Francisque Xavier Michel

Francisque Xavier Michel (Lyon, February 18, 1809 - Paris, May 18, 1887) was a French historian and philologist.

Life

He became known for his editions of French works of the Middle Ages, and the French Government, recognizing their value, sent him to England (1833) and Scotland (1837) to continue his research there. In 1837 he became a member of the Comité Historique and in 1838 chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. In 1839 he was appointed professor of foreign literature in the Faculté des lettres at the University of Bordeaux. Between 1834 and 1842 he published editions of many works written between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries in French, English, and Saxon, including the Roman de la rose and the Chanson de Roland. He got his licence in literature in 1842, and his doctorat in 1846, with a thesis in Latin on Virgile and a thesis in French, entitled: Histoire des races maudites de la France et de l'Espagne. Subsequently he published French translations of Goldsmith, Sterne, Shakespeare, and Tennyson. In 1857 he published his important book on the Basque Country: Le Pays Basque, sa population, sa langue, ses moeurs, sa littérature et sa musique.

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