Epic
Peder Paars
Ludvig Holberg · 1720
Synopsis
In 1608, Peder Paars, a merchant of Kalundborg, sets sail with his squire Per Ruus to join his fiancée Dorothea in Aarhus. Hostile to their union, the goddess Avind obtains a storm from Aeolus, and the ship is wrecked near the island of Anholt, whose inhabitants live off what the sea throws up, under the authority of the bailiff Woldemar. The gods of Olympus keep meddling in the journey, which is part ancient epic and part parody of it.
Context
The poem appeared in four books from 1719 to 1720, under the name of a Kalundborg brewer, Hans Mickelsen, and with the prefaces and three hundred and thirty-four notes of an invented commentator, Just Justesen. This burlesque epic parodies the Aeneid and the Odyssey. Frederik Rostgaard, owner of Anholt, lodged a complaint against the image given of the islanders; according to Danske Studier, the king and his council rejected it on 12 February 1720. The third edition, the same year, fixed the text. Bergliot Stromsoe translated it into English verse in 1962.
Who it is for
A mock-heroic poem in Danish, in four books, with no French translation, readable in English since 1962.
Prizes and reception
The first great secular bestseller in Denmark, and for Britannica the first classic of the Danish language.
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The pages consulted to check this page.