Discipline: Literature

Jules Bois

Discipline: Literature
MacDowell Fellowships: 1922, 1923, 1929
Henri Antoine Jules-Bois (or simply Jules Bois; 1868–1943), was a French writer with an interest in the occult. He was educated at the College of St. Ignatius, where he received his A.B. and B.Sc. degrees, at the Collège de France, where he was granted the Litt.D., and at the Sorbonne, where he earned a Ph.D. Jules-Bois' interests were wide-ranging. The women's emancipation movement of the 1890's inspired novels such as L'Ève nouvelle and La femme inquiète, while his interest in occultism, parapsychology, satanism and theosophy resulted in a number of publications, including L'au delà et les forces inconnues, Le monde invisible, Les petites religions de Paris, and Le satanisme et la magie. He also wrote poetry and symbolic plays in verse such as Les deux Hélène and La furie, the proposed production of which at the Comédie-Française created a controversy that resulted in the resignation of the company's director. Jules-Bois' travels took him to the Middle and Far East, as well as to Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. His encounters with Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore during a trip through India sparked an interest in Asian philosophy and resulted in the writing of Visions de l'Inde, which describes his search for truth in Indian philosophy. He was active in the Society for Psychological Research of Paris, of which he served as president, and other learned societies. At the École de Psychologie of the Sorbonne Jules-Bois was professor of the "superconscious". At the time of his death, he was writing a book on the psychology of the saints.