Denis Saurat | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1890-03-21)21 March 1890 |
| Died | 7 June 1958(1958-06-07) (aged 68) |
Denis Saurat (21 March 1890 – 7 June 1958) was an Anglo-French scholar, writer, and broadcaster on a wide range of topics, including explaining French society and culture to the English and what he called "philosophical poetry."
He was born inToulouse and died inNice, France, but his most active years were spent in London, England. His views on the connection in theearly modern period between the poetry ofEdmund Spenser andJohn Milton and theoccult, represented in particular by theKabbalah, were ahead of their time: without surviving close scholarly analyses, they anticipated later studies such as those ofFrances Yates.[1] He also interpreted in light of Philosophical Poetry the Prophetic Books ofWilliam Blake and discussed Blake's relationship to Milton and Celtic antiquarians.[2]
At the outbreak ofWorld War I, he was a reader in French atGlasgow University in Scotland.[3] After receiving a doctorate of theUniversity of Bordeaux, and alauréat des concours d'agrégation in 1919, he became associated with the Department of French atKing's College London from 1920, where he was a professor from 1926. He was also director for many years of theFrench Institute of London (Institut Français) in South Kensington. DuringWorld War II his position there and his wish to maintain the autonomy of the Institut led him into a serious clash withCharles de Gaulle. This concerned not only the politics of the Free French, but also Saurat's resistance to the General's technocratic ambitions for theInstitut. Under official pressure to move toBristol, Saurat came through with support fromVere Ponsonby, 9th Earl of Bessborough.[4] Instead, he resigned from the Institut, retired from the university, and settled in Nice. In his last years he took an active interest in PEN International, composed poems in Occitan, his mother tongue, and wrote best-selling books of speculative non-fiction onAtlantis and the early history of Earth.
The term "Scottish Renaissance" was brought into critical prominence by Saurat in his article "Le Groupe de la Renaissance Écossaise", which was published in theRevue Anglo-Américaine in April 1924.[5]
| Non-profit organization positions | ||
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| Preceded by | Wartime International Presidential Committee 1941-47PEN International 1941–1947 | Succeeded by |
