Vänskap på Parnassen

Akademisk tillfällesdiktning på 1720-talet

Abstract

Friendship on Parnassus: Occasional Poetry in Swedish Dissertations of the 1720s

In early modern Sweden many thousands of academic dissertations were printed. These usually contained a large number of paratexts, including eloquent homages addressing patrons as well as respondents. Not much scholarly attention has been paid to these texts; the present article aims at exemplifying how social interdependence and mutual solidarity in the early 18th century are expressed in the praise directed to the respondents. Students in Sweden were members of so-called ”student nations” based on the students’ geographical origin. It is shown that the authors of the poems or eloquent prose pieces included in the dissertations were usually friends belonging to the same student organisation or the respondent’s own pupil, who paid homage to his tutor. At the centre of the article stands the future vicar and inventor Nils Brelin (1690–1753). Analyses of his Swedish-language poetry and his painting of a student’s progress towards the Temple of Honour – commissioned by Brelin’s student nation – are used to elucidate the techniques and aesthetics informing the period’s academic epideictic writing.