Denis Saurat 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 in Toulouse and died in Nice, France, but his most active years were spent in London, England. His views on the connection in the early modern period

Early modern period

In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...

 between the poetry of Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

 and John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 and the occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

, represented in particular by the Kabbalah

Kabbalah

Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

, were ahead of their time: without surviving close scholarly analyses, they anticipated later studies such as those of Frances Yates

Frances Yates

Dame Frances Amelia Yates DBE was a British historian. She taught at the Warburg Institute of the University of London for many years.She wrote extensively on the occult or Neoplatonic philosophies of the Renaissance...

. He also interpreted in light of Philosophical Poetry the Prophetic Books of William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

 and discussed Blake's relationship to Milton and Celtic antiquarians.

Life

After receiving a doctorate of the University of Bordeaux

University of Bordeaux

University of Bordeaux is an association of higher education institutions in and around Bordeaux, France. Its current incarnation was established 21 March 2007. The group is the largest system of higher education schools in southwestern France. It is part of the Academy of Bordeaux.There are seven...

, and a lauréat des concours d'agrégation in 1919, he became associated with the Department of French at King's College London

King's College London

King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...

 from 1920, where he was a professor from 1926. He was also director for many years of the French Institute of London (Institut Français) in South Kensington. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 his position there and his wish to maintain the autonomy of the Institut led him into a serious clash with Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....

. This concerned not only the politics of the Free French, but also Saurat's resistance to the General's technocratic ambitions for the Institut. Under official pressure to move to Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

, Saurat came through with support from Vere Ponsonby, 9th Earl of Bessborough

Vere Ponsonby, 9th Earl of Bessborough

Captain Vere Brabazon Ponsonby, 9th Earl of Bessborough was a British businessman and politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 14th since Canadian Confederation....

. 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 on Atlantis and the early history of Earth.

Works

• La pensée de Milton (1920) as Milton: Man and Thinker (1925)
• Blake and Milton (1922)
• Milton et le matérialisme chrétien en Angleterre (1928) as Milton and Materialism
• The Three Conventions: Metaphysical Dialogues, Principia Metaphysica, and Commentary (1926)
• Tendances, essays de critique (1928)
• Blake and Modern Thought (1929)
• La religion de Victor Hugo (1929)
• La littérature et l'occultisme. Études sur la poésie philosophique moderne (1929) as Literature and Occult Tradition (1930) translated by Dorothy Bolton
• Histoire des Religions (1933) as A History of Religions (1934)
• Selected Essays and Critical Writings of A. R. Orage (1935) editor with Herbert Read
  Herbert Read
  Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
  
  
• Modernes (1935)
• La fin de la peur (1937) as The End of Fear
• Perspectives (1938)
• French War Aims (1940)
• The Christ at Chartres (1940)
• The Spirit of France (1940)
• Regeneration, with a Letter from General de Gaulle (1941)
• Watch Over Africa (1941)
• Death and the Dreamer (1946) as La mort et le rêveur (1947)
• Modern French Literature, 1870-1940 (1946)
• William Blake Selected Poems (1947) editor
• Gods of the People (1947)
• Angels and Beasts (1947) French short stories, editor
• La religion esotérique de Victor Hugo (1948)
• Victor Hugo et les dieux du people (1948) La Littérature et l'occultisme II
• L'expérience de l'au-delà (1951)
• William Blake (1954) in French
• L'Atlantide et le règne des géants (1954) as Atlantis and the Giants (1957)
• La religion des géants et la civilisation des insectes (1955)
• Commentary on Beelzebub's Tales (1969)
• The Denis Saurat Reader (2004)
• Early Earth (2006)

• John Robert Colombo (2003), editor, O Rare Denis Saurat
• John Robert Colombo (2004), editor, The Denis Saurat Reader
• John Robert Colombo (2006), editor, Early Earth
• Jean-François Courouau (2010), author, translator, Encaminament Catar