BARTHOLD HEINRICH BROCKES’ PHYSICO-THEOLOGY OF SMELL

• Authors: Krause Frank
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Studies on the significance of olfaction for philosophical aesthetics are justifiably interested in innovative literary explorations of links between aesthetic values and olfactory perceptions. In this context, the early Enlightenment poetry by Barthold Heinrich Brockes has remained neglected: literary historians rarely pay attention to his approaches to smell, and only the few pertinent studies appeared in German. This article introduces the English-speaking public to the valuation of smell in the theological aesthetics of Brockes’ poems, and it concludes with a sketch of his contribution to the tradition of modern cultic smelling, in which the olfactory and the aesthetic are variously intertwined. He thematises smelling as an emotional climax of human relations to external nature which are validated by a sacred essence of the experiential world, the awareness of which can be conjured up through inner worldly poetic thought. This interpretive pattern of olfactory culture has remained relevant to the present day.

Keywords

EN

GERMAN LITERATURE; ENLIGHTENMENT; NATURE POETRY; NATURAL THEOLOGY; LITERATURE; OLFACTION

• Publisher: Society for Aesthetics in Slovakia ad Institute of Aesthetics and Art Culture
• Journal: ESPES
• Year: 2024
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 48 - 63

Contributors

author

Krause Frank

• Department of English and Creative Writing, Goldsmiths College, University of London, GB – London SE14 6NW

Identifiers

DOI

10.5281/zenodo.12734411