Hybride Zeiten

Abstract

Abstract Not only the postmodern era is characterized by manifold, contradictory, and hybrid temporalities. Earlier epochs were already marked by temporal and medial pluralities. Examining these pluralities expands both our knowledge of the past and of the present. The 15th and 16th centuries are particularly suitable for this. This period sees not only spatial expansion, religious diversification and media restructuring. It also sees temporal changes: a growing presence of measured time, rigorous time management, and the formation of a notion of time independent from the Aristotelian tradition. In particular, literature and the arts – in new media forms – explore the whole range of temporal semantics and dynamics, and play their part in pluralizing and hybridizing the idea of time, largely shaped by Christian models of salvation history.