Forgotten Love. The Poetry of Torsten Rudeen
Torsten Rudeen (1661–1729) was a productive and much-appreciatedwriter of occasional poetry, especially during the 1680s, but his most notablecontribution to Swedish literature are his love poems, not least those tohis wife Anna (1675–1695). These were not printed in his own time andhave never been scholarly collected and edited, a reason why Rudeen todayis less known. His poetry on love and matrimony will, however, be publishedby Lars Burman in a critical edition in early 2019 (Svenska Vitterhetssamfundet).This article introduces Rudeen who harkened from Värmlandand studied at Uppsala University. He was appointed poëseos professorat Turku (Åbo) University in 1692 and Superintendent (Bishop) inKarlstad in 1709. He crowned his career as Bishop in Linköping. The articlediscusses the fate of lesser-known but interesting authorships, andhighlights the poetic immediacy of Torsten Rudeen’s sentiments, unusualfor the Swedish 17th century.