husband, but that’s after she’s already been getting it on with him. In my mind this seems to be pretty dismissive of chastity.