Relaxing the principle of decorum: Early modern Swedish funeral poetry in a new light

The received view of 17th and 18th-century funerary poetry is that it is an established genre governed by set rules, encouraging poets to observe decorum. However, during the ten years that Daniel Möller has been doing research in this field, he has observed that a radical change occurs in the way certain influential poets employ the principle of decorum, thus affecting the development of Swedish occasional verse.

In the 1690s, the principle of decorum, hitherto prevalent in funeral poetry, is questioned in Sweden as some very important poets begin to depart from the practice favoured both by the handbooks and earlier poets. In Daniel Möller’s thesis on Swedish epitaphs on animals 1670–1760, he puts forward the hypothesis that this genre became a literary free zone in which it was possible to test the boundaries of literature. In her review of his thesis, Anna Cullhed emphasises that “there are good reasons to test Möller’s hypothesis on a wider material”.

The relaxation of the principle of decorum in early modern Swedish funeral poetry involved a diversification of the use of this genre. No examination of the successive stages that the destruction of the doctrine of decorum underwent has been made so far. This is surprising in view of the many repercussions it has had not only on funeral poetry but on occasional literature at large. In this projec, Daniel Möller’s aim is to ask what the expressions of this relaxation were and what it meant for occasional writing in Sweden between 1600 and 1800.