Description
Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume explore the nature of time, our God-given medium of ascent, known, as Augustine puts it, through the ordered study of the “liberal disciplines that carry the mind to the divine (disciplinae liberales intellectum efferunt ad divina)”: grammar and dialectic, for example, to promote thinking; geometry and astronomy to grasp the dimensions of our reality; music, an invisible substance like time itself, as an exemplary bridge to the unseen substance of thoughts, ideas, and the nature of God (theology). This ascending course of study rests on procedure, progress, and attainment — on before, following, and afterwards — whose goal is an ascending erudition that lets us finally contemplate, as Augustine says in De ordine, our invisible medium — time — within time itself: time is immaterial, but experienced as substantial. The essays here look at projects that chronicle time “from the beginning,” that clarify ideas of creation “in time” and “simultaneous times,” and the interrelationships between measured time and eternity, including “no-time.” Essays also examine time as revealed in social and political contexts, as told by clocks, as notated in music and embodied in memorializing stone. In the final essays of this volume, time is understood as the subject and medium of consciousness. As Adrian Bardon says, “time is not so much a ‘what’ as a ‘how’”: a solution to “organizing experience and modeling events.” Contributors are (in order within the volume) Jesse W. Torgerson, Ken A. Grant, Danielle B. Joyner, Nancy van Deusen, Peter Casarella, Aaron Canty, Jordan Kirk, Vera von der Osten-Sacken, Gerhard Jaritz, Jason Aleksander, Sara E. Melzer, Mark Howard, Andrew Eschelbacher, Hans J. Rindisbacher, James F. Knapp, Peggy A. Knapp, Raymond Knapp, Michael Cole, Ike Kamphof and Leonard Michael Koff.
Table of ContentsContents List of Figures vii List of Abbreviations ix List of Contributors xi Introduction 1 1 Time and Again: Early Medieval Chronography and the Recurring Holy First-Created Day of George Synkellos 18 Jesse W. Torgerson 2 Registering Rome: The Eternal City Through the Eyes of Pope Gregory vii 58 Ken A. Grant 3 Building Block of Times, Knowledge and Wisdom in the Hortus deliciarum 78 Danielle B. Joyner 4 Simultaneous Times: Synderesis and its Musical Exemplification 112 Nancy van Deusen 5 Trinity, Simultaneity, and the Music of Creation in St. Bonaventure 141 Peter Casarella 6 Hugh of St. Cher and Thomas Aquinas: Time and the Interpretation of the Psalms 160 Aaron Canty 7 Walter Burley on the Time of Unknowing 177 Jordan Kirk 8 Theological and Social Time: The Case of the Beguines 201 Vera von der Osten-Sacken 9 Medieval Mechanical Clocks 212 Gerhard Jaritz 10 Providence, Temporal Authority, and the Illustrious Vernacular in Dante’s Political Philosophy 231 Jason Aleksander 11 Time, Myth and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns: Racine and Fontenelle 261 Sara E. Melzer 12 Time and Space as Manipulated Materials in Rameau’s Les Cyclopes 284 Mark Howard 13 Resisting Death’s Finality: Jules Dalou’s Blanqui Tomb and the Dialectics of Memorialization 299 Andrew Eschelbacher 14 End of Story: Closed Form and Open Time 314 Hans J. Rindisbacher 15 Time and the Self in Virginia Woolf and Richard Powers 331 James F. Knapp and Peggy A. Knapp 16 Temporality and Control in Sondheim’s Middle Period: From Company to Sunday in the Park with George 352 Raymond Knapp 17 Remembering the Future 375 Michael Cole 18 “Real Time”. On the Whereabouts of Time in New Media: The Case of Webcams 388 Ike Kamphof 19 No-Time in Non-Places 411 Leonard Michael Koff Index 457
