The Spirits of Satire
Kant and Blake Read Emanuel Swedenborg
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10759702 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Allen Dunn (University of Tennessee at Knoxville, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 102 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 325-344 |
| Publication date | 2019-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Soundings An Interdisciplinary Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-1861 • E-ISSN: 2161-6302 |
| Publisher | The Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5325/soundings.102.4.0325 |
| OpenAlex | W2981693951 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
Emanuel Swedenborg was a scientist and mystic whose religious writings attracted a large following in the late eighteenth century. Both Immanuel Kant and William Blake wrote satires of Swedenborg’s work, but their satires mask a deep ambivalence. They are fascinated by, and sometimes envious of, Swedenborg’s visionary powers even as they remain skeptical of these powers. Both the poet and the philosopher find a tentative resolution for this ambivalence in their accounts of poetry, which claim that poetic inspiration is a more trustworthy guide to the spirit world than Swedenborg’s systematic theology, because poetry does not attempt to present the experience of the spirit world with the specious certainty of a metaphysical system
Ambivalence · Art · Literature · Metaphysics · Mysticism · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Skepticism · Theology · Moravian Church and William Blake · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|