Antika poesicitat i tidigmoderna svenska dissertationer

Poetry Quotations in Swedish early modern academic Dissertations (Antika poesicitat i tidig­moderna svenska dissertationer) Academic texts from the 17th and 18th centuries often contain quotations of poetry, the great majority from the classical antiquity. Even if this is well known, it appears to be little studied. This paper accounts for a study of the presence and function of such quotations in academic dissertations from Uppsala University 1625–1850. The study includes a survey of the extent to which poetry is quoted in the dissertations in various subjects and periods between the years 1625–1850. Further the study explores which poets are most quoted in the material and what arguments poetry quotations usually support. The survey shows that among the periods stud­ied poetry is quoted most frequently in period 2 (1685–1710), whereas it is hardly quoted at all in the following period 3 (1760–1785). The paper discusses reasons for the "rise and fall" of the poetry quotation and makes comparisons to other tendencies in academic writing, changes in the academic milieu and changes in poetics with regard to what should be consid­ered the right use and purpose of poetry, in society and in university education. The use of the poetry in period 2 for argumentative purposes corresponds roughly to the poetical theory of the time. Solely decorative purposes appear to be rare, while poetry appears generally to have been quoted in its capacity of being specialist literature in various disciplines. Alongside the disciplines studied here, medicine and political science, poetry quotations represented fields of knowledge such as history, ethics and philosophy, as well as in then undefined fields such as psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology and ethnology