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 13
... meanings , like an impossible notion of an unmediated experience of na- ture , withdraw towards an infinitely receding vanishing point . The vanish- ing point of origin may be construed in various ways : as the founder of a cult that ...
... meanings , like an impossible notion of an unmediated experience of na- ture , withdraw towards an infinitely receding vanishing point . The vanish- ing point of origin may be construed in various ways : as the founder of a cult that ...
Page 18
... meanings . Balzac's novels , which evoke very different no- tions of ideology , have much to tell us about the fortunes of the occult in relation to French politics and society in the first half of the nineteenth century . The texts of ...
... meanings . Balzac's novels , which evoke very different no- tions of ideology , have much to tell us about the fortunes of the occult in relation to French politics and society in the first half of the nineteenth century . The texts of ...
Page 19
... meanings suggested by the existence of an allegorical language of nature which , it was believed , Swedenborg had explained in a series of exegetical works . ' And yet it seems that few people actually read the works of Swedenborg ...
... meanings suggested by the existence of an allegorical language of nature which , it was believed , Swedenborg had explained in a series of exegetical works . ' And yet it seems that few people actually read the works of Swedenborg ...
Page 20
... meanings that are sensuous and resonant . Although some interpretations of the sonnet " Correspondances " make passing reference to a much longer poem published in the 1840s and entitled " Les correspondances , " none attempts to link ...
... meanings that are sensuous and resonant . Although some interpretations of the sonnet " Correspondances " make passing reference to a much longer poem published in the 1840s and entitled " Les correspondances , " none attempts to link ...
Page 21
... meaning of the title of Baudelaire's sonnet , " Correspondances . " For during the de- cades surrounding 1848 , the word played a key role in the increasingly stratified contexts of popular and elite cultures in France . Before 1848 ...
... meaning of the title of Baudelaire's sonnet , " Correspondances . " For during the de- cades surrounding 1848 , the word played a key role in the increasingly stratified contexts of popular and elite cultures in France . Before 1848 ...
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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