In the Celtic version of the myth, Isolde was the daughter of Angwish, King of Ireland, and betrothed to King Mark of Cornwall.

Tristan and Isolde, lovers in a twelfth-century myth, illustrate this inevitability. Star-crossed love is inevitable, preordained by destiny or fortune. Denis while Heloise was sent to a convent nearby. After Heloise bore their child, Abelard was castrated and disgraced, then sent to live out his days in St. The two transgressed by disregarding the boundaries imposed on them by their social roles. Heloise, the niece of a canon, fell in love with Abelard, who was her tutor, in her uncle's house. The love story of Peter Abelard (1079–1142), the French philosopher and theologian, and Heloise, in the early twelfth century, which survives in their famous letters to one another, provides another example. In Shakespeare's source, Arthur Brook's narrative Pyramus and Thisbe (1562), the lovers were forbidden to marry by their parents. Romeo and Juliet are the only children of two feuding families. Star-crossed love is transgressive: It is nearly always forbidden by society and/or made dangerous by circumstance. Not all six need be present for a love relationship to be considered star-crossed, but to differentiate the paradigm from Aristotelian tragedy and other forms of love stories, several of the elements must be involved, often with one dominant element. Six elements define the state of being star-crossed: transgression, destiny, secrecy, heightened passion, tragedy, and sacrifice. However, this entry focuses on paradigmatic cases from the European and North American tradition. Each of these examples fit the criteria set forth below for star-crossed love.

1031), The Tale of Genji, the love between Genji and Fujitsubo, the emperor's concubine, is similarly doomed. In Japan's famous eleventh-century literary work by Lady Shikibu Murasaki (c. When his family makes Jia Bao-Yu marry another girl, Lin Dai-Yu dies of grief. In Asian literature, Jia Bao-Yu and Lin Dai-Yu, two characters in Hsueh-Chin Tsao's early-eighteenth-century Chinese classic The Dream of the Red Chamber, are excellent examples of star-crossed lovers. There are examples of star-crossed lovers in most literary traditions of the world. Although Shakespeare gave a name to this kind of love, such love stories existed in world literature long before Shakespeare's time. Cross'd carries the triple meaning of (1) brought into each other's path (2) thwarted (or at least fraught with adversity or affliction) and (3) burdened (as in a cross to bear). 'Star-cross'd,' coined by Shakespeare (1564–1616) to describe the young lovers in Romeo and Juliet (1595), has come to describe two people whose tragic destinies are intertwined. … From forth the fatal loins of these two foesĪ pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life. … From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Star-Crossed Lovers Two households, both alike in dignity,

Tsao hsueh chin