William Stukeley and the exploration of Paradise

Journal article


Wilson, S. 2025. William Stukeley and the exploration of Paradise. Preternature: Cultural and Historical Studies in the Preternatural. 14 (1).
AuthorsWilson, S.
Abstract

This article examines the writings of eighteenth-century antiquarian William Stukeley. It argues that Stukeley conceived of the megalithic monuments of England as portals into a transfigured, paradisiacal landscape in which matter was spiritualized and spirit materialized. Throughout, the piece draws on Henry Corbin’s discussion of imagination as a mode of super-sensory perception and its revelation of a visionary geography which in turn mirrors back the truth of imaginative perception in endless co-creation. However, Stukeley, it goes on to argue, believed that the spiritualized landscape was being destroyed by a new materialism, so that he had to rely less on the presence of a divine landscape and more on personalized imagination as a way of accessing Paradise. The article also briefly examines Stukeley’s influence on poets, artists, antiquarians and the wider English public, particularly in the way they conceived of and experienced the relationship between imagination and divinized landscape.

KeywordsWilliam Stukeley; Imagination; Henry Corbin; Antiquarianism; Visionary geography
Year2025
JournalPreternature: Cultural and Historical Studies in the Preternatural
Journal citation14 (1)
PublisherPenn State University Press
ISSN2161-2196
Publication process dates
AcceptedJun 2024
Deposited11 Jul 2024
Accepted author manuscript
License
All rights reserved
File Access Level
Open
Output statusIn press
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https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/9847v/william-stukeley-and-the-exploration-of-paradise

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File access level: Open

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