Dumb Beasts in Hallowed Tombs - Daniel Möller

. .

Résumé :
When Kersti Berg died in 1735, she was honoured with an obituary in the form of a poetic epitaph composed by Olof von Dalin. A modern-day reader can easily get the impression that Dalin's poem is an example of a funerary poem for a human being - one of the eighteenth century's most common poetic genres. Kersti Berg, however, was a dog, and Dalin's poem belongs to another genre, namely, the animal epitaph. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this was a frequently practised form of poetry which could be used for a great many purposes, from imitations of ancient originals to masked poems composed to convey a political message or to further the writer's career.

Biographie:
Daniel MÖller has a doctorate in literature from Lund University, Sweden, where he is associate professor and does research on early modern literature.

Sommaire:
Contents: Animal studies - Animal epitaph - Funerary poetry - Epitaph culture - Early modern literature - Occasional poetry - Rhetoric - Baroque - Panegyric - Erotic poetry - Court poetry - Imitatio - Decorum - 17<UP>th</UP> and 18<UP>th</UP> century Sweden - Charles XI - Charles XII - Israel HolmstrÖm - Sophia Elisabet Brenner - Olof von Dalin.