Émile Théodore Léon Gautier
Encyclopedia
He was born at Le Havre
Le Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...
, France. He was educated at the École des Chartes, and became successively head of the archives of the département of Haute-Marne
Haute-Marne
Haute-Marne is a department in the northeast of France named after the Marne River.-History:Haute-Marne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
and archivist at the Imperial Archives
Archives nationales (France)
The Archives nationales preserve the national archives of the French state, apart from the archives of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as these two ministries have their own archive services, the Service historique de la défense and the Archives diplomatiques...
at Paris. In 1871 he became professor of palaeography
Palaeography
Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...
at the École des Chartes. He was elected member of the Academy of Inscriptions in 1887, and became chief of the historical section of the National Archives in 1893.
Gautier rendered great services to the study of early French literature, the most important of his numerous works on medieval subjects being a critical text (Tours
Tours
Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...
, 1872) with translation and introduction of the Chanson de Roland, and Les Épopées françaises (3 vols., 1866-1867; 2nd ed., 5 vols., 1878-1897, including a Bibliographie des chansons de geste).
Works
- Œuvres poétiques d'Adam de Saint-Victor (1858/59)
- Les Épopées françaises (1865/68)
- La Chanson de Roland (critical edition, 1872)
- Portraits contemporains et questions actuelles (1873)
- La Chevalerie (1884)
- Histoire de la poésie liturgique au Moyen Âge: les tropes (1886)
- Portraits du XIXe siècle I. Poètes et romanciers, (1894/95)
- Portraits du XIXe siècle. Historiens et critiques, (1894/95)
- Portraits du XIXe siècle. Nos adversaires et nos amis, (1894/95)
- Bibliographie des chansons de geste (1897)