Astronomy, Latinity, Enlightenment: Niels Krog Bredal’s Poems Commemorating the Transits of Venus, 1761 and 1769
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/10037/10209Dato
2016-11-16Type
Journal articleTidsskriftartikkel
Peer reviewed
Forfatter
Aspaas, Per PippinSammendrag
The subject of this article is three pieces of elegiac Latin poetry, written in Trondheim by the
mayor of the town, Niels Krog Bredal. The occasion for the poems were the transits of Venus
occurring in the years 1761 and 1769, a rare phenomenon attracting considerable attention
from natural philosophers of the Enlightenment and spurring numerous scientific expeditions
across the globe. Bredal wrote the poems to commemorate expeditions undertaken by Thomas
Bugge and Urban Bruun Aaskow (Trondheim, 1761), Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein
(Trondheim, 1769), and Maximilianus Hell (Vardø, 1769). Bredal is primarily remembered as
an important, albeit controversial, figure within Dano-Norwegian theatre history. His Latin
poems reveal another side of his character, a person with a keen interest in the natural
sciences, and more than willing to express his insights through poetry. The article includes an
edition with critical apparatus, translation, and commentary.
Beskrivelse
This is the accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Symbolae Osloenses 2016, 90:205-234, available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00397679.2016.1235875