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. |
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Page viii
... Contexts 152 Desire and Tradition : The Other Worlds of Les études philosophiques 156 Through a Glass Darkly : Swedenborgianism in Les études de moeurs Chapter Five : Baudelaire's Correspondances : Language , Censorship , and Mourning ...
... Contexts 152 Desire and Tradition : The Other Worlds of Les études philosophiques 156 Through a Glass Darkly : Swedenborgianism in Les études de moeurs Chapter Five : Baudelaire's Correspondances : Language , Censorship , and Mourning ...
Page ix
... context of the doctrines of Mesmerism and freemasonry , and the evolution of a myth of Swedenborg and a notion of an absolute language identified with his doctrine of correspondences involves complex interactions between popular and ...
... context of the doctrines of Mesmerism and freemasonry , and the evolution of a myth of Swedenborg and a notion of an absolute language identified with his doctrine of correspondences involves complex interactions between popular and ...
Page x
... context for Saussure's ground - breaking work at the end of the nineteenth . It appeared , however , that this revival entailed more than a turning back on the part of professional linguists and philosophers ; indeed , that there had ...
... context for Saussure's ground - breaking work at the end of the nineteenth . It appeared , however , that this revival entailed more than a turning back on the part of professional linguists and philosophers ; indeed , that there had ...
Page xii
... context . The pattern that emerges indicates shifting attitudes towards the shape of language and the nature and aims of the French Revolution , whose universal aims tended to be abandoned , or at least viewed with considerable ...
... context . The pattern that emerges indicates shifting attitudes towards the shape of language and the nature and aims of the French Revolution , whose universal aims tended to be abandoned , or at least viewed with considerable ...
Page xiii
... context of disillusionment with political platforms and agendas . The years surrounding 1830 and 1848 proved cru- cial in this respect . Reading Balzac's and Baudelaire's subtle explorations of the limits of of an unchanging language of ...
... context of disillusionment with political platforms and agendas . The years surrounding 1830 and 1848 proved cru- cial in this respect . Reading Balzac's and Baudelaire's subtle explorations of the limits of of an unchanging language of ...
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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