Gaston Raynaud


Gaston Raynaud was a French philologist and librarian.

Biography

Raynaud entered the École Nationale des Chartes in 1870. In 1875, he graduated as archivist-paleographer. The subject of his thesis was the study of the Picard dialect in Ponthieu in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This work was favorably viewed by his advisors Natalis de Wailly and Paul Meyer, evaluating it as an excellent analysis of phonetic phenomena and grammatical rules. Published the following year in the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, the study on the dialect of Ponthieu earned Raynaud the fourth mention in the Antiquities of France competition at the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. The same year saw the related works of Léon Clédat's on Bertran de Born and of Jacques Normand on a chanson de geste, Aiol and Mirabel. Normand joined forces with Raynaud and Clédat for the overhaul of his thesis in Aoil: chanson de geste. He also collaborated with Gaston Paris on the work Mystère de la passion d'Arnould Gréban, concerning the works of organist Arnoul Gréban.
In 1876, Raynaud joined the department of manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale, remaining for nearly fourteen years. In 1889, he left the library to devote himself more freely to his favorite works. These included being administrator and the editor of the considerable work of the fourteenth century poet Eustache Deschamps. In 1882, he collaborated with Henri-Victor Michelant on the Itinéraires à Jérusalem et descriptions de la Terre Sainte, rédigés en français aux XIe, XIIe XIIIe siècles; in 1887, Les Gestes des Chiprois, a collection of French chronicles written in the East in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the work of Gérard de Montréal and Philippe de Navarre.

Publications

Selected publications of Gaston Raynaud include the following.Étude sur le dialecte picard dans le Ponthieu, d'après les chartes des xiii et xiv siècles . Paris, 123 pages. Published in Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes.