| Name: |
(Jean) Charles (Emmanuel) Nodier |
| Variant Name: |
|
| Birth Date: |
|
| Death Date: |
|
| Nationality: |
|
| Gender: |
|
Contradiction is a term that characterizes not only Charles Nodier's personality but also his oeuvre, philosophy, politics, and, ultimately, his place in the French canon. On the one hand, he was a man born of the Enlightenment; his lifelong work on botany, entomology, linguistics, and dictionaries exemplifies his appreciation, pursuit, and advancement of learning based on the tradition of eighteenth-century philosophical and scientific inquiry. One of his foremost concerns was the organization of knowledge in order to make it more accessible. His bibliophilia was founded on this interest; his lexicons also illustrate it, as do his insect collections and his profession as a librarian.
But, on the other hand, this was a person who often railed at the notion that positivistic science could explain the mysterious, spiritual dimension of human experience or provide satisfactory answers to the deepest human fears and questions about the unknown. In his fantastic texts and in some essays, he proposes that only spiritual transformation through the imagination and its dreams, and ultimately its art, can reveal hidden truths and lead to inner fulfillment.
This is a free page. This page contains 151 words. This
biography contains 13,198 words (approx. 44 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our (Jean) Charles (Emmanuel) Nodier Access Pass.
