title: Journey (2012 video game)

text: "Journey" received critical and commercial success worldwide. After its release, it became the fastest-selling game to date on PlayStation Store in both North America and Europe. At E3 2011, prior to release, the game won awards for best downloadable game from 1UP.com, GameSpy, and GameTrailers. After publication, the game was heavily honored at end of the year awards. At the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, formerly known as the Interactive Achievement Awards, "Journey" won eight awards, the most honors received of the night, which includes "Game of the Year", "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming", "Casual Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction", "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction", "Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay", "Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition", and "Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design"; it was additionally nominated for "Downloadable Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Gameplay Engineering", and "Outstanding Achievement in Story". "Journey" was selected as the best game of the year by IGN and GameSpot, among others.


title: Journey (2012 video game)

text: The soundtrack was nominated for the Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media at the 2013 Grammy Awards, the first video game soundtrack to be nominated for that category, though it did not win. Additionally, the game won the award for best music and was nominated for the best graphics award from IGN, and was selected as the best PlayStation Network game by GameSpot. At the Spike Video Game Awards, "Journey" won awards as the best PlayStation 3 game, the best indie game, and the game with the best music, and was additionally nominated for game of the year, best downloadable game, best graphics, and best song in a game for "I Was Born For This". It received the 2013 Annie Award for video game animation. It won five awards at the 2013 British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards: Artistic Achievement, Audio Achievement, Game Design, Online Multiplayer, and Original Music, and was nominated for Best Game, Game Innovation and Story. In March 2013, it won six awards at the annual Game Developers Choice Awards: Best Audio, Best Game Design, Best Visual Arts, Best Downloadable Game, the Innovation Award, and Game of the Year.


title: Journey (2012 video game)

text: "Journey" received high acclaim from critics who praised the visual and auditory art direction as well as the emotional response playing with a stranger created. It received the IGN Best Overall Game Award for 2012 and Ryan Clements of IGN described the game as "the most beautiful game of its time", saying, "each moment is like a painting, expertly framed and lit". Jane Douglas of GameSpot concurred, calling it "relentlessly beautiful" and lauding the visual diversity of the world and the depiction of the rippling sand; Matt Miller of "Game Informer" added praise for the animation of the sand and creatures, saying the game was visually stunning. The music was also complimented, with Miller describing it as a "breathtaking musical score" and Douglas calling it "moving, dynamic music".


title: Journey (2012 video game)

text: Reviewers were especially pleased with the emotional experience of playing the game, particularly with other players. Christian Donlan of Eurogamer described it as a "non-denominational religious experience" that, with the addition of another player, moves beyond metaphors and becomes a "pilgrimage" to the player. A reviewer writing for "Edge" magazine said the emotional arc of the game hits with "occasionally startling power", while Patrick Shaw from "Wired" said the game made him feel a "wide range of emotions ... wonder, fear, even sadness". Miller said all three times he played the game, "each time, without fail, individual moments... managed to give me goosebumps, and those moments have remained on my mind for weeks afterward". Joel Gregory of "PlayStation Official Magazine" praised the game's story for being open to the player's interpretation, leaving an ambiguity that drew him in. The addition of an unnamed second player was described by Donlan as brilliant and as a "master stroke", and "Edge" said it made for "a more absorbing, more atmospheric experience". In 2019, "Journey" was ranked 48th on "The Guardian" newspaper's The 50 Best Video Games of the 21st Century list.


title: Journey (2012 video game)

text: The few criticisms for the game centered on its length and pacing. Clements noted that not all players would appreciate a game with a "deliberate, melancholic pace" and short duration, comments echoed by the "Edge" review. Miller noted the lack of complex gameplay elements in "Journey", and Shaw was disappointed that the game was only a few hours long, though Douglas said the length was perfect. Miller concluded the game could be compared to "a musical concert, a well-directed film, or a long-awaited book", while Clements concluded, "completing "Journey" will create memories that last for years".


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Emanuel Swedenborg (, ; born Emanuel Swedberg; 29 March 1772) was a Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, "Heaven and Hell" (1758).


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741, at 53, he entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visions, notably on Easter Weekend, on 6 April


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: His experiences culminated in a "spiritual awakening" in which he received a revelation that Jesus Christ had appointed him to write "The Heavenly Doctrine" to reform Christianity. According to "The Heavenly Doctrine", the Lord had opened Swedenborg's spiritual eyes so that from then on, he could freely visit heaven and hell to converse with angels, demons and other spirits, and that the Last Judgment had already occurred in 1757, the year before the 1758 publication of "De Nova Hierosolyma et ejus doctrina coelesti" (English: "Concerning the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine").


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Over the last 28 years of his life, Swedenborg wrote 18 published theological works—and several more that remained unpublished. He termed himself a "Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ" in "True Christian Religion", which he published himself. Some followers of "The Heavenly Doctrine" believe that of his theological works, only those that were published by Swedenborg himself are fully divinely inspired. Others have regarded all Swedenborg's theological works as equally inspired, saying for example that the fact that some works were "not written out in a final edited form for publication does not make a single statement less trustworthy than the statements in any of the other works". The New Church, also known as Swedenborgianism, is a new religious movement originally founded in 1787 and comprising several historically related Christian denominations that revere Swedenborg's writings as revelation.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg's father, Jesper Swedberg (1653–1735), descended from a wealthy mining family, the first known paternal ancestor being Otte Persson from Sundborn parish, mentioned 1571. He travelled abroad and studied theology, and on returning home, he was eloquent enough to impress the Swedish king, Charles XI, with his sermons in Stockholm. Through the king's influence, he would later become professor of theology at Uppsala University and Bishop of Skara.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Jesper took an interest in the beliefs of the dissenting Lutheran Pietist movement, which emphasised the virtues of communion with God rather than relying on sheer faith ("sola fide"). "Sola fide" is a tenet of the Lutheran Church, and Jesper was charged with being a pietist heretic. While controversial, the beliefs were to have a major impact on his son Emanuel's spirituality. Jesper furthermore held the unconventional belief that angels and spirits were present in everyday life. This also came to have a strong impact on Emanuel.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In 1703–1709, aged 15–21, Emanuel Swedenborg lived in Erik Benzelius the Younger's house. He completed his university course at Uppsala in 1709, and in 1710, he made his grand tour through the Netherlands, France and Germany before reaching London, where he would spend the next four years. It was a flourishing centre of scientific ideas and discoveries. He studied physics, mechanics and philosophy and read and wrote poetry. According to the preface of a book by the Swedish critic Olof Lagercrantz, Swedenborg wrote to his benefactor and brother-in-law Benzelius that he believed he might be destined to be a great scientist.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In 1715, aged 27, Swedenborg returned to Sweden, where he devoted himself to natural science and engineering projects for the next two decades. A first step was his meeting with King Charles XII of Sweden in the city of Lund, in 1716. The Swedish inventor Christopher Polhem, who became a close friend of Swedenborg, was also present. Swedenborg's purpose was to persuade the king to fund an observatory in northern Sweden. However, the warlike king did not consider this project important enough, but did appoint Swedenborg to be assessor-extraordinary on the Swedish Board of Mines ("Bergskollegium") in Stockholm.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: From 1716 to 1718, aged 30, Swedenborg published a scientific periodical entitled "Daedalus Hyperboreus" (""The Northern Daedalus""), a record of mechanical and mathematical inventions and discoveries. One notable description was that of a flying machine, the same he had been sketching a few years earlier.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In 1718, Swedenborg published an article that attempted to explain spiritual and mental events in terms of minute vibrations, or "tremulations".


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Upon the death of Charles XII, Queen Ulrika Eleonora ennobled Swedenborg and his siblings. It was common in Sweden during the 17th and 18th centuries for the children of bishops to receive that honor, as a recognition of the services of their father. The family name was changed from Swedberg to Swedenborg.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In 1724, he was offered the chair of mathematics at Uppsala University, but he declined and said that he had dealt mainly with geometry, chemistry and metallurgy during his career. He also said that he did not have the gift of eloquent speech because of a stutter, as recognized by many of his acquaintances; it forced him to speak slowly and carefully, and there are no known occurrences of his speaking in public. The Swedish critic Olof Lagerkrantz proposed that Swedenborg compensated for his impediment by extensive argumentation in writing.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: During the 1730s, Swedenborg undertook many studies of anatomy and physiology. He had the first known anticipation of the neuron concept. It was not until a century later that science recognized the full significance of the nerve cell. He also had prescient ideas about the cerebral cortex, the hierarchical organization of the nervous system, the localization of the cerebrospinal fluid, the functions of the pituitary gland, the perivascular spaces, the foramen of Magendie, the idea of somatotopic organization, and the association of frontal brain regions with the intellect. In some cases, his conclusions have been experimentally verified in modern times.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In the 1730s, Swedenborg became increasingly interested in spiritual matters and was determined to find a theory to explain how matter relates to spirit. Swedenborg's desire to understand the order and the purpose of creation first led him to investigate the structure of matter and the process of creation itself. In the "Principia", he outlined his philosophical method, which incorporated experience, geometry (the means by which the inner order of the world can be known) and the power of reason. He also outlined his cosmology, which included the first presentation of his nebular hypothesis. (There is evidence that Swedenborg may have preceded Kant by as much as 20 years in the development of that hypothesis.)


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In 1735, in Leipzig, he published a three-volume work, "Opera philosophica et mineralis" (""Philosophical and mineralogical works"") in which he tried to conjoin philosophy and metallurgy. The work was mainly appreciated for its chapters on the analysis of the smelting of iron and copper, and it was the work that gave Swedenborg his international reputation. The same year, he also published the small manuscript "de Infinito" ("On the Infinite") in which he attempted to explain how the finite is related to the infinite and how the soul is connected to the body. It was the first manuscript in which he touched upon such matters. He knew that it might clash with established theologies since he presented the view that the soul is based on material substances. He also conducted dedicated studies of the fashionable philosophers of the time such as John Locke, Christian von Wolff, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Descartes and earlier thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Augustine of Hippo.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In 1743, at the age of 55, Swedenborg requested a leave of absence to go abroad. His purpose was to gather source material for "Regnum animale" ("The Animal Kingdom", or "Kingdom of Life"), a subject on which books were not readily available in Sweden. The aim of the book was to explain the soul from an anatomical point of view. He had planned to produce a total of 17 volumes.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: By 1744, when he was 56, Swedenborg had traveled to the Netherlands. Around the time, he began having strange dreams. Swedenborg carried a travel journal with him on most of his travels and did so on this journey. The whereabouts of the diary were long unknown, but it was discovered in the Royal Library in the 1850s and was published in 1859 as "Drömboken", or "Journal of Dreams".


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg experienced many different dreams and visions, some greatly pleasurable, others highly disturbing. The experiences continued as he traveled to London to progress the publication of "Regnum animale". This process, which one biographer has proposed as cathartic and comparable to the Catholic concept of Purgatory, continued for six months. He also proposed that what Swedenborg was recording in his "Journal of Dreams" was a battle between the love of himself and the love of God.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In the last entry of the journal from 26–27 October 1744, Swedenborg appears to be clear as to which path to follow. He felt that he should drop his current project and write a new book about the worship of God. He soon began working on "De cultu et amore Dei", or "The Worship and Love of God". It was never fully completed, but Swedenborg still had it published in London in June 1745.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In 1745, aged 57, Swedenborg was dining in a private room at a tavern in London. By the end of the meal, a darkness fell upon his eyes, and the room shifted character. Suddenly, he saw a person sitting at a corner of the room, telling him: "Do not eat too much!". Swedenborg, scared, hurried home. Later that night, the same man appeared in his dreams. The man told Swedenborg that he was the Lord, that he had appointed Swedenborg to reveal the spiritual meaning of the Bible and that he would guide Swedenborg in what to write. The same night, the spiritual world was opened to Swedenborg.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In June 1747, Swedenborg resigned his post as assessor of the board of mines. He explained that he was obliged to complete a work that he had begun and requested to receive half his salary as a pension. He took up afresh his study of Hebrew and began to work on the spiritual interpretation of the Bible with the goal of interpreting the spiritual meaning of every verse. From sometime between 1746 and 1747 and for ten years henceforth, he devoted his energy to the task. Usually abbreviated as "Arcana Cœlestia" or under the Latin variant "Arcana Caelestia" (translated as "Heavenly Arcana", "Heavenly Mysteries", or "Secrets of Heaven" depending on modern English-language editions), the book became his "magnum opus" and the basis of his further theological works.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: The work was anonymous, and Swedenborg was not identified as the author until the late 1750s. It had eight volumes, published between 1749 and 1756. It attracted little attention, as few people could penetrate its meaning.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: His life from 1747 to his death was spent in Stockholm, the Netherlands, and London. During the 25 years, he wrote another 14 works of a spiritual nature; most were published during his lifetime.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: One of Swedenborg's lesser-known works presents a startling claim: that the Last Judgment had begun in the previous year (1757) and was completed by the end of that year and that he had witnessed it. According to "The Heavenly Doctrine", the Last Judgment took place not in the physical world but in the World of Spirits, halfway between heaven and hell, through which all pass on their way to heaven or hell. The Judgment took place because the Christian church had lost its charity and faith, resulting in a loss of spiritual free will that threatened the equilibrium between heaven and hell in everyone's life.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: "The Heavenly Doctrine" also teaches that the Last Judgement was followed by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which occurred not by Christ in person but by a revelation from him through the inner, spiritual sense of the Word through Swedenborg.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In another of his theological works, Swedenborg wrote that eating meat, regarded in itself, "is something profane" and was not practised in the early days of the human race. However, he said, it now is a matter of conscience, and no one is condemned for doing it. Nonetheless, the early-days ideal appears to have given rise to the idea that Swedenborg was a vegetarian. That conclusion may have been reinforced by the fact that a number of Swedenborg's early followers were part of the vegetarian movement that arose in Britain in the 19th century. However, the only reports on Swedenborg himself are contradictory. His landlord in London, Shearsmith, said he ate no meat, but his maid, who served Swedenborg, said that he ate eels and pigeon pie.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In "Earths in the Universe", it is stated that he conversed with spirits from Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Venus and the Moon, as well as spirits from planets beyond the Solar System. From the "encounters", he concluded that the planets of the Solar System are inhabited and that such an enormous undertaking as the universe could not have been created for just one race on a planet or one "Heaven" derived from its properties per planet. Many Heavenly societies were also needed to increase the perfection of the angelic Heavens and Heaven to fill in deficiencies and gaps in other societies. He argued: "What would this be to God, Who is infinite, and to whom a thousand or tens of thousands of planets, and all of them full of inhabitants, would be scarcely anything!" Swedenborg and the question of life on other planets has been extensively reviewed elsewhere.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg published his work in London or the Netherlands to escape censorship by the Swedish Empire.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In July 1770, at the age of 82, he traveled to Amsterdam to complete the publication of his last work. The book, "Vera Christiana Religio" ("The True Christian Religion"), was published there in 1771 and was one of the most appreciated of his works. Designed to explain his teachings to Lutherans, it is the most concrete of his works.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In the summer of 1771, he traveled to London. Shortly before Christmas, he had a stroke and was partially paralyzed and confined to bed. His health improved somewhat, but he died in 1772. There are several accounts of his last months, made by those with whom he stayed and by Arvid Ferelius, a pastor of the Swedish Church in London, who visited him several times.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: There is evidence that Swedenborg wrote a letter to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, in February. Swedenborg said that he had been told in the world of spirits that Wesley wanted to speak with him. Wesley, startled since he had not told anyone of his interest in Swedenborg, replied that he was going on a journey for six months and would contact Swedenborg on his return. Swedenborg replied that that would be too late since Swedenborg would be going to the spiritual world for the last time on March 29. (Wesley later read and commented extensively on Swedenborg's work.) Swedenborg's landlord's servant girl, Elizabeth Reynolds, also said that Swedenborg had predicted the date and that he was as happy about it as if he was "going on holiday or to some merrymaking":


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: He was buried in the Swedish Church in Princes Square in Shadwell, London. On the 140th anniversary of his death, in 1912/1913, his remains were transferred to Uppsala Cathedral in Sweden, where they now rest close to the grave of the botanist Carl Linnaeus. In 1917, the Swedish Church in Shadwell was demolished, and the Swedish community that had grown around the parish moved to Marylebone. In 1938, Princes Square was redeveloped, and in his honour the local road was renamed Swedenborg Gardens. In 1997, a garden, play area and memorial, near the road, were created in his memory.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg's transition from scientist to revelator or mystic has fascinated many people. He has had a variety of both supporting and critical biographers. Some propose that he did not have a revelation at all but developed his theological ideas from sources which ranged from his father to earlier figures in the history of thought, notably Plotinus. That position was first taken by Swedish writer Martin Lamm who wrote a biography of Swedenborg in 1915. Swedish critic and publicist Olof Lagercrantz had a similar point of view, calling Swedenborg's theological writing "a poem about a foreign country with peculiar laws and customs".


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg's approach to proving the veracity of his theological teachings was to use voluminous quotations from the Old Testament and the New Testament to demonstrate agreement with the Bible, and this is found throughout his theological writings. A Swedish Royal Council considering heresy charges against two Swedish promoters of his theological writings concluded that "there is much that is true and useful in Swedenborg's writings". Victor Hugo suggested in passing, in Chapter 14 of "Les Misérables", that Swedenborg, in company with Blaise Pascal, had "glided into insanity".


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg proposed many scientific ideas during his lifetime. In his youth, he wanted to present a new idea every day, as he wrote to his brother-in-law Erik Benzelius in 1718. Around 1730, he had changed his mind, and instead believed that higher knowledge is not something that can be acquired, but that it is based on intuition. After 1745, he instead considered himself receiving scientific knowledge in a spontaneous manner from angels.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: From 1745, when he considered himself to have entered a spiritual state, he tended to phrase his "experiences" in empirical terms, to report accurately things he had experienced on his spiritual journeys.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: One of his ideas that is considered most crucial for the understanding of his theology is his notion of correspondences. But, in fact, he first presented the theory of correspondences only in 1744, in the first volume of "Regnum Animale" dealing with the human soul.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: The basis of the correspondence theory is that there is a relationship among the natural ("physical"), the spiritual, and the divine worlds. The foundations of this theory can be traced to Neoplatonism and the philosopher Plotinus in particular. With the aid of this scenario, Swedenborg now interpreted the Bible in a different light, claiming that even the most apparently trivial sentences could hold a profound spiritual meaning. Swedenborg argued that it is the presence of that spiritual sense which makes the Word divine.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Four incidents of purported psychic ability of Swedenborg exist in the literature. There are several versions of each story.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: On Thursday, 19 July 1759 a great and well-documented fire broke out in Stockholm, Sweden. In the high and increasing wind it spread very fast, consuming about 300 houses and making 2000 people homeless.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: When the fire broke out Swedenborg was at a dinner with friends in Gothenburg, about 400 km from Stockholm. He became agitated and told the party at six o'clock that there was a fire in Stockholm, that it had consumed his neighbour's home and was threatening his own. Two hours later, he exclaimed with relief that the fire had stopped three doors from his home. In the excitement following his report, word even reached the ears of the provincial governor, who summoned Swedenborg that same evening and asked for a detailed recounting.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: At that time, it took two to three days for news from Stockholm to reach Gothenburg by courier, so that is the shortest duration in which the news of the fire could reach Gothenburg. The first messenger from Stockholm with news of the fire was from the Board of Trade, who arrived Monday evening. The second messenger was a royal courier, who arrived on Tuesday. Both of these reports confirmed every statement to the precise hour that Swedenborg first expressed the information. The accounts are fully described in Bergquist, pp. 312–313 and in Chapter 31 of "The Swedenborg Epic". According to Swedenborg's biographer Lars Bergquist, however, this event took place on Sunday, July 29 – ten days after the fire.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: According to Swedenborg's followers, it seems unlikely that the many witnesses to Swedenborg's distress during the fire, and his immediate report of it to the provincial governor, would have left room for doubt in the public eye of Swedenborg's report. They further contend that if Swedenborg had only received news of the fire by the normal methods there would have been no issue of psychic perception recorded for history. Instead, "when the news of Swedenborg's extraordinary vision of the fire reached the capital, public curiosity about him was very much aroused."


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: A second fire anecdote, similar to the first one, but less cited, is the incident of the mill owner Bolander. Swedenborg warned him, again abruptly, of an incipient fire in one of his mills.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: The third event was in 1758 when Swedenborg visited Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden, who asked him to tell her something about her deceased brother Prince Augustus William of Prussia. The next day, Swedenborg whispered something in her ear that turned the Queen pale and she explained that this was something only she and her brother could know about.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: The fourth incident involved a woman who had lost an important document, and came to Swedenborg asking if a recently deceased person could tell him where it was, which he (in some sources) was said to have done the following night.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Although not typically cited along with these three episodes, there was one further piece of evidence: Swedenborg was noted by the seamen of the ships that he sailed between Stockholm and London to always have excellent sailing conditions. When asked about this by a friend, Swedenborg played down the matter, saying he was surprised by this experience himself and that he was certainly not able to do miracles.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In 1763, Immanuel Kant, then at the beginning of his career, was impressed by accounts of Swedenborg's psychic abilities and made inquiries to find out if they were true. He also ordered all eight volumes of the expensive "Arcana Cœlestia" ("Heavenly Arcana" or "Heavenly Mysteries"). One Charlotte von Knobloch wrote to Kant asking his opinion of Swedenborg's psychic experiences. Kant wrote a very affirmative reply, referring to Swedenborg's "miraculous" gift, and characterizing him as "reasonable, agreeable, remarkable and sincere" and "a scholar", in one of his letters to Moses Mendelssohn, and expressing regret that he (Kant) had never met Swedenborg. Joseph Green, his English friend, who investigated the matter for Kant, including by visiting Swedenborg's home, found Swedenborg to be a "sensible, pleasant and openhearted" man and here again, a scholar.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: However, three years later, in 1766, Kant wrote and published anonymously a small book entitled "Träume eines Geistersehers" ("Dreams of a Spirit-Seer") that was a scathing critique of Swedenborg and his writings. He termed Swedenborg a "spook hunter" "without official office or occupation". As rationale for his critique, Kant said he wanted to stop "ceaseless questioning" and inquiries about "Dreams" from "inquisitive" persons, both known and unknown. Kant's friend Moses Mendelssohn thought there was a "joking pensiveness" in "Dreams" that sometimes left the reader in doubt as to whether "Dreams" was meant to make "metaphysics laughable or spirit-seeking credible". In one of his letters to Mendelssohn, Kant refers to "Dreams" less-than-enthusiastically as a "desultory little essay".


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg claimed in "The Heavenly Doctrine" that the teachings of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ were revealed to him.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg considered his theology a revelation of the true Christian religion that had become obfuscated through centuries of theology. However, he did not refer to his writings as theology since he considered it based on actual experiences, unlike theology, except in the title of his last work. Neither did he wish to compare it to philosophy, a discipline he discarded in 1748 because, he claimed, it "darkens the mind, blinds us, and wholly rejects the faith".


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: The foundation of Swedenborg's theology was laid down in "Arcana Cœlestia" ("Heavenly Mysteries"), published in eight Latin volumes from 1749 to 1756. In a significant portion of that work, he interprets the Biblical passages of Genesis and Exodus. He reviews what he says is the inner spiritual sense of these two works of the Word of God. (He later made a similar review of the inner sense of the book of Revelation in "Apocalypse Revealed".) Most of all, he was convinced that the Bible describes a human's transformation from a materialistic to a spiritual being, which he calls rebirth or regeneration. He begins this work by outlining how the creation myth was not an account of the creation of Earth, but an account of man's rebirth or regeneration in six steps represented by the six days of creation. Everything related to mankind in the Bible could also be related to Jesus Christ, and how Christ freed himself from materialistic boundaries through the glorification of his human presence by making it Divine. Swedenborg examines this idea in his exposition of Genesis and Exodus.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: One often discussed aspect of Swedenborg's writing is his ideas on marriage. Swedenborg himself remained a bachelor all his life, but that did not hinder him from writing voluminously on the subject. His work on "Marriage Love" ("Conjugial Love" in older translations) (1768) was dedicated to this purpose.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: A central question with regard to marriage is whether it stops at death or continues into heaven. The question arises due to a statement attributed to Jesus that there is no marriage in heaven (Luke 20:27–38, Matthew 22:23–32, and Mark 12:18–27). Swedenborg wrote "The Lord God Jesus Christ on Marriage in Heaven" as a detailed analysis of what he meant.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: The quality of the relationship between husband and wife resumes in the spiritual world in whatever state it was at their death in this world. Thus, a couple in true marriage love remain together in that state in heaven into eternity. A couple lacking in that love by one or both partners, however, will separate after death and each will be given a compatible new partner if they wish. A partner is also given to a person who loved the ideal of marriage but never found a true partner in this world. The exception in both cases is a person who hates chaste marriage and thus cannot receive such a partner.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg saw creation as a series of pairings, descending from the Divine love and wisdom that define God and are the basis of creation. This duality can be seen in the pairing of good and truth, charity and faith, God and the church, and husband and wife. In each case, the goal for these pairs is to achieve conjunction between the two component parts. In the case of marriage, the object is to bring about the joining of the two partners at the spiritual and physical levels, and the happiness that comes as a consequence.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg rejected the common explanation of the Trinity as a Trinity of Persons, which he said was not taught in the early Christian church. There was, for instance, no mention in the Apostolic writings of any "Son from eternity". Instead he explained in his theological writings how the Divine Trinity exists in One Person, in One God, the Lord Jesus Christ, which he said is taught in Colossians 2:9. According to "The Heavenly Doctrine", Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world because of the spread of evil here.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg spoke in virtually all his works against what he regarded as the incomprehensible Trinity of Persons concept. He said that people of other religions opposed Christianity because of its doctrine of a Trinity of Persons. He considered the separation of the Trinity into three separate Persons to have originated with the First Council of Nicaea and the Athanasian Creed.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: "The Heavenly Doctrine" rejects the concept of salvation through faith-alone ("sola-fide" in Latin), since he considered both faith and charity necessary for salvation, not one without the other, whereas the Reformers taught that faith-alone procured justification, although it must be a faith which resulted in obedience. The purpose of faith, according to "The Heavenly Doctrine", is to lead a person to a life according to the truths of faith, which is charity, as is taught in 1 Corinthians 13:13 and James 2:20.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In other words, Swedenborg spoke sharply against the faith-alone doctrine of Luther and others. He held that justification before God was not based solely upon some imputed righteousness before God, and was not achievable merely by a gift of God's grace ("sola gratia"), granted without any basis in a person's actual behavior in life. "Sola-fide" was a doctrine averred by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and others during the Protestant Reformation, and was a core belief especially in the theology of the Lutheran reformers Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Although the "sola-fide" doctrine of the Reformers also emphasized that saving faith was one that effected works (by faith-alone, but not by a faith which is alone), Swedenborg protested against faith-alone being the instrument of justification, and held that salvation is only possible through the conjunction of faith and charity in a person, and that the purpose of faith is to lead a person to live according to the truths of faith, which is charity. He further states that faith and charity must be exercised by doing good out of willing good whenever possible, which are good works or good uses or the conjunction perishes. In one section he wrote:


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg made no attempt to found a church. A few years after his death – 15 (~1787) by one estimate – for the most part in England, small reading groups formed to study his teachings. As one scholar states, "The Heavenly Doctrine" particularly appealed to the various dissenting groups that sprang up in the first half of the 18th century who were "surfeited with revivalism and narrow-mindedness" and found his optimism and comprehensive explanations appealing.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: A variety of important cultural figures, both writers and artists, were influenced by Swedenborg's writings, including Robert Frost, Johnny Appleseed, William Blake, Jorge Luis Borges, Daniel Burnham, Arthur Conan Doyle,


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Flaxman, George Inness, Henry James Sr., Carl Jung, Immanuel Kant, Honoré de Balzac, Helen Keller, Czesław Miłosz, Joseph Smith, August Strindberg, D. T. Suzuki, and W. B. Yeats. His philosophy had a great impact on the Duke of Södermanland, later King Carl XIII, who as the Grand Master of Swedish Freemasonry ("Svenska Frimurare Orden") built its unique system of degrees and wrote its rituals. In contrast, one of the most prominent Swedish authors of Swedenborg's day, Johan Henric Kellgren, called Swedenborg "nothing but a fool". A heresy trial was initiated in Sweden in 1768 against Swedenborg writings and two men who promoted them.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: In the two and a half centuries since Swedenborg's death, various interpretations of his theology have been made, and he has also been scrutinized in biographies and psychological studies. Swedenborg, with his claimed new dispensation, has been considered by some to have a mental illness.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: While the insanity explanation was not uncommon during Swedenborg's own time, it is mitigated by his activity in the Swedish Riddarhuset (the House of the Nobility), the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament), and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Additionally, the system of thought in his theological writings is considered by some to be remarkably coherent. Furthermore, he was characterized by his contemporaries as a "kind and warm-hearted man", "amiable in his meeting with the public", speaking "easily and naturally of his spiritual experiences", with pleasant and interesting conversation. An English friend of Kant's who visited Swedenborg at Kant's behest described Swedenborg as a "reasonable, pleasant and candid man and scholar". Of note here is Swedenborg's statement that he was commanded by the Lord to publish his writings and "Do not believe that without this express command I would have thought of publishing things which I knew in advance would make me look ridiculous and many people would think lies".


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Copies of the original Latin version in which Swedenborg wrote his revelation are available from the following sources.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: The common names used in a New Church listing are given parenthetically, followed by the titles in the original. All the titles listed were published by Swedenborg except "The Spiritual Diary." Various minor reports and tracts have been omitted from the list.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: The song "The Dreams of Swedenborg", from symphonic metal band Therion's 2004 album "Lemuria", talks about Swedenborg's revelations.


title: Emanuel Swedenborg

text: Swedenborg's book "Heaven and its Wonders and Hell From Things Heard and Seen" is a major contributor to the plot of the movie "Things Heard & Seen", which premiered on Netflix in 2021.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays "Every Man in His Humour" (1598), "Volpone, or The Fox" (c. 1606), "The Alchemist" (1610) and "Bartholomew Fair" (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I."


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642).


title: Ben Jonson

text: His ancestors spelled the family name with a letter "t" (Johnstone or Johnstoun). While the spelling had eventually changed to the more common "Johnson", the playwright's own particular preference became "Jonson".


title: Ben Jonson

text: In midlife, Jonson said his paternal grandfather, who "served King Henry and was a gentleman", was a member of the extended Johnston family of Annandale in the Dumfries and Galloway, a genealogy that is attested by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family coat of arms: one spindle is a diamond-shaped heraldic device used by the Johnston family.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson's father lost his property, was imprisoned, and, as a Protestant, suffered forfeiture under Queen Mary. Becoming a clergyman upon his release, he died a month before his son's birth. His widow married a master bricklayer two years later. Jonson attended school in St Martin's Lane. Later, a family friend paid for his studies at Westminster School, where the antiquarian, historian, topographer and officer of arms William Camden (1551–1623) was one of his masters. The pupil and master became friends, and the intellectual influence of Camden's broad-ranging scholarship upon Jonson's art and literary style remained notable, until Camden's death in 1623.


title: Ben Jonson

text: On leaving Westminster School in 1589, Jonson was to have attended the University of Cambridge, to continue his book learning but did not, because of his unwilled apprenticeship to his bricklayer stepfather. According to the churchman and historian Thomas Fuller (1608–61), Jonson at this time built a garden wall in Lincoln's Inn. After having been an apprentice bricklayer, Jonson went to the Netherlands and volunteered to soldier with the English regiments of Sir Francis Vere (1560–1609) in Flanders. England was allied with the Dutch in their fight for independence as well as the ongoing war with Spain.


title: Ben Jonson

text: The "Hawthornden Manuscripts" (1619), of the conversations between Ben Jonson and the poet William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), report that, when in Flanders, Jonson engaged, fought and killed an enemy soldier in single combat, and took for trophies the weapons of the vanquished soldier.


title: Ben Jonson

text: After his military activity on the Continent, Jonson returned to England and worked as an actor and as a playwright. As an actor, he was the protagonist “Hieronimo” (Geronimo) in the play "The Spanish Tragedy" (c. 1586), by Thomas Kyd (1558–94), the first revenge tragedy in English literature. By 1597, he was a working playwright employed by Philip Henslowe, the leading producer for the English public theatre; by the next year, the production of "Every Man in His Humour" (1598) had established Jonson's reputation as a dramatist.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson described his wife to William Drummond as "a shrew, yet honest". The identity of Jonson's wife is obscure, though she sometimes is identified as "Ann Lewis", the woman who married a Benjamin Jonson in 1594, at the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr, near London Bridge.


title: Ben Jonson

text: The St. Martin's Church registers indicate that Mary Jonson, their eldest daughter, died in November 1593, at six months of age. A decade later, in 1603, Benjamin Jonson, their eldest son, died of bubonic plague when he was seven years old, upon which Jonson wrote the elegiac "On My First Sonne" (1603). A second son, also named Benjamin Jonson, died in 1635.


title: Ben Jonson

text: During that period, Jonson and his wife lived separate lives for five years; Jonson enjoyed the residential hospitality of his patrons, Esme Stuart, 3rd Duke of Lennox and 7th Seigneur d'Aubigny and Sir Robert Townshend.


title: Ben Jonson

text: By summer 1597, Jonson had a fixed engagement in the Admiral's Men, then performing under Philip Henslowe's management at The Rose. John Aubrey reports, on uncertain authority, that Jonson was not successful as an actor; whatever his skills as an actor, he was evidently more valuable to the company as a writer.


title: Ben Jonson

text: By this time Jonson had begun to write original plays for the Admiral's Men; in 1598 he was mentioned by Francis Meres in his "Palladis Tamia" as one of "the best for tragedy." None of his early tragedies survive, however. An undated comedy, "The Case is Altered", may be his earliest surviving play.


title: Ben Jonson

text: In 1597, a play which he co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, "The Isle of Dogs", was suppressed after causing great offence. Arrest warrants for Jonson and Nashe were issued by Queen Elizabeth I's so-called interrogator, Richard Topcliffe. Jonson was jailed in Marshalsea Prison and charged with "Leude and mutynous behaviour", while Nashe managed to escape to Great Yarmouth. Two of the actors, Gabriel Spenser and Robert Shaw, were also imprisoned. A year later, Jonson was again briefly imprisoned, this time in Newgate Prison, for killing Gabriel Spenser in a duel on 22 September 1598 in Hogsden Fields (today part of Hoxton). Tried on a charge of manslaughter, Jonson pleaded guilty but was released by benefit of clergy, a legal ploy through which he gained leniency by reciting a brief Bible verse (the neck-verse), forfeiting his 'goods and chattels' and being branded on his left thumb.


title: Ben Jonson

text: While in jail Jonson converted to Catholicism, possibly through the influence of fellow-prisoner Father Thomas Wright, a Jesuit priest.


title: Ben Jonson

text: In 1598 Jonson produced his first great success, "Every Man in His Humour", capitalising on the vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had begun with "An Humorous Day's Mirth". William Shakespeare was among the first actors to be cast. Jonson followed this in 1599 with "Every Man out of His Humour", a pedantic attempt to imitate Aristophanes. It is not known whether this was a success on stage, but when published it proved popular and went through several editions.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson's other work for the theatre in the last years of Elizabeth I's reign was marked by fighting and controversy. "Cynthia's Revels" was produced by the Children of the Chapel Royal at Blackfriars Theatre in 1600. It satirised both John Marston, who Jonson believed had accused him of lustfulness in "Histriomastix", and Thomas Dekker. Jonson attacked the two poets again in "Poetaster" (1601). Dekker responded with "Satiromastix", subtitled "the untrussing of the humorous poet". The final scene of this play, whilst certainly not to be taken at face value as a portrait of Jonson, offers a caricature that is recognisable from Drummond's report – boasting about himself and condemning other poets, criticising performances of his plays and calling attention to himself in any available way.


title: Ben Jonson

text: This "War of the Theatres" appears to have ended with reconciliation on all sides. Jonson collaborated with Dekker on a pageant welcoming James I to England in 1603 although Drummond reports that Jonson called Dekker a rogue. Marston dedicated "The Malcontent" to Jonson and the two collaborated with Chapman on "Eastward Ho", a 1605 play whose anti-Scottish sentiment briefly landed both Jonson and Chapman in jail.


title: Ben Jonson

text: At the beginning of the English reign of James VI and I in 1603 Jonson joined other poets and playwrights in welcoming the new king. Jonson quickly adapted himself to the additional demand for masques and entertainments introduced with the new reign and fostered by both the king and his consort Anne of Denmark. In addition to his popularity on the public stage and in the royal hall, he enjoyed the patronage of aristocrats such as Elizabeth Sidney (daughter of Sir Philip Sidney) and Lady Mary Wroth. This connection with the Sidney family provided the impetus for one of Jonson's most famous lyrics, the country house poem "To Penshurst".


title: Ben Jonson

text: In February 1603 John Manningham reported that Jonson was living on Robert Townsend, son of Sir Roger Townshend, and "scorns the world." Perhaps this explains why his trouble with English authorities continued. That same year he was questioned by the Privy Council about "Sejanus", a politically themed play about corruption in the Roman Empire. He was again in trouble for topical allusions in a play, now lost, in which he took part. Shortly after his release from a brief spell of imprisonment imposed to mark the authorities' displeasure at the work, in the second week of October 1605, he was present at a supper party attended by most of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. After the plot's discovery he appears to have avoided further imprisonment; he volunteered what he knew of the affair to the investigator Robert Cecil and the Privy Council. Father Thomas Wright, who heard Fawkes's confession, was known to Jonson from prison in 1598 and Cecil may have directed him to bring the priest before the council, as a witness.


title: Ben Jonson

text: At the same time, Jonson pursued a more prestigious career, writing masques for James's court. "The Satyr" (1603) and "The Masque of Blackness" (1605) are two of about two dozen masques which Jonson wrote for James or for Queen Anne, some of them performed at Apethorpe Palace when the King was in residence. "The Masque of Blackness" was praised by Algernon Charles Swinburne as the consummate example of this now-extinct genre, which mingled speech, dancing and spectacle.


title: Ben Jonson

text: On many of these projects he collaborated, not always peacefully, with designer Inigo Jones. For example, Jones designed the scenery for Jonson's masque "Oberon, the Faery Prince" performed at Whitehall on 1 January 1611 in which Prince Henry, eldest son of James I, appeared in the title role. Perhaps partly as a result of this new career, Jonson gave up writing plays for the public theatres for a decade. He later told Drummond that he had made less than two hundred pounds on all his plays together.


title: Ben Jonson

text: In 1616 Jonson received a yearly pension of 100 marks (about £60), leading some to identify him as England's first Poet Laureate. This sign of royal favour may have encouraged him to publish the first volume of the folio collected edition of his works that year. Other volumes followed in 1640–41 and 1692. (See: Ben Jonson folios)


title: Ben Jonson

text: On 8 July 1618 Jonson set out from Bishopsgate in London to walk to Edinburgh, arriving in Scotland's capital on 17 September. For the most part he followed the great north road, and was treated to lavish and enthusiastic welcomes in both towns and country houses. On his arrival he lodged initially with John Stuart, a cousin of King James, in Leith, and was made an honorary burgess of Edinburgh at a dinner laid on by the city on 26 September. He stayed in Scotland until late January 1619, and the best-remembered hospitality he enjoyed was that of the Scottish poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, sited on the River Esk. Drummond undertook to record as much of Jonson's conversation as he could in his diary, and thus recorded aspects of Jonson's personality that would otherwise have been less clearly seen. Jonson delivers his opinions, in Drummond's terse reporting, in an expansive and even magisterial mood. Drummond noted he was "a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others".


title: Ben Jonson

text: The period between 1605 and 1620 may be viewed as Jonson's heyday. By 1616 he had produced all the plays on which his present reputation as a dramatist is based, including the tragedy "Catiline" (acted and printed 1611), which achieved limited success and the comedies "Volpone" (acted 1605 and printed in 1607), "Epicoene, or the Silent Woman" (1609), "The Alchemist" (1610), "" (1614) and "The Devil Is an Ass" (1616). "The Alchemist" and "Volpone" were immediately successful. Of "Epicoene", Jonson told Drummond of a satirical verse which reported that the play's subtitle was appropriate, since its audience had refused to applaud the play (i.e., remained silent). Yet "Epicoene", along with "Bartholomew Fair" and (to a lesser extent) "The Devil is an Ass" have in modern times achieved a certain degree of recognition. While his life during this period was apparently more settled than it had been in the 1590s, his financial security was still not assured.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson recounted that his father had been a prosperous Protestant landowner until the reign of "Bloody Mary" and had suffered imprisonment and the forfeiture of his wealth during that monarch's attempt to restore England to Catholicism. On Elizabeth's accession he had been freed and had been able to travel to London to become a clergyman. (All that is known of Jonson's father, who died a month before his son was born, comes from the poet's own narrative.) Jonson's elementary education was in a small church school attached to St Martin-in-the-Fields parish, and at the age of about seven he secured a place at Westminster School, then part of Westminster Abbey.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Notwithstanding this emphatically Protestant grounding, Jonson maintained an interest in Catholic doctrine throughout his adult life and, at a particularly perilous time while a religious war with Spain was widely expected and persecution of Catholics was intensifying, he converted to the faith. This took place in October 1598, while Jonson was on remand in Newgate Gaol charged with manslaughter. Jonson's biographer Ian Donaldson is among those who suggest that the conversion was instigated by Father Thomas Wright, a Jesuit priest who had resigned from the order over his acceptance of Queen Elizabeth's right to rule in England. Wright, although placed under house arrest on the orders of Lord Burghley, was permitted to minister to the inmates of London prisons. It may have been that Jonson, fearing that his trial would go against him, was seeking the unequivocal absolution that Catholicism could offer if he were sentenced to death. Alternatively, he could have been looking to personal advantage from accepting conversion since Father Wright's protector, the Earl of Essex, was among those who might hope to rise to influence after the succession of a new monarch. Jonson's conversion came at a weighty time in affairs of state; the royal succession, from the childless Elizabeth, had not been settled and Essex's Catholic allies were hopeful that a sympathetic ruler might attain the throne.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Conviction, and certainly not expedience alone, sustained Jonson's faith during the troublesome twelve years he remained a Catholic. His stance received attention beyond the low-level intolerance to which most followers of that faith were exposed. The first draft of his play "Sejanus His Fall" was banned for "popery", and did not re-appear until some offending passages were cut. In January 1606 he (with Anne, his wife) appeared before the Consistory Court in London to answer a charge of recusancy, with Jonson alone additionally accused of allowing his fame as a Catholic to "seduce" citizens to the cause. This was a serious matter (the Gunpowder Plot was still fresh in people's minds) but he explained that his failure to take communion was only because he had not found sound theological endorsement for the practice, and by paying a fine of thirteen shillings (156 pence) he escaped the more serious penalties at the authorities' disposal. His habit was to slip outside during the sacrament, a common routine at the time—indeed it was one followed by the royal consort, Queen Anne of Denmark, herself—to show political loyalty while not offending the conscience. Leading church figures, including John Overall, Dean of St Paul's, were tasked with winning Jonson back to Protestantism, but these overtures were resisted.


title: Ben Jonson

text: In May 1610 Henry IV of France was assassinated, purportedly in the name of the Pope; he had been a Catholic monarch respected in England for tolerance towards Protestants, and his murder seems to have been the immediate cause of Jonson's decision to rejoin the Church of England. He did this in flamboyant style, pointedly drinking a full chalice of communion wine at the eucharist to demonstrate his renunciation of the Catholic rite, in which the priest alone drinks the wine. The exact date of the ceremony is unknown. However, his interest in Catholic belief and practice remained with him until his death.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson's productivity began to decline in the 1620s, but he remained well known. In that time, the Sons of Ben or the "Tribe of Ben", those younger poets such as Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling who took their bearing in verse from Jonson, rose to prominence. However, a series of setbacks drained his strength and damaged his reputation. He resumed writing regular plays in the 1620s, but these are not considered among his best. They are of significant interest, however, for their portrayal of Charles I's England. "The Staple of News", for example, offers a remarkable look at the earliest stage of English journalism. The lukewarm reception given that play was, however, nothing compared to the dismal failure of "The New Inn"; the cold reception given this play prompted Jonson to write a poem condemning his audience ("An Ode to Himself"), which in turn prompted Thomas Carew, one of the "Tribe of Ben", to respond in a poem that asks Jonson to recognise his own decline.


title: Ben Jonson

text: The principal factor in Jonson's partial eclipse was, however, the death of James and the accession of King Charles I in 1625. Jonson felt neglected by the new court. A decisive quarrel with Jones harmed his career as a writer of court masques, although he continued to entertain the court on an irregular basis. For his part, Charles displayed a certain degree of care for the great poet of his father's day: he increased Jonson's annual pension to £100 and included a tierce of wine and beer.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Despite the strokes that he suffered in the 1620s, Jonson continued to write. At his death in 1637 he seems to have been working on another play, "The Sad Shepherd". Though only two acts are extant, this represents a remarkable new direction for Jonson: a move into pastoral drama. During the early 1630s he also conducted a correspondence with James Howell, who warned him about disfavour at court in the wake of his dispute with Jones.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson died on or around 16 August 1637, and his funeral was held the next day. It was attended by 'all or the greatest part of the nobility then in town'. He is buried in the north aisle of the nave in Westminster Abbey, with the inscription "O Rare Ben Johnson ["sic"]" set in the slab over his grave. John Aubrey, in a more meticulous record than usual, notes that a passer-by, John Young of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, saw the bare grave marker and on impulse paid a workman eighteen pence to make the inscription. Another theory suggests that the tribute came from William Davenant, Jonson's successor as Poet Laureate (and card-playing companion of Young), as the same phrase appears on Davenant's nearby gravestone, but essayist Leigh Hunt contends that Davenant's wording represented no more than Young's coinage, cheaply re-used. The fact that Jonson was buried in an upright position was an indication of his reduced circumstances at the time of his death, although it has also been written that he asked for a grave exactly 18 inches square from the monarch and received an upright grave to fit in the requested space.


title: Ben Jonson

text: It has been pointed out that the inscription could be read "Orare Ben Jonson" (pray for Ben Jonson), possibly in an allusion to Jonson's acceptance of Catholic doctrine during his lifetime (although he had returned to the Church of England); the carving shows a distinct space between "O" and "rare".


title: Ben Jonson

text: A monument to Jonson was erected in about 1723 by the Earl of Oxford and is in the eastern aisle of Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner. It includes a portrait medallion and the same inscription as on the gravestone. It seems Jonson was to have had a monument erected by subscription soon after his death but the English Civil War intervened.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Apart from two tragedies, "Sejanus" and "", that largely failed to impress Renaissance audiences, Jonson's work for the public theatres was in comedy. These plays vary in some respects. The minor early plays, particularly those written for boy players, present somewhat looser plots and less-developed characters than those written later, for adult companies. Already in the plays which were his salvos in the Poets' War, he displays the keen eye for absurdity and hypocrisy that marks his best-known plays; in these early efforts, however, plot mostly takes second place to variety of incident and comic set-pieces. They are, also, notably ill-tempered. Thomas Davies called "Poetaster" "a contemptible mixture of the serio-comic, where the names of Augustus Caesar, Maecenas, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Tibullus, are all sacrificed upon the altar of private resentment". Another early comedy in a different vein, "The Case is Altered", is markedly similar to Shakespeare's romantic comedies in its foreign setting, emphasis on genial wit and love-plot. Henslowe's diary indicates that Jonson had a hand in numerous other plays, including many in genres such as English history with which he is not otherwise associated.


title: Ben Jonson

text: The comedies of his middle career, from "Eastward Hoe" to "The Devil Is an Ass" are for the most part city comedy, with a London setting, themes of trickery and money, and a distinct moral ambiguity, despite Jonson's professed aim in the Prologue to "Volpone" to "mix profit with your pleasure". His late plays or "dotages", particularly "The Magnetic Lady" and "", exhibit signs of an accommodation with the romantic tendencies of Elizabethan comedy.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Within this general progression, however, Jonson's comic style remained constant and easily recognisable. He announces his programme in the prologue to the folio version of "Every Man in His Humour": he promises to represent "deeds, and language, such as men do use". He planned to write comedies that revived the classical premises of Elizabethan dramatic theory—or rather, since all but the loosest English comedies could claim some descent from Plautus and Terence, he intended to apply those premises with rigour. This commitment entailed negations: after "The Case is Altered", Jonson eschewed distant locations, noble characters, romantic plots and other staples of Elizabethan comedy, focusing instead on the satiric and realistic inheritance of new comedy. He set his plays in contemporary settings, peopled them with recognisable types, and set them to actions that, if not strictly realistic, involved everyday motives such as greed and jealousy. In accordance with the temper of his age, he was often so broad in his characterisation that many of his most famous scenes border on the farcical (as William Congreve, for example, judged "Epicoene"). He was more diligent in adhering to the classical unities than many of his peers—although as Margaret Cavendish noted, the unity of action in the major comedies was rather compromised by Jonson's abundance of incident. To this classical model Jonson applied the two features of his style which save his classical imitations from mere pedantry: the vividness with which he depicted the lives of his characters, and the intricacy of his plots. Coleridge, for instance, claimed that "The Alchemist" had one of the three most perfect plots in literature.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson's poetry, like his drama, is informed by his classical learning. Some of his better-known poems are close translations of Greek or Roman models; all display the careful attention to form and style that often came naturally to those trained in classics in the humanist manner. Jonson largely avoided the debates about rhyme and meter that had consumed Elizabethan classicists such as Thomas Campion and Gabriel Harvey. Accepting both rhyme and stress, Jonson used them to mimic the classical qualities of simplicity, restraint and precision.


title: Ben Jonson

text: "Epigrams" (published in the 1616 folio) is an entry in a genre that was popular among late-Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, although Jonson was perhaps the only poet of his time to work in its full classical range. The epigrams explore various attitudes, most from the satiric stock of the day: complaints against women, courtiers and spies abound. The condemnatory poems are short and anonymous; Jonson’s epigrams of praise, including a famous poem to Camden and lines to Lucy Harington, are longer and are mostly addressed to specific individuals. Although it is included among the epigrams, "On My First Sonne" is neither satirical nor very short; the poem, intensely personal and deeply felt, typifies a genre that would come to be called "lyric poetry." It is possible that the spelling of 'son' as 'Sonne' is meant to allude to the sonnet form, with which it shares some features. A few other so-called epigrams share this quality. Jonson's poems of "The Forest" also appeared in the first folio. Most of the fifteen poems are addressed to Jonson's aristocratic supporters, but the most famous are his country-house poem “To Penshurst” and the poem “To Celia” ("Come, my Celia, let us prove") that appears also in "Volpone".


title: Ben Jonson

text: "Underwood", published in the expanded folio of 1640, is a larger and more heterogeneous group of poems. It contains "A Celebration of Charis", Jonson's most extended effort at love poetry; various religious pieces; encomiastic poems including the poem to Shakespeare and a sonnet on Mary Wroth; the "Execration against Vulcan" and others. The 1640 volume also contains three elegies which have often been ascribed to Donne (one of them appeared in Donne's posthumous collected poems).


title: Ben Jonson

text: There are many legends about Jonson's rivalry with Shakespeare. William Drummond reports that during their conversation, Jonson scoffed at two apparent absurdities in Shakespeare's plays: a nonsensical line in "Julius Caesar" and the setting of "The Winter's Tale" on the non-existent seacoast of Bohemia. Drummond also reported Jonson as saying that Shakespeare "wanted art" (i.e., lacked skill).


title: Ben Jonson

text: In in "Timber", which was published posthumously and reflects his lifetime of practical experience, Jonson offers a fuller and more conciliatory comment. He recalls being told by certain actors that Shakespeare never blotted (i.e., crossed out) a line when he wrote. His own claimed response was "Would he had blotted a thousand!" However, Jonson explains, "He was, indeed, honest and of an open and free nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped". Jonson concludes that "there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." When Shakespeare died, he said, "He was not of an age, but for all time."


title: Ben Jonson

text: Thomas Fuller relates stories of Jonson and Shakespeare engaging in debates in the Mermaid Tavern; Fuller imagines conversations in which Shakespeare would run rings around the more learned but more ponderous Jonson. That the two men knew each other personally is beyond doubt, not only because of the tone of Jonson's references to him but because Shakespeare's company produced a number of Jonson's plays, at least two of which ("Every Man in His Humour" and "Sejanus His Fall") Shakespeare certainly acted in. However, it is now impossible to tell how much personal communication they had, and tales of their friendship cannot be substantiated.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson's most influential and revealing commentary on Shakespeare is the second of the two poems that he contributed to the prefatory verse that opens Shakespeare's First Folio. This poem, , did a good deal to create the traditional view of Shakespeare as a poet who, despite "small Latine, and lesse Greeke", had a natural genius. The poem has traditionally been thought to exemplify the contrast which Jonson perceived between himself, the disciplined and erudite classicist, scornful of ignorance and sceptical of the masses, and Shakespeare, represented in the poem as a kind of natural wonder whose genius was not subject to any rules except those of the audiences for which he wrote. But the poem itself qualifies this view:


title: Ben Jonson

text: Some view this elegy as a conventional exercise, but others see it as a heartfelt tribute to the "Sweet Swan of Avon", the "Soul of the Age!" It has been argued that Jonson helped to edit the First Folio, and he may have been inspired to write this poem by reading his fellow playwright's works, a number of which had been previously either unpublished or available in less satisfactory versions, in a relatively complete form.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson was a towering literary figure, and his influence was enormous for he has been described as 'One of the most vigorous minds that ever added to the strength of English literature'. Before the English Civil War, the "Tribe of Ben" touted his importance, and during the Restoration Jonson's satirical comedies and his theory and practice of "humour characters" (which are often misunderstood; see William Congreve's letters for clarification) was extremely influential, providing the blueprint for many Restoration comedies. John Aubrey wrote of Jonson in "Brief Lives". By 1700 Jonson's status began to decline. In the Romantic era, Jonson suffered the fate of being unfairly compared and contrasted to Shakespeare, as the taste for Jonson's type of satirical comedy decreased. Jonson was at times greatly appreciated by the Romantics, but overall he was denigrated for not writing in a Shakespearean vein.


title: Ben Jonson

text: In 2012, after more than two decades of research, Cambridge University Press published the first new edition of Jonson's complete works for 60 years.


title: Ben Jonson

text: As G. E. Bentley notes in "Shakespeare and Jonson: Their Reputations in the Seventeenth Century Compared", Jonson's reputation was in some respects equal to Shakespeare's in the 17th century. After the English theatres were reopened on the Restoration of Charles II, Jonson's work, along with Shakespeare's and Fletcher's, formed the initial core of the Restoration repertory. It was not until after 1710 that Shakespeare's plays (ordinarily in heavily revised forms) were more frequently performed than those of his Renaissance contemporaries. Many critics since the 18th century have ranked Jonson below only Shakespeare among English Renaissance dramatists. Critical judgment has tended to emphasise the very qualities that Jonson himself lauds in his prefaces, in "Timber", and in his scattered prefaces and dedications: the realism and propriety of his language, the bite of his satire, and the care with which he plotted his comedies.


title: Ben Jonson

text: For some critics, the temptation to contrast Jonson (representing art or craft) with Shakespeare (representing nature, or untutored genius) has seemed natural; Jonson himself may be said to have initiated this interpretation in the second folio, and Samuel Butler drew the same comparison in his commonplace book later in the century.


title: Ben Jonson

text: At the Restoration, this sensed difference became a kind of critical dogma. Charles de Saint-Évremond placed Jonson's comedies above all else in English drama, and Charles Gildon called Jonson the father of English comedy. John Dryden offered a more common assessment in the "Essay of Dramatic Poesie," in which his Avatar Neander compares Shakespeare to Homer and Jonson to Virgil: the former represented profound creativity, the latter polished artifice. But "artifice" was in the 17th century almost synonymous with "art"; Jonson, for instance, used "artificer" as a synonym for "artist" ("Discoveries," 33). For Lewis Theobald, too, Jonson "ow[ed] all his Excellence to his Art,” in contrast to Shakespeare, the natural genius. Nicholas Rowe, to whom may be traced the legend that Jonson owed the production of "Every Man in his Humour" to Shakespeare's intercession, likewise attributed Jonson's excellence to learning, which did not raise him quite to the level of genius. A consensus formed: Jonson was the first English poet to understand classical precepts with any accuracy, and he was the first to apply those precepts successfully to contemporary life. But there were also more negative spins on Jonson's learned art; for instance, in the 1750s, Edward Young casually remarked on the way in which Jonson's learning worked, like Samson's strength, to his own detriment. Earlier, Aphra Behn, writing in defence of female playwrights, had pointed to Jonson as a writer whose learning did not make him popular; unsurprisingly, she compares him unfavourably to Shakespeare. Particularly in the tragedies, with their lengthy speeches abstracted from Sallust and Cicero, Augustan critics saw a writer whose learning had swamped his aesthetic judgment.


title: Ben Jonson

text: In this period, Alexander Pope is exceptional in that he noted the tendency to exaggeration in these competing critical portraits: "It is ever the nature of Parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable, as that because Ben Jonson had much the most learning, it was said on the one hand that Shakespear had none at all; and because Shakespear had much the most wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other, that Jonson wanted both." For the most part, the 18th century consensus remained committed to the division that Pope doubted; as late as the 1750s, Sarah Fielding could put a brief recapitulation of this analysis in the mouth of a "man of sense" encountered by David Simple.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Though his stature declined during the 18th century, Jonson was still read and commented on throughout the century, generally in the kind of comparative and dismissive terms just described. Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg translated parts of Peter Whalley's edition into German in 1765. Shortly before the Romantic revolution, Edward Capell offered an almost unqualified rejection of Jonson as a dramatic poet, who (he writes) "has very poor pretensions to the high place he holds among the English Bards, as there is no original manner to distinguish him and the tedious sameness visible in his plots indicates a defect of Genius." The disastrous failures of productions of "Volpone" and "Epicoene" in the early 1770s no doubt bolstered a widespread sense that Jonson had at last grown too antiquated for the contemporary public; if he still attracted enthusiasts such as Earl Camden and William Gifford, he all but disappeared from the stage in the last quarter of the century.


title: Ben Jonson

text: The romantic revolution in criticism brought about an overall decline in the critical estimation of Jonson. Hazlitt refers dismissively to Jonson's "laborious caution." Coleridge, while more respectful, describes Jonson as psychologically superficial: “He was a very accurately observing man; but he cared only to observe what was open to, and likely to impress, the senses.” Coleridge placed Jonson second only to Shakespeare; other romantic critics were less approving. The early 19th century was the great age for recovering Renaissance drama. Jonson, whose reputation had survived, appears to have been less interesting to some readers than writers such as Thomas Middleton or John Heywood, who were in some senses "discoveries" of the 19th century. Moreover, the emphasis which the romantic writers placed on imagination, and their concomitant tendency to distrust studied art, lowered Jonson's status, if it also sharpened their awareness of the difference traditionally noted between Jonson and Shakespeare. This trend was by no means universal, however; William Gifford, Jonson's first editor of the 19th century, did a great deal to defend Jonson's reputation during this period of general decline. In the next era, Swinburne, who was more interested in Jonson than most Victorians, wrote, "The flowers of his growing have every quality but one which belongs to the rarest and finest among flowers: they have colour, form, variety, fertility, vigour: the one thing they want is fragrance” – by “fragrance,” Swinburne means spontaneity.


title: Ben Jonson

text: In the 20th century, Jonson's body of work has been subject to a more varied set of analyses, broadly consistent with the interests and programmes of modern literary criticism. In an essay printed in "The Sacred Wood", T. S. Eliot attempted to repudiate the charge that Jonson was an arid classicist by analysing the role of imagination in his dialogue. Eliot was appreciative of Jonson's overall conception and his "surface", a view consonant with the modernist reaction against Romantic criticism, which tended to denigrate playwrights who did not concentrate on representations of psychological depth. Around mid-century, a number of critics and scholars followed Eliot's lead, producing detailed studies of Jonson's verbal style. At the same time, study of Elizabethan themes and conventions, such as those by E. E. Stoll and M. C. Bradbrook, provided a more vivid sense of how Jonson's work was shaped by the expectations of his time.


title: Ben Jonson

text: The proliferation of new critical perspectives after mid-century touched on Jonson inconsistently. Jonas Barish was the leading figure among critics who appreciated Jonson's artistry. On the other hand, Jonson received less attention from the new critics than did some other playwrights and his work was not of programmatic interest to psychoanalytic critics. But Jonson's career eventually made him a focal point for the revived sociopolitical criticism. Jonson's works, particularly his masques and pageants, offer significant information regarding the relations of literary production and political power, as do his contacts with and poems for aristocratic patrons; moreover, his career at the centre of London's emerging literary world has been seen as exemplifying the development of a fully commodified literary culture. In this respect he is seen as a transitional figure, an author whose skills and ambition led him to a leading role both in the declining culture of patronage and in the rising culture of mass media.


title: Ben Jonson

text: Jonson has been called 'the first poet laureate'. If Jonson's reputation as a playwright has traditionally been linked to Shakespeare, his reputation as a poet has, since the early 20th century, been linked to that of John Donne. In this comparison, Jonson represents the cavalier strain of poetry, emphasising grace and clarity of expression; Donne, by contrast, epitomised the metaphysical school of poetry, with its reliance on strained, baroque metaphors and often vague phrasing. Since the critics who made this comparison (Herbert Grierson for example), were to varying extents rediscovering Donne, this comparison often worked to the detriment of Jonson's reputation.


title: Ben Jonson

text: In his time Jonson was at least as influential as Donne. In 1623, historian Edmund Bolton named him the best and most polished English poet. That this judgment was widely shared is indicated by the admitted influence he had on younger poets. The grounds for describing Jonson as the "father" of cavalier poets are clear: many of the cavalier poets described themselves as his "sons" or his "tribe". For some of this tribe, the connection was as much social as poetic; Herrick described meetings at "the Sun, the Dog, the Triple Tunne". All of them, including those like Herrick whose accomplishments in verse are generally regarded as superior to Jonson's, took inspiration from Jonson's revival of classical forms and themes, his subtle melodies, and his disciplined use of wit. In these respects Jonson may be regarded as among the most important figures in the prehistory of English neoclassicism.


title: Ben Jonson

text: The best of Jonson's lyrics have remained current since his time; periodically, they experience a brief vogue, as after the publication of Peter Whalley's edition of 1756. Jonson's poetry continues to interest scholars for the light which it sheds on English literary history, such as politics, systems of patronage and intellectual attitudes. For the general reader, Jonson's reputation rests on a few lyrics that, though brief, are surpassed for grace and precision by very few Renaissance poems: "On My First Sonne"; "To Celia"; "To Penshurst"; and the epitaph on Salomon Pavy, a boy player abducted from his parents who acted in Jonson's plays.


title: Ben Jonson

text: It is in Jonson's "Timber, or Discoveries..." that he famously quipped on the manner in which language became a measure of the speaker or writer:


title: Ben Jonson

text: As with other English Renaissance dramatists, a portion of Ben Jonson's literary output has not survived. In addition to "The Isle of Dogs" (1597), the records suggest these lost plays as wholly or partially Jonson's work: "Richard Crookback" (1602); "Hot Anger Soon Cold" (1598), with Porter and Henry Chettle; "Page of Plymouth" (1599), with Dekker; and "Robert II, King of Scots" (1599), with Chettle and Dekker. Several of Jonson's masques and entertainments also are not extant: "The Entertainment at Merchant Taylors" (1607); "The Entertainment at Salisbury House for James I" (1608); and "The May Lord" (1613–19).


title: Ben Jonson

text: Finally, there are questionable or borderline attributions. Jonson may have had a hand in "Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother", a play in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The comedy "The Widow" was printed in 1652 as the work of Thomas Middleton, Fletcher and Jonson, though scholars have been intensely sceptical about Jonson's presence in the play. A few attributions of anonymous plays, such as "The London Prodigal", have been ventured by individual researchers, but have met with cool responses.


title: Davis Mills

text: Davis Compton Mills (born October 21, 1998) is an American football quarterback for the Houston Texans of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Stanford and was selected by the Texans in the third round of the 2021 NFL Draft. Mills became Houston's starter during his first season and set the franchise record for rookie passing yards.


title: Davis Mills

text: Mills was born on October 21, 1998, in Atlanta, Georgia, later attending Greater Atlanta Christian School in Norcross, Georgia. During his career, he passed for 6,290 yards and 66 touchdowns. He was selected to the 2017 U.S. Army All-American Bowl, but was unable to play due to an injury. A five-star recruit, Mills was ranked as the top quarterback in his class. He committed to Stanford University to play college football.


title: Davis Mills

text: Mills redshirted his freshman year for the Stanford Cardinal in 2017. In 2018, he appeared in one game as a backup to K. J. Costello. He entered 2019 as a backup to Costello, but started six of eight games after Costello was injured. Against Washington State, he set a school record with 504 passing yards. He finished the 2019 season completing 158 of 241 passes for 1,960 yards, 11 touchdowns, and five interceptions. Mills played in five games during Stanford's pandemic-shortened 2020 season, completing 129 of 195 passes for 1,508 yards with seven touchdowns and three interceptions.


title: Davis Mills

text: Mills was selected 67th overall by the Houston Texans in the third round of the 2021 NFL Draft. He signed his four-year rookie contract, worth $5.2 million, with the Texans on May 26, 2021.


title: Davis Mills

text: Due to incumbent starting quarterback Deshaun Watson being ruled inactive, Mills was named the second option behind Tyrod Taylor. He made his NFL debut during the second half of the Week 2 game against the Cleveland Browns after Taylor was injured, throwing for 102 yards, a touchdown, and an interception in the 31–21 defeat. Mills made his starting debut against the Carolina Panthers the following week, in which he threw for 168 yards and a touchdown. The Texans subsequently lost 20–9. In Week 4, Mills struggled against the Buffalo Bills, completing 11 of 21 passes for 87 yards and four interceptions in a 40–0 shutout defeat. Mills rebounded the following week when he completed 21 of 29 passes for 312 yards and three touchdowns against the New England Patriots. However, the Texans lost 25–22 after surrendering a 22–9 lead in the third quarter.


title: Davis Mills

text: Mills resumed his backup duties after Taylor returned in Week 5, but ineffective performances from Taylor led to Mills replacing him during a 31–0 shutout defeat in Week 13 against the Indianapolis Colts. Following the game, Mills was announced as the starter for the remainder of the season. Mills won his first NFL game during Week 15 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, completing 19 of 30 passes for 209 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception in the 30–16 victory. He helped lead the Texans to a 41–29 upset over the Los Angeles Chargers the following week, but the game marked the Texans' final victory for the season.


title: Davis Mills

text: Despite winning only two games, Mills set the franchise record for rookie passing yards at 2,664. His 16 touchdowns and 66.8 completion percentage were also the second-highest among rookie quarterbacks in 2021, behind Mac Jones.


title: Davis Mills

text: With Watson traded to the Cleveland Browns and the departure of Taylor, Mills was named the Texans' starter for 2022. He began the season against the Indianapolis Colts, completing 23 of 37 passes for 240 yards and two touchdowns. The game ended in a 20–20 tie, the first in franchise history for the Texans. After a Week 11 loss to the Washington Commanders, Mills was benched in favor of Kyle Allen for the Texans Week 12 matchup against the Miami Dolphins. After starting two games where he struggled, Allen was benched in favor of Mills.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The "Kuznetsov"-class aircraft carrying cruiser (Russian: Авиано́сцы ти́па «Кузнецо́в» "Avianо́stsii Tipa "Kuznetsо́v""), Soviet designation Project 1143.5, is a class of aircraft carriers operated by the Russian and Chinese navies. Originally designed for the Soviet Navy, the "Kuznetsov"-class ships use a ski-jump to launch high-performance conventional aircraft in a STOBAR configuration. The design represented a major advance in Soviet fleet aviation over the carriers, which could only launch VSTOL aircraft. The Soviet Union's classification for the class was as a heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser, which permits the ships to transit the Turkish Straits without violating the Montreux Convention. However, the Chinese variants are classified as aircraft carriers.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: Because of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the three "Kuznetsov"-class ships were built over a protracted construction period of almost four decades. Two ships were originally laid down at the Nikolayev South Shipyard in the Ukrainian SSR, to be followed by the first of the "Ulyanovsk"-class nuclear-powered supercarriers. Only the lead ship had been commissioned when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and the ship now serves in the Russian Navy. Construction of her sister ship "Varyag" was abandoned until 1998, when an independent Ukraine sold the uncompleted ship to China for use as a floating casino, along with a complete set of blueprints. "Varyag" was eventually completed and commissioned in 2012 as China's first aircraft carrier, the Type 001 aircraft carrier . China subsequently constructed a third ship to a modified Type 002 design, commissioning in 2019.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The "Kuznetsov"-class ships were described by their Soviet builders as "Tyazholiy Avianesushchiy Kreyser" (TAKR or TAVKR) – "heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser” – intended to support and defend strategic missile-carrying submarines, surface ships, and maritime missile-carrying aircraft of the Soviet fleet. In its fleet defense role, "Admiral Kuznetsov"s P-700 Granit (SS-N-19 NATO reporting name: "Shipwreck") anti-ship cruise missiles, 3K95 Kinzhal ("Gauntlet") surface-to-air missiles, and Su-33 ("Flanker-D") aircraft are its main weapons. The fixed-wing aircraft on "Kuznetsov" are intended for air superiority operations to protect a deployed task force. The carrier also carries numerous helicopters for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and search and rescue (SAR) operations.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The Russian naval system classifies its "Kuznetsov"-class ship as a heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser because it was fitted with long-range anti-ship cruise missiles. Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, aircraft carriers heavier than 15,000 tons may not pass through the Turkish Straits. Since "Kuznetsov" exceeds the displacement limit, it would have been confined to the Black Sea if it had been classified as an aircraft carrier. However, there is no tonnage restriction on other capital ships operated by Black Sea Powers. Turkey has allowed to pass through the Straits, and no other signatory to the Montreux Convention has objected to its designation as an aircraft cruiser.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The Chinese aircraft carrier "Liaoning" is armed with air-defense weapons, but it is not equipped with the anti-ship or anti-submarine missiles that are on "Admiral Kuznetsov". Instead, the hangar bay was extended to carry more aircraft.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: In October 1978 the Soviet government decided to continue the production of additional Project 1143 ("Kiev"-class) aircraft carriers, with the fifth vessel built with improved features like catapults and arresting gear. This resulted in the Project 1143.5 plan created by the Nevskoye Bureau and approved at the end of 1979. As originally planned, Project 1143.5 was to have a full load displacement of 65,000 tons, CATOBAR capability, and an air wing based around fixed-wing aircraft and Kamov helicopters. However, by 1980 Soviet defense minister Dmitry Ustinov ordered the deletion of the catapults, reduction of the ship's displacement by 10,000 tons, and revision of the air component toward VSTOL aircraft. The design was revised to support only VSTOL aircraft under the project name "Nitka", but then was revised again to its final configuration to provide for fixed-wing aircraft by adding a 12-degree ski-jump.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The hull design is derived from the 1982 , but is larger in both length and beam. The "Kiev"-class ships had only an angled flight deck, with surface weaponry on the foredeck. The "Kuznetsov"-class is the first Soviet carrier to be designed with a full-length flight deck. The ship's 12 anti-ship cruise missiles are located in launchers below the flight deck, just aft of the ski-jump.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The aircraft carriers are of a STOBAR configuration: Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery. Short take-off is achieved by using a 12-degree ski-jump on the bow. There is also an angled deck with arresting wires, which allows aircraft to land without interfering with launching aircraft. The flight deck has a total area of . Two aircraft elevators, on the starboard side forward and aft of the island, move aircraft between the hangar deck and the flight deck.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: In the original project specifications, the ship should be able to carry up to 33 fixed-wing aircraft and 12 helicopters . The primary aircraft carried are Sukhoi Su-33 fighters, naval variants of the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker. Kamov Ka-27 naval utility helicopters and its subsequent variants make up the helicopter wing, providing anti-submarine, maritime patrol and naval assault mobility capabilities. In addition, the Kamov Ka-52K "Katran" attack helicopter, a naval variant of the Kamov Ka-50, can also be included in its air wing.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The "Kuznetsov"-class ships were originally designed as aircraft cruisers. "Kuznetsov" carries twelve launchers for P-700 Granit (SS-N-19 "Shipwreck") anti-ship surface-to-surface missiles, which also form the main armament of the s. The Granits would be stored in 12 vertical launchers located beneath the ship's front deck, just before the inclined ski-jump. The top deck hatches of these launchers would open to allow the missiles to be fired, however, when open they prevented the simultaneous launch of aircraft. The heavy surface armament makes "Kuznetsov" different from other countries' aircraft carriers, which carry only defensive armament and rely on their aircraft for strike power.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: For long-range air defense, "Kuznetsov" carries 24 vertical launchers for Tor missile system (SA-N-9 "Gauntlet") surface-to-air missiles with 192 missiles. For close-range air defense, the ship carries eight Kashtan close-in weapon system (CIWS) mounts. Each mount has two launchers for 9M311 SAMs, twin GSh-30 30 mm rotary cannons, and a radar/optronic director. The ship also carries six AK-630 30 mm rotary cannons in single mounts. For defense against underwater attack, the ship carries the UDAV-1 ASW rocket launcher.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The Russian Navy reportedly removed the Granit missile tubes in the late 2000s to make room for a larger hangar bay, but it was never clear that the tubes were ever actually removed. During a major overhaul set to begin in September 2017, the P-700 tubes will be replaced with new vertical launch tubes capable of housing newer Kalibr and P-800 Oniks cruise missiles. Air defense upgrades will include replacement of the Kashtan CIWS with the Pantsir-M and the 3K95 Kinzhal/Tor system with the Poliment-Redut system.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: "Admiral Kuznetsov" has D/E band air and surface target acquisition radar (passive electronically scanned array), F band surface search radar, G/H band flight control radar, I band navigation radar, and four K band fire-control radars for the Kashtan CIWS.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The ship has hull-mounted medium- and low-frequency search and attack sonar. The ASW helicopters have surface search radar, dipping sonar, sonobuoys, and magnetic anomaly detectors.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: "Admiral Kuznetsov" is conventionally powered by eight gas-fired boilers and four steam turbines, each producing , driving four shafts with fixed-pitch propellers. The maximum speed is , and her range at maximum speed is . At , her maximum economical range is .


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: "Admiral Kuznetsov" has been plagued by years of technical problems. The vessel's steam turbines and turbo-pressurised boilers have been reported to be so unreliable that the carrier is accompanied by a large ocean-going tug whenever it deploys, in case it breaks down. There are also flaws in the water piping system, which causes it to freeze during winter. To prevent pipes from bursting, the water is turned off in most of the cabins, and half the latrines do not work.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: The Chinese Type 001 ships are configured as aircraft carriers. The cruise missile launchers were never installed, and the launcher base was removed during the refit to incorporate a larger hangar bay. The air-defense system consists of FL-3000N surface-to-air-missiles and the Type 1130 CIWS.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: Several design changes were made to the Type 002 aircraft carrier. Length, width, and displacement have been slightly increased. The island of the ship has been reduced in size to increase the size of the flight deck, and it carries a 3-D phased array radar. The ship claims can carry 36 aircraft instead of the 24 J-15 fighters carried by CNS "Liaoning".


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: "Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov" was designed by the Neva Design Bureau, St. Petersburg, and built at the Nikolayev South Shipyard (Chernomorskoye Shipyard) in the Ukrainian SSR. She was launched in 1985, commissioned in 1990, and became fully operational in 1995. The vessel was named "Riga", "Leonid Brezhnev", and "Tbilisi", before finally being named after Soviet admiral Nikolay Kuznetsov.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: During the winter of 1995–1996, "Admiral Kuznetsov" deployed to the Mediterranean Sea to mark the 300th anniversary of the Russian Navy. In late 2000, "Admiral Kuznetsov" went to sea for recovery and salvage operations for the submarine . In late 2007 and early 2008, "Admiral Kuznetsov" again deployed to the Mediterranean. Most recently, "Admiral Kuznetsov" was deployed to the Mediterranean in late 2016 and early 2017 to support Russian operations in Syria.


title: Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier

text: Although technical and financial problems have limited operations, "Admiral Kuznetsov" is expected to remain in service until approximately 2025.