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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to show the relations between literature and esotericism in the English and French literary works of the nineteenth century, as well as in the academic debate that had its origins in that epoch.

Paper long abstract:

The nineteenth century represents a crucial moment as far as the relations between literature and esotericism are concerned. It is the century in which scholars started to overtly present literature in a new light – of an esoteric doctrine hidden in literary works. Let us think, for instance, of the esoteric dimension of Dante’s work proposed for the first time in England by Gabriele Rossetti. This idea was shared with other scholars, writers and esotericists of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, such as Giovanni Pascoli, Eliphas Lévi, René Guénon or Michelangelo Caetani. This latter represents one of the most interesting cases to investigate, since Caetani belonged to the Roman pontifical aristocracy (he was a descendant of Pope Boniface VIII), and this aspect shows a contact point between the Catholic milieu and esotericism. Beyond Dante, other writers and poets of the previous centuries were interpreted through the lens of an esoteric dimension characterizing their works, but, in the nineteenth century, one assists not only to a re-interpretation of medieval and Renaissance literature, since nineteenth century literature is imbued with an esoteric thought, and is strictly linked to the initiatory milieus of that epoch. This paper aims to show the relations between esotericism and literature, particularly in the English and French literatures of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth one, in authors such as Balzac, Nerval, Péladan, Bulwer-Lytton, Yeats or Pound. In all these authors is present the idea of a philosophia perennis, which is called “eternal tradition” by George Sand or “celestial tradition” by Ezra Pound. Thus, the role of literature in the spread of a perennial tradition is at the basis of this paper, which analyzes the interactions between esotericism and nineteenth century literature, and their relations with Christianity.