IMAGINAL LANDSCAPES | WILLIAM ROWLANDSON
EVENT: IMAGINAL LANDSCAPES | WILLIAM ROWLANDSON
DATE: 19th March 2015
TIME: 6.30 pm
VENUE: Swedenborg House, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH
SPEAKER/S: William Rowlandson
19 March 2015 | Doors open 18.30 | Swedenborg Hall, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH
On Thursday 19 March, we will be launching Imaginal Landscapes: reflections on the mystical visions of Jorge Luis Borges and Emanuel Swedenborg, the new book by leading Borges scholar, William Rowlandson.
In Imaginal Landscapes William Rowlandson offers a brief but deep-reaching study of the often unknown appreciation that the Argentine short story writer Jorge Luis Borges had for Emanuel Swedenborg, showing how the Swedish visionary’s influence has gone a long way to explain Borges’s preoccupations with parallel existences, the infinite, and the mystery of language. Delightfully written, and steeped in a wonderful sense of curiosity, Imaginal Landscapes cements Rowlandson’s position as one of the UK’s leading scholars on Borges, and raises important questions about the criteria we often use to assess the lives and works of those thinkers and writers who have come to be labelled as mystics.
William will be talking about his new book and Borges’s relationship to Swedenborg and will also be available to sign copies and field questions after the talk.
Wine will be served during the evening and William’s talk will be preceded by a brief piano accompaniment.
WILLIAM ROWLANDSON is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Kent. He is the author of Borges, Swedenborg and Mysticism (Peter Lang, 2013) and has published widely on Latin American cultural and political history including the history of Guantánamo Bay and Cuba during the War on Terror. He has written for the Guardian and has also recently edited Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence with Angela Voss (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013).
Admission is free but please RSVP to admin@swedenborg.org.uk or by phoning 0207 405 7986.