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 x
... language of nature played an important role in late - eighteenth- and early - nineteenth - century philosophy and aesthetics , with the important difference that French writers tended to view this language as ahistorical , akin to the ...
... language of nature played an important role in late - eighteenth- and early - nineteenth - century philosophy and aesthetics , with the important difference that French writers tended to view this language as ahistorical , akin to the ...
Page xi
... language of nature to a spirit of place and the particular history of a poet . In the work of Balzac , Baudelaire , and many other French writers , in contrast , the evocation of a language of nature carries with it universalizing ...
... language of nature to a spirit of place and the particular history of a poet . In the work of Balzac , Baudelaire , and many other French writers , in contrast , the evocation of a language of nature carries with it universalizing ...
Page xii
... language known as the doctrine of correspondences , provide a red thread through a complicated context . The pattern that emerges indicates shifting attitudes towards the shape of language and the nature and aims of the French ...
... language known as the doctrine of correspondences , provide a red thread through a complicated context . The pattern that emerges indicates shifting attitudes towards the shape of language and the nature and aims of the French ...
Page xiii
... language of nature suggested to me that one reason Foucault's linguistic intellectual history fails to capture them is that it is itself caught up in the paradigm of a universal language — a paradigm that can spill over into the ...
... language of nature suggested to me that one reason Foucault's linguistic intellectual history fails to capture them is that it is itself caught up in the paradigm of a universal language — a paradigm that can spill over into the ...
Page 3
... language and consciousness , or language and a state of nature . The second , which takes after Herder's emphasis on the importance of the specific historical devel- opment of individual languages , ties language to the fortunes of ...
... language and consciousness , or language and a state of nature . The second , which takes after Herder's emphasis on the importance of the specific historical devel- opment of individual languages , ties language to the fortunes of ...
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