Joseph Bédier

Joseph Bédier (1864–1938) was a French scholar of medieval literature, born in Paris and raised on the island of Réunion. He studied under Gaston Paris and held the chair of medieval French at the Collège de France from 1903. His scholarly works, including a monumental edition of the Song of Roland and the four volumes of Les Légendes épiques, overturned the theory that the French epics grew out of folk song and argued instead for individual poets working along the pilgrim roads. For the general reader he reconstructed Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut (1900) from the surviving medieval fragments. He was elected to the Académie française in 1920.