How was time experienced in the Middle Ages? What attitudes informed people's awareness of its passing - especially when tensions beween eternity and human time shaped perceptions in profound and often unexpected ways? Is it a human universal or culturally specific - or both?
The essays here offer a range of perspectives on and approaches to personal, artistic, literary, ecclesiastical and visionary responses to time during this period. They cover a wide and diverse variety of material, from historical prose to lyrical verse, and from liturgical and visionary writing to textiles and images, both real and imagined, across the literary and devotional cultures of England, Italy, Germany and Russia. From anxieties about misspent time to moments of pure joy in the here and now, from concerns about worldly affairs to experiences of being freed from the trappings of time, the volume demonstrates how medieval cultures and societies engaged with and reflected on their own temporalities.
ANNIE SUTHERLAND is Associate Professor, University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in Old and Middle English, Somerville College; ALMUT SUERBAUM is Associate Professor, University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in Medieval German, Somerville College.
Contributors: David Bowe, Philippa Byrne, Manuele Gragnolati, Jim Harris, Jonas Hermann, Racha Kirakosian, C.M. MacRobert, Francesca Southerden, Almut Suerbaum, Annie Sutherland, Katharine Sykes, Benjamin Thompson,
Essays investigating the question of time, and how it was perceived, both in philosophical/religious terms, and in reality.
