著者

竹村 直之

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

no.26, pp.41-51, 1996-03-30

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In this paper, I will analyze how both William Blake and Edgar Allan Poe are different from Emanuel Swedenborg concerning human imagination, and then I will show why Blake and Poe departed from Swedenborg. Both Blake and Poe were deeply influenced by Swedenborg, but later parted from him and began to criticize him. They criticize him as follows: Swedenborg was too much rational; he overstepped the boundary of reason: he came to invade and restrict the world of imagination. I believe that one of the reasons Blake and Poe criticized Swedenborg is that both had their peculiar views of the human imagination which is quite different from Swedenborg's. For example, in "Laocoon, " Blake said: The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is God himself, The Divine Body Jesus: We are his Members In "The Domain of Arnheim, " Poe also used such phrases as 'being superior yet alike to humanty' or 'immortality of Man, his perennial existence' in "Poetic Principle." Both Blake and Poe thought that human imagination can achieve thought of a godlike person or humanlike god. These are the only few of the many examples of how Blake and Poe see human imagination.