Tuesday 4th February 2020, 5.15-6.30pmOld Library, All Souls College

Nathalie Jeter (St Cross College)- Chronicles of Exile: Loss and Identity in the Memoirs of Early Modern Huguenot Refugees

The memoirs of Isaac Dumont de Bostaquet chronicle his adventures and misadventures across four countries as a French Huguenot refugee. What does the language in which he describes his gains and losses reveal about the identity Dumont is seeking, consciously or subconsciously, to portray? What might this language tell us concerning the role of memoir in shaping the identity of early modern Huguenots in exile? To what extent is the narrative shaping in Dumont’s account characteristic of Huguenot refugee self-writing? This paper addresses the role of memoir in the construction of community identity and argues that Huguenot refugee accounts are essentially narratives of loss in which loss, treated both materially and emotionally, is a means of regeneration. It considers notions of exemplarity and singularity in Dumont’s account against the greater corpus of Huguenot self-narratives, exploring ways in which Dumont’s framework may have influenced the redefinition of individual and cultural identity among French Protestant immigrant populations.

 Vincent Roy-Di Piazza (Linacre College)- The Visions of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) in the Context of dialogues des morts Literature 

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish civil servant, natural philosopher and mystic theologian, assessor at the Board of Mines of Sweden for thirty-one years (1716-1747). In 1747 Swedenborg retired to focus on theology, claiming to have acquired through divine grace the gift to speak with angels and the spirits of the dead. Swedenborg’s theological works subsequently drew heavily on his alleged regular conversations with the dead. Mostly remembered as a seer, Swedenborg is best known by the public for his detailed visionary descriptions of the spiritual world. However, scholarship has long neglected to contextualize Swedenborg’s conversations with the dead in relationship to other popular literary genre at the time such as the dialogues des morts, famously exemplified in France by figures such as Fontenelle, Fénelon and Voltaire. This paper will investigate to what extent Swedenborg’s visionary works featured typical characteristics of dialogues des morts literature. By doing so it will provide evidence for a drastically new picture of Swedenborg, as a versatile recombiner of literary genres determined to spread his theology to new audiences. More broadly, the paper will showcase underrated interactions between dialogues des morts literature, mysticism and satire during the 18th century.