Time and Early Modern Thought

Northern Renaissance Roses Seminar, 9-10 May

Run jointly by the universities of Lancaster and York, with support from the SRS, this conference will look at ‘time’ in the renaissance. We will consider this broadly, addressing such questions as:

• Was there a ‘concept of time’, distinct to the period? What ideas of time were inherited from antiquity?
• How was time related to music and poetics, measure and proportion? How was it perceived, on the pulse, in the heart and on the brain?
• How was time related to timelessness, quotidian time to divine time? What did it mean, as Plato has it, to suppose time is a moving image of eternity?
• Was the relationship between time and mortality – emblematised in the Renaissance hour-glass and skull – terrifying or mere renaissance kitsch?
• What were the functions of early modern antiquarianism and the obsession with chronologies?
• How does renaissance theatre figure time, and what is the relationship between dramatic time and quotidian time?
• What was the relationship between time and space, eternity and infinity?
• Who were the Renaissance theorists of time?

The conference will be held over two days, the first in the Treehouse, Humanities Research Centre, and the second in the beautiful surroundings of York Minster Old Palace Library, and will conclude with a concert given by the Minster Minstrels, a renaissance-baroque early music wind group.

The seminar particularly encourages early career and post-graduates working in any Renaissance discipline: literature, history, music, art, philosophy.

The conference is organised by Kevin Killeen (kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk), Liz Oakley-Brown (e.oakley-brown@lancaster.ac.uk) and Sam Ellis (se654@york.ac.uk )

Download provisional programme here:Time & EM Thought prov programme (PDF , 435kb)

Download Poster here:Time & EM Thought poster (PDF , 306kb)Time & EM Thought poster (PDF , 306kb)