Swedenborg, Emmanuel (1678-1772). Swedish scientist, philosopher, and mystic whose works reached a wide audience across Europe despite their obscurity and difficulty. Before the Revolution his mystical doctrine appealed to those in France with interests in Illuminism and esotericism. His work continued to attract attention in the 19th-c., when there were attempts to set up a Swedenborgian church. In the 1820s and 1830s his best-known devotees were Édouard Richer and abbé J.-G.-E. Œgger. Swedenborgianism was of interest to the Romantics and to the Symbolists on account of the importance it ascribed to emanation, regeneration, and analogical modes of explanation.

[Ceri Crossley]

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.