Eugène Vinaver

Eugène Vinaver ( born June 18, 1899 in Saint Petersburg, † July 21, 1979 ) was a French linguist and medievalist Russian origin, who taught in England.

Life and work

Vinaver was at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris pupil of Joseph Bédier. He habilitated with the two theses Le Roman de Tristan et dans l' œuvre de Iseut Thomas Malory and Études sur le " Tristan " en prose. Les sources, les manuscrits, bibliography critique (both Paris 1925) and went to Oxford, where he was Lecturer and Reader in 1931. From 1933 to 1966 Vinaver was a professor of French language and literature in Manchester. After his retirement, he taught even in Canada and the USA, and at the University of Hull and the University of Kent in Canterbury.

Vinaver founded in 1928 in Oxford an Arthurian Society and 1948, together with Jean Frappier and Roger Sherman Loomis ( 1887-1966 ), the International Arthurian Society. From 1961 he was a foreign member of the Royal Belgian Academy. Vinaver was five honorary doctorates.

Other works

• Malory, Oxford 1929, Reprint 1992
• Hommage à Bédier, Manchester 1942
• Racine. Principes de la tragédie en marge de la poétique d' Aristote, texte et établi commente, Manchester 1944, Manchester / Paris 1978
• (Ed.) The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3 vols, Oxford, 1947, 2nd edition 1967, 3rd edition 1990
• Racine et la poésie tragique. Essai, Paris, 1951, 2nd edition 1963
• (Ed.) The Tale of the death of King Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory, Oxford 1955
• Form and Meaning in Medieval Romance, 1966
• A la recherche d'une poétique médiévale, Paris 1970
• The Rise of Romance, Oxford 1971
• Questions and Answers sur Racine, Paris 1984