The Happy Life. Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht on Enlightenment Philosophy and Earthly Happiness

This chapter examines how Swedish 18th-century poet Hedvig Charlotta NordenflychtHedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht (1718–1763) discusses earthly happinessHappiness and enlightenmentEnlightenment philosophy in three longer poems: “Important Questions to a Scholar. With the Author’s Own Reply” (1744); “Verse-Epistle to CritonCriton” (1754); and “The Defence of Women. Against J. J. RousseauRousseau, Citizen of Geneva” (1761). These poems share an underlining concern: how does contemporary, enlightenment thought refigure the meaning of a happy life? Nordenflycht does not develop a consistent theory about happiness in the three poems. Added to her choice to favor poetry over prose, this may explain why scholars have yet to fully examine the philosophical aspects of Nordenflycht’s writing. Yet as this article seeks to demonstrate, Nordenflycht engages profoundly and often pioneeringly with the classic philosophical issue of the happy life.