1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Paris, Alexis Paulin

PARIS, ALEXIS PAULIN (1800–1881), French savant, was born at Avenay (Marne) on the 25th of March 1800. He published in 1824 an Apologie pour l’école romantique, and took an active part in Parisian journalism. His appointment, in 1828, to the department of manuscripts in the Bibliothèque royale left him leisure to pursue his studies in medieval French literature. Paulin Paris lived before minute methods of research had been generally applied to modern literature, and his chief merit is that by his numerous editions of early French poems he continued the work begun by Dominique Méon in arousing general interest in the then little-known epics of chivalry. Admitted to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1837, he was shortly afterwards appointed on the commission entrusted with the continuation of the Histoire littéraire de la France. In 1853 a chair of medieval literature was founded at the Collège de France, and Paulin Paris became the first occupant. He retired in 1872 with the title of honorary professor, and was promoted officer of the Legion of Honour in the next year. He died on the 13th of February 1881 in Paris.

His works include: Manuscrits français de la bibliothèque du roi (7 vols., 1836–1848); Li Romans di Garin le Loherain, précédé d’un examen des romans carlovingiens (1883–1885); Li Romans de Berte aux grans piés (1832); Le Romancero français, histoire de quelques anciens trouvères et choix de leurs chansons (1833); an edition of the Grandes chroniques de France (1836–1840); La Chanson d’Antioche (1848); Les Aventures de maître Renart et d’Ysengrin (1861) and Les Romans de la table ronde (1868–1877), both put into modern French.

His son Gaston Paris contributed a biographical notice to vol. xxix. of the Histoire littéraire.