The Scottish Renaissance beyond the Anglosphere: The Intellectual Friendship between Denis Saurat and Hugh MacDiarmid

The French scholar Denis Saurat is typically relegated to a footnote in histories of the Scottish Renaissance, credited merely with naming the movement in 1924. This article reconstructs the intellectual friendship between Saurat and Hugh MacDiarmid, arguing that their three-decade dialogue was far more substantive than has been acknowledged. Drawing on available evidence and reasoned conjecture, it challenges the prevailing reliance on written records and exposes the methodological obstacles – particularly methodological nationalism and the insular tendency of minority culture studies – that have obscured this transnational exchange. The article reveals Saurat as a border-crossing intellectual whose own roots in Occitania shaped a deep, reciprocal affinity with MacDiarmid's project. By recovering their shared interests in occultism, peasant spirituality, and the European revival of minor literatures, it repositions Saurat not as a peripheral figure but as an active interlocutor who helped delineate the Scottish Renaissance's European potential. Ultimately, the article calls for a critical reassessment of how twentieth-century Scottish literary history has been written.