IMC 2026: Sessions

Time preoccupied not only medieval philosophers, but narrative texts also repeatedly refer to time, its passing, and the transience that comes with it, as Hartmann von Aue's prologue to Iwein makes clear. Here, honour is introduced as an effective means of countering the passing of time and forgetting. This concept is already anchored in early heroic epics such as Beowulf. Beyond gaining honour and thus entry into the memoria, the texts also experiment with other approaches to override, reverse, or fundamentally negate the passage of time. This is evident, e.g., in the freezing of time, its cyclical nature, or the introduction of other temporal structures, e.g., in the context of an otherworld or through the use of magical objects that manipulate the characters' sense of time. Religious sense of time is also addressed in legends of saints and verse novellas, such as the tale of the transfixed monk or the legend of the Seven Sleepers.

These few examples demonstrate that the understanding of time and its deliberate manipulation within narratives is a phenomenon that is repeatedly used for various functions.

The two proposed sections on time anomalies not only demonstrate these anomalies using a wide range of examples from religious, courtly, heroic epic literature, and medieval maps, but also illuminate their functions and, using these examples, question the medieval understanding of the passage of time and its subjective perception.