Emanuel Swedenborg

Annalisa Volpone (Università di Perugia)

Ed. by Susan Brantly, University of Wisconsin
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.3.6: Swedish Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Sven Hakon Rossel (Universitat Wien), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (University College London)

Dates

Born 29 Jan 1688
Died 29 Mar 1772
Activity 1708-1772

Places

Born in Sweden
Active in Sweden

Activities

Primary

Mystic
Religious writer

Resources

Emanuel Swedenborg was born in Sweden on 29 January, 1688. He was the third child of Jesper Swedberg (1653-1735), a pastor of the Lutheran Church, and of Sara Behm (1666-1696), the daughter of a rich mine owner. In 1719, after being ennobled by Queen Ulrika Eleonora, his family, with the exception of his father, changed the original name into “Swedenborg”, as an evidence of the recipient’s advancement of social status.

Jesper Swedberg was a prolific writer of hymns and sermons, a professor of theology at the University of Uppsala and, in 1702, was made bishop of Skara, a position he would retain until his death, in 1735. From his father, Swedenborg inherited the belief in the presence of angels and devils in everyday life, a…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2497 words

Citation: Volpone, Annalisa. "Emanuel Swedenborg". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 December 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4294, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here