The Dream of an Absolute Language: Emanuel Swedenborg and French Literary CultureTaking as its point of departure the two poems, "Correspondances" by Baudelaire and "Les correspondances" by Alphonse-Louis Constant, The Dream of an Absolute Language: Emanuel Swedenborg and French Literary Culture traces the reception and popularization of several key Swedenborgian doctrines in late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French literature and popular culture, notably the doctrine of correspondences. Contrary to what Michel Foucault argued in his early Les mots et les choses, in nineteenth-century France, the word "correspondences" does not denote a break with "representation," at least as it was used by nineteenth-century French writers: rather it is intimately bound up with the taxonomic structures of natural history--and also with the desire to understand the social world in terms of an ordered and controllable totality. Because it crops up in texts we now classify as canonical and also those outside the canon, and because it is so clearly related to notions of literary structure and effect, the word "correspondences" and its transformations in late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France offers a vantage point for discerning how artists and writers defined their work both within and against a context of cultures defined as elite, "popular," and even ideological. |
From inside the book
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Page vii
... Swedenborgianism and Popular Culture in France , 1780-1865 • 107 Swedenborgian Performances : Alphonse Cahagnet's Séances 109 Combien en durera cette société ? J.-F.-E. Le Boys des Guays and the French Swedenborgians 112 Language ...
... Swedenborgianism and Popular Culture in France , 1780-1865 • 107 Swedenborgian Performances : Alphonse Cahagnet's Séances 109 Combien en durera cette société ? J.-F.-E. Le Boys des Guays and the French Swedenborgians 112 Language ...
Page viii
... Swedenborgianism and Popular Culture 141 Part II : Fictions of Wholeness : Swedenborgianism and the French Canon Chapter Four : The Underside of History : Swedenborgianism and La comédie humaine 147 Swedenborgianism and Representation ...
... Swedenborgianism and Popular Culture 141 Part II : Fictions of Wholeness : Swedenborgianism and the French Canon Chapter Four : The Underside of History : Swedenborgianism and La comédie humaine 147 Swedenborgianism and Representation ...
Page xii
... Swedenborgianism most often appear as a kind of fiction . It is highly im- probable that Balzac was a Swedenborgian believer , and there was no Swedenborgian Church in France . The references to Swedenborgianism suggest , especially in ...
... Swedenborgianism most often appear as a kind of fiction . It is highly im- probable that Balzac was a Swedenborgian believer , and there was no Swedenborgian Church in France . The references to Swedenborgianism suggest , especially in ...
Page 4
... Swedenborgians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries , showing both the striking isolation and lack of success of this sect and the continuing link , even in the most apparently isolated cases , between French ...
... Swedenborgians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries , showing both the striking isolation and lack of success of this sect and the continuing link , even in the most apparently isolated cases , between French ...
Page 6
... Swedenborgians were associated with masonic com- munities that claimed his doctrines as the origin and justification of ... Swedenborgianism into a Mesmerist - tinged popular culture , it seems , mark out " the end of the Enlightenment ...
... Swedenborgians were associated with masonic com- munities that claimed his doctrines as the origin and justification of ... Swedenborgianism into a Mesmerist - tinged popular culture , it seems , mark out " the end of the Enlightenment ...
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The Dream of an Absolute Language: Emanuel Swedenborg and French Literary ... Lynn Rosellen Wilkinson No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic allegory appears argues avait Balzac Baudelaire Baudelaire's bien borgianism c'est century chapter choses ciel comédie humaine concept consciousness Constant/Lévi contemporary context cousin Pons Descartes Dieu divine doctrine of correspondences Dogme et rituel dreams Edgar Poe eighteenth eighteenth-century Eliphas Lévi Emanuel Swedenborg emphasizes esoteric esotericism esprit essay être études evoke fait France freemasonry French Heaven and Hell homme human importance individual intellectual interpretation of Swedenborgianism Jesper Swedberg Jonsson journal kind L'histoire l'homme La comédie humaine Le cousin Pons Leibniz literary livre Louis Lambert magic Mesmeric Revelation Mesmerism monde mystique narrative narrator nineteenth nineteenth-century notion novel occult origins parallels Paris passage pensée Pernety philosophical poem poet political popular culture published qu'il references to Swedenborg represent representation rituals role scientific Séraphîta Séraphîta-Séraphîtüs social society structures suggests Sweden Swedenborg's doctrine Swedenborgian doctrines Swedenborgianism Swedish texts theory of language tion tout tradition universal language visionary visions word writers