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 xi
... kind of historical religion and who had utmost impor- tance for the interpretation and transmission of a notion of a language of nature in French culture in the nineteenth century . For it was the Idéo- logues who made the crucial link ...
... kind of historical religion and who had utmost impor- tance for the interpretation and transmission of a notion of a language of nature in French culture in the nineteenth century . For it was the Idéo- logues who made the crucial link ...
Page xii
... 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 the later works of La comédie humaine ...
... 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 the later works of La comédie humaine ...
Page 6
... kind of Enlightenment politics , in France . Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France was Darnton's first book and also one of the first American studies to focus on French popular culture . His argument parallels that of ...
... kind of Enlightenment politics , in France . Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France was Darnton's first book and also one of the first American studies to focus on French popular culture . His argument parallels that of ...
Page 7
... , almost always men , the opportunity to experience a kind of " ennoblement " as they passed through the various grades of freemasonry and to partici- pate in a democratic community in which values often associated Introduction 7.
... , almost always men , the opportunity to experience a kind of " ennoblement " as they passed through the various grades of freemasonry and to partici- pate in a democratic community in which values often associated Introduction 7.
Page 12
... kind of literature from others they viewed as more deservedly fleeting , but that would also be widely influential in late - nineteenth- and early - twentieth - century French and European aesthetics . The notion of the literary text as ...
... kind of literature from others they viewed as more deservedly fleeting , but that would also be widely influential in late - nineteenth- and early - twentieth - century French and European aesthetics . The notion of the literary text as ...
Contents
1 | |
10 | |
19 | |
Echoes of Les correspondances in ConstantLevis prose | 27 |
The Preface to the 1861 Edition | 37 |
Swedenborgs Correspondences and the Cultures of | 55 |
Who Has the Word? Swedenborgianism and Popular | 107 |
The Underside of History Swedenborgianism | 147 |
The Other Worlds of Les études philosophiques | 156 |
Swedenborgianism in Les études de moeurs | 194 |
Baudelaires Correspondances Language Censorship | 217 |
Conclusion | 249 |
Baudelaires Correspondances and ConstantLévis Les | 257 |
Works Cited | 301 |
Index | 321 |
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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 allegorical appears argues avait Balzac Baudelaire's bien c'est Cahagnet century chapter comédie humaine concept Constant/Lévi contemporary context cousin Pons Descartes Dieu doctrine of correspondences Dogme et rituel dreams Edgar Poe eighteenth eighteenth-century Eliphas Lévi Emanuel Swedenborg emphasizes esoteric esotericism esprit essay être 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 language of nature Le cousin Pons Leibniz literary livre Louis Lambert magic merism Mesmeric Revelation Mesmerism monde mystique narrative narrator nineteenth nineteenth-century notion novel occult Oegger parallels Paris passage pensée Pernety philosophical poem poet political popular culture published qu'il references to Swedenborg religious represent representation rituals role scientific Séraphîta Séraphîta-Séraphîtüs social society spirituel structures suggests Sweden Swedenborg's doctrine Swedenborgian doctrines Swedenborgianism Swedish texts theory of language tion tout tradition universal language visionary visions word writers