Ridicule and politics

Uppsala student carnivals in the 1840s

Authors

• Johan Sjöberg

Abstract

Ridicule and Politics: Uppsala Student Carnivals in the 1840s

From the late eighteenth century onwards, new conceptions on youth and its political role spread throughout Western Europe, and during the nineteenth century university students began to take on the role of political opinion formers. The phenomenon of students participating in politics challenged the traditional patriarchal view of the social role appropriate for young people. In the student carnivals in Uppsala, politics was not isolated from the rest of the student’s self-image, and the boundaries between the everyday, the ridiculous and the political were not always very sharply drawn. The student carnivals in Uppsala give us a unique opportunity to see how the different ideals of studenthood coexisted.