Petrach and the concept of time

Cerulean

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Petrarch

One of the things I came away with from Renaissance studies was the way Petrach redefined the concept of looking at history. Instead of presenting history as Augustine did, from the Biblical creation to his present time, he actually divided history into segments.

"He regarded Christianity's rejection of the classics of antiquity as the greatest failure of Christian scholars and the cause of what he saw as a great shadow over learning during the Middle Ages" is a quote from the link below.

In some eyes, the view of the "Dark Ages'" is from Petrach's slant when Roman Christianity did not accept classical literature as part of historical wisdom. This website history, a more conservative biography, suggests Petrach really didn't coin the phrase Dark Ages, but he was one of the original commentators who helped redefine historical contexts and laid foundation for more experimental Renaissance thinking:

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Dark_Ages

I noticed this background had better information about his early years a cleric of the church, (taking Holy Orders), which is sometimes not mentioned in histories regarding his courtly love poetry.

I've been trying to find online histories that give a more expanded view of his contributions to writing and Renaissance thinking...I don't know exactly if this is helpful, but his introduction of viewing periods in history was supposed to be very unusual. It may not have anything to do with his "Triumph of Time and Eternity" but I thought from a long ago class there was something important about his thinking...

(Also, the invented use of minutes in clocks came about around 1516? I have to dig up my notes when I return from a family funeral...Petarch's view of time keeps nagging at me)
 

Fulgour

Our word clock comes from Glocke, meaning bell, and at first
a timepiece was not thought of as a clock unless it rang a bell.
The monastic clock was thus designed for sounding the hours.

By 1500 the clock at Wells Cathedral in England was striking
the quarter hours, but had no way yet to mark a "minute",
which comes from the medieval Latin, pars minuta prima.

To measure minutes one still had to use a sandglass. Until the
pendulum made it possible to indicate seconds, separate hands
to mark minutes were uncommon for mechanical clockworks,
although Tycho Brahe had one created for his own use in 1577.

Minute hands were fairly widespread by the year 1660, and by
1670 it was not unusual for clocks to also have second hands.
 

ihcoyc

The development of the pendulum and the balance spring made the minute hand more feasible. Before their introduction, the standard regulator was a balance arm suspended by a thread or wire, that simply wagged back and forth and allowed the notched teeth of a ratchet type gear to pass. Such a clock could easily vary from one day to the next by half an hour or more, so adding a minute hand would only call attention to its deficiencies.

The pendulum uses gravity, and the balance spring uses tension, to make the ratchet part much more regular; when they were introduced, minute hands became feasible.

The seconds hand was introduced on watches. It allowed the owner to do a quick check to see if it was working or not.
 

darwinia

Cerulean said:
I noticed this background had better information about his early years a cleric of the church, (taking Holy Orders), which is sometimes not mentioned in histories regarding his courtly love poetry.
Click to expand...

Somewhat off-topic--In the summer I bought a newly-published hardcover anthology of his poetry.

Ties in nicely with Dante and Shakespeare as he comes between them in the timeline of poetic love. Speaking of the concept of time.

The Poetry of Petrarch
by David Young (Translator)
Hardcover: 320 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.14 x 9.62 x 6.52
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; (April 14, 2004)
ISBN: 0374235325

(It's now out in pb but I couldn't wait)
 

Cerulean

Celebrating 700 years of Petrach...

More than anyone wanted to know about Petrach:

http://petrarch.freeservers.com/index2.html

A historian of Siennese painting (Hayden B.J. Maginnis; The World of the Early Sienese Painter) gave a reference to Petrach making sketches on his manuscripts, but I cannot find information on this yet. However, when I looked online, this link suggests Petrach did some biographies of Roman heroes, which reminds me of the so-called Sola Busca trumps--could one think the so-called card deck was a visual reminder of such lost frescos? Or at least a suggestion of the iconography of the time:

http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2003-01/frescoes.html

I'm still trying to find references to Petrach and how he might view the concepts of time and allegorical trumps...

Thanks for the contributions and ideas to time and Petrach!

Regards,

Cerulean
 

fyreflye

-delete-
 

Cerulean

Thank you for noticing!

The spelling detail correction that Fyreflye caught is gratefully appreciated.

Thank you,

Cerulean
 

Fulgour

Hi Cerulean

Any conclusions or general summation yet?

~Fulgour

*

Edited to add: Thanks for the PM and I am
looking forward to when we resume later :)
 
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