Biography
Paris was born at Avenay (Marne). In his childhood, he learned to appreciate Old French romances as poems and stories, and this early impulse for the study of Romance literature was placed on a solid basis by courses of study at Bonn (1856) and at the École des chartes.
Paris taught French grammar in a private school, later succeeding his father as professor of medieval French literature at the Collège de France in 1872; in 1876 he was admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions and in 1896 to the Académie française; in 1895 he was appointed director of the Collège de France. He won a European reputation as a Romance scholar. He had learnt German methods of exact research, but besides being an accurate philologist he was a literary critic of great acumen and breadth of view, and brought a singularly clear mind to bear on his favourite study of medieval French literature. His Vie de Saint-Alexis (1872) broke new ground and provided a model for future editors of medieval texts. It included the original text and the variations of it dating from the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. He contributed largely to the Histoire littéraire de la France, and with Paul Meyer published Romania, a journal devoted to the study of Romance literature.
In 1877 Gaston Paris was invited to Sweden for the 400th anniversary of the Upsala University, where he was made an honorary doctor. Before returning home he also visited Kristiania (Oslo) to take part in a celebration of the Norwegian philosopher Marcus Jacob Monrad. At the University of Kristiania Gaston Paris also held a lecture about the two folktale collectors, Asbjørnsen and Moe, which he believed to be, besides the Grimm Brothers, the best re-tellers of the genre.
Paris died in Cannes in 1903.
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