Bibliographie des travaux de Gaston Paris

The bibliography of Gaston Paris’ works was established shortly after his death and published in 1904 by his disciples Joseph Bédier and Mario Roques (Bibliography of the works of Gaston Paris, Paris, Société amicale Gaston Paris, 200 pp.). If we take into account only the titles classified under the heading “folklore”, omitting, in particular, all his work editing medieval texts – which, after all, also concern folklore – we can see that Bédier and Roques listed no less than 103 articles or critical reviews concerning this discipline. Among these are the famous study of the tale of the Little Thumb (Le Petit Poucet et la Grande Ourse, Paris, librairie A. Franck, 1875, VIII-95 p.) and the volume on Les chants populaires du Piémont (Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1890, 40 pp.). However, there is a long folklore article, written by Gaston Paris in 1874, which escaped their bibliography: « Le conte du trésor du roi Rhampsinite », published posthumously in 1907 by Gédéon Huet in the Revue de l’Histoire des Religions. This text was read by Gaston Paris, presenting himself as a mythographer – one of the names formerly used by folklorists to qualify themselves – before the Académie des Inscriptions during the sessions of 16 October and 13 November. He himself never published this work, which he probably wanted to revise. But the editor of the article recalls in his preface that he was still talking to his students years later, in his Sunday class, about this study given to the tale of the smart thief, saying that, in his opinion, the main result was still valid. This conclusion is a demonstration that Herodotus’ version of this tale shows clear signs of tampering and omission.