La navigation dans les romans de Tristan au Moyen-Âge

Abstract. In this article we propose to study navigation in the novels of Tristan in verse and prose to try to have a precise idea of the practice of navigation in the Middle Ages. To do this, we devoted the first part of our study to the place given to the sailors who are involved in the crossing. They direct the ships according to the weather, in the face of which they often find themselves quite helpless with prayer as their only weapon. During bad weather they invoke God and the saints to get out of trouble. Their condition is very unenviable so much so that for a long they did not appear in the journals of states of the world. The second part of this study is devoted to the conditions of the crossing and the third part to the description of the crossing. We find elliptical formulas which refer to the crossings in Le roman de Tristan en prose while the texts of Thomas and Folies Tristan bespeak of a more in -depth knowledge of the fact of navigation. These texts written in Anglo-Norman are very rich from the standpoint of the vocabulary used to describe navigation, vocabulary on which we also dwell in our third part.