Joseph Bédier was a renowned French writer and historian, celebrated for his profound work on medieval France. Born in Paris, France, he was the son of Adolphe Bédier, a lawyer of Breton origin, and spent much of his childhood in Réunion. Bédier's academic journey saw him as a professor of medieval French literature at the Université de Fribourg in Switzerland from 1889 to 1891, and later at the Collège de France in Paris around 1893.

His scholarly work laid the foundation for modern theories regarding the fabliaux and the chansons de geste. Bédier was instrumental in reviving interest in several significant old French texts such as Le roman de Tristan et Iseut (1900), La chanson de Roland (1921), and Les fabliaux (1893). He was honored as a member of the Académie française from 1920 until his passing in 1938. Notably, his work Tristan et Iseut was translated into Cornish by A. S. D. Smith, into English by Hilaire Belloc and Paul Rosenfeld, and into German by Rudolf G. Binding.