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Wreaths of Time: Perceiving the Year in Early Modern Germany (1475-1650)

Lyon, Nicole M.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447158213

Abstract Details

2015, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: History.
“Wreaths of Time” broadly explores perceptions of the year’s time in Germany during the long sixteenth century (approx. 1475-1650), an era that experienced unprecedented change with regards to the way the year was measured, reckoned and understood. Many of these changes involved the transformation of older, medieval temporal norms and habits. The Gregorian calendar reforms which began in 1582 were a prime example of the changing practices and attitudes towards the year’s time, yet this event was preceded by numerous other shifts. The gradual turn towards astronomically-based divisions between the four seasons, for example, and the use of 1 January as the civil new year affected depictions and observations of the year throughout the sixteenth century. Relying on a variety of printed cultural historical sources—especially sermons, calendars, almanacs and treatises—“Wreaths of Time” maps out the historical development and legacy of the year as a perceived temporal concept during this period. In doing so, the project bears witness to the entangled nature of human time perception in general, and early modern perceptions of the year specifically. During this period, the year was commonly perceived through three main modes: the year of the civil calendar, the year of the Church, and the year of nature, with its astronomical, agricultural and astrological cycles. As distinct as these modes were, however, they were often discussed in richly corresponding ways by early modern authors. Rather than extricating these strands of understanding, each chapter engages a site of entanglement or tension between multiple notions of the year’s time, drawing attention to the rich conceptual syntheses that characterized temporal understandings of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century world. The picture that emerges sheds light on an era during which the year changed and solidified as a temporal concept. While, to some degree, the year’s time gave way to greater uniformity during the sixteenth century, this process was highly nuanced and marked by the hallmarks of early modern German mentality, imbued with Lutheran apocalypticism and humoral astrology, among other things. Moreover, time and the perception thereof were strongly tied to spiritual paradigms that viewed the year and its temporality as created and sustained by God. The various religious and calendrical reforms of the sixteenth century did little to dissuade this spiritualization of time perception. More often than not, they prompted new ways of envisioning time’s sacredness, and as such led not to the desacralization but rather the resacralization of the year’s time.
Sigrun Haude, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Robert Kolb, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Maura O'Connor, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Tracy Teslow, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
351 p.
History
Early Modern Europe; Germany; Time perception; History; Religious History; Calendars

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Lyon, N. M. (2015). Wreaths of Time: Perceiving the Year in Early Modern Germany (1475-1650) [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447158213

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Lyon, Nicole. Wreaths of Time: Perceiving the Year in Early Modern Germany (1475-1650). 2015. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447158213.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Lyon, Nicole. "Wreaths of Time: Perceiving the Year in Early Modern Germany (1475-1650)." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447158213

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1447158213
4,186
© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Wreaths of Time: Perceiving the Year in Early Modern Germany (1475-1650) by Nicole M. Lyon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.