L'Epy, Heliogenes de
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of an unidentified seventeenth-century UK author (? -? ), a name which translates roughly as "Sun-born of the Sword"; his claim to have been born a French gentleman in 1633 near Lyons is an invention, though the date of birth may be genuine. His Fantastic Voyage, A Voyage into Tartary, Containing a Curious Description of that Country [for full title see Checklist] (1689) depicts, perhaps for the first time, the discovery of a Lost World, a circular land in central Asia, at the centre of which lies the equally circular City of Heliopolis. Inhabited by sun-worshipping descendants of ancient Greeks, it is a republican Utopia which maintains remarkable control over its own advanced Technologies; a museum contains relics of flying machines and other Inventions that the Heliopolitans have no use for. E F Bleiler suggests that a pressing reason for the author's anonymity was his text's extremely forthright treatment of Religion: after L'Epy shows them the New Testament – expecting them to see the light of true religion – the ruling scholars of Heliopolis place the text in the mythology section of their central Library. As Bleiler also makes clear, A Voyage into Tartary is a pre-Enlightenment text, with all that implies for rational discourse, though the dark side of Enlightenment reasonableness about the world is also revealed by the fact that those who disagree with the way of life in Heliopolis – those who, in other words, are disharmonious – are treated as mentally unstable. [JC]
"Heliogenes de L'Epy"
born
works
- A Voyage into Tartary, Containing a Curious Description of that Country, with Parts of Greece and Turky; the Manners, Opinions, and Religion of the Inhabitants Therein: With some Other Incidents (London: Printed by Thomas Hodgkin and are to be sold by Randal Taylor, 1689) [the spelling "Turky" is sic: binding unknown/]
about the author
- E F Bleiler. "L'Epy's A Voyage into Tartary. An Enlightenment Ideal Society". (Summer 1988 Extrapolation) [mag/]
links
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