World’s first doctoral dissertation on Nostradamus

Nostradamus was not a prophet – he was a poet. This is what Anna Carlstedt maintains in a dissertation at Stockholm University in Sweden.

Thousands of books have been written about the prophecies of Nostradamus, which first appeared in France in 1555. What these works have in common is that they have focused on the prophetic aspect of the work Les Centuries, which is usually referred to simply as The Prophecies. Few have noted, however, that Nostradamus’ famous work is written in rhymed verse. And no scholarly dissertation has been written on the subject, neither in Sweden nor anywhere else. Until now. Anna Carlstedt from Stockholm University in Sweden has analyzed the language, style, and genre of Nostradamus’ work. She has compared his Renaissance French with the language of other poets of his time, such as Rabelais and Scève. She has also investigated Nostradamus’ idiosyncratic style, which helps create the mystique of the text. The stylistic study of the dissertation includes a thematic analysis, which shows that the number of themes in Nostradamus can be reduced to three: war, disasters, and the (mis)governance of rulers. Using linguistic and stylistic methods, Anna Carlstedt shows how Nostradamus creates in his poetry a pitch black fresco of human misery, with descriptions that are applicable to all epochs.

Nostradamus stands out primarily as a humanist and Renaissance man: he was a physician, astrologist, translator, and author. The message of his more or less apocalyptic descriptions of disasters is that humans are themselves responsible for the predicament of the world and what is to come. Nostradamus’ text comes across as shockingly different and radical in a time when both happiness and sorrows were ascribed to the will of God, when the Inquisition was burning dissidents at the stake, and when the purpose of poetry was to praise either a ruler or one’s lady love, according to Anna Carlstedt.

The title of the dissertation (translated into English): The Oracular Poetry of Nostradamus: Language, Style, and Genre in the Work Les Centuries (The Prophecies). —–