IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 731: Material Expressions of Temporality
Tuesday 7 July 2026, 14:15-15:45
| Sponsor: | Medieval French in the Midwest |
|---|---|
| Organiser: | Daisy Delogu, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Chicago |
| Moderator/Chair: | Emma Cayley, School of Languages, Cultures & Societies, University of Leeds |
| Paper 731-a | Emblematising Time (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - Decorative Arts, Heraldry, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Political Thought |
| Paper 731-b | Honied Time: Bees and the Christian Calendar (Language: English) Index terms: Liturgy, Manuscripts and Palaeography |
| Paper 731-c | (Pre)Modern Times: Labour, Profit, and the Mechanisation of Time (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - General, Economics - Rural, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Technology |
| Abstract | This session explores the ways in which time-ideation and time-experience find form in text and image. Manuscripts of moralized literature mingle Biblical and mythological creation history, their illustrations shaping how they are consumed; poetry treats time in the natural world, relating bees' work in their hives to the cyclical Christian calendar. Treatises of agricultural advice foreground the seasonality of labor and also refer to human time-craft by way of clocks, and all events sit within a Christian framework. Examples of personal devices among the nobility incorporate words, putting a “time stamp” on individual identity; their mottoes evoke their holders’ relation to temporality. |