| Paper 1504-a | Has the Future Already Come About?: An Investigation into Early Medieval Conceptions of Time, c. 900-1140
(Language: English)
Alisa Koonce, Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography, Philosophy, Science, Theology |
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| Paper 1504-b | The Presence of the Past in the Future: Merlin Reconstructs Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain
(Language: English)
Karen Sullivan, Division of Languages & Literature, Bard College, New York
Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Language and Literature - Latin, Mentalities |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
According to some medieval theories of time, the future exists simultaneously with the present and the past. One result of such an usual theory is that a person who was rich, at present lost his wealth, and in the future will acquire it again, is paradoxically both rich and poor at once. My paper investigates this conception of time which developed within the writings of those influenced by Boethian natural philosophy (c. 900-1140); my paper analyses the reasons why such a theory was held, opponents of the theory, and its further consequences, specifically as it applies to economic fortunes.
Paper -b:
If there is anything that distinguishes Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae it is his relation to time. While the British kings with whom Merlin is interacting in this text understand time as a series of sequential moments, unanticipated, as they hover in the future, and forgotten, as they fall into the past, Merlin understands time as an eternal present, rendered meaningful by his knowledge of what is to come and what has gone by. He knows, for example, that if one wants warriors who have recently fallen in battle to be remembered in the distant future, one must commemorate them with enormous stones from the distant past. What is it about a marvel (which is what Stonehenge is perceived as being in Geoffrey's text) that breaks down the boundaries of past, present, and future? How does Merlin's conception of time resemble learned conceptions of time in the twelfth century, and how does it differ from them? What fantasy of time does his extraordinary knowledge of past and future reflect?
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