Abstract: If the relationship between Tristan’s tragic inventio and humanist theater is less obvious than that of many of his contemporaries, it is partly because he prefers adaptation to rewriting and decouples sources and models. His plays, however, are part of vast, simultaneously serial and cyclical networks of invention that date back to the sixteenth century. In addition, Tristan takes up the techniques of humanist theater, which he repeats in each of his tragedies.