What is it about?
Time can be expressed in various ways, highlighting different aspects and viewpoints. This article uses Kant's system of categories, which purports to contain all aspects of determining an object, to explore how time may be written in a broad spectrum of texts, ranging from ancient Japanese poetry to modern scientific research articles.
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Why is it important?
Extant research into the ways time is recorded and expressed in texts has almost exclusively focussed on the quantitative aspects of time (chronometry). The method employed in this article leads to a much enriched picture. It provides a template for assessing the distinctive quality of temporal expression of a given text, or genre, and should be seminal for further research into the ways time was and is conceived and expressed.
Perspectives
My personal discovery while writing this was to think of the quality of time as a category as important as its quantity, which in a way matches common sense: "What time is it?" may be answered by "Five o'clock", but also by: "Time to go", or "Time for a change".
Professor Raji C. Steineck
University of Zurich
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This page is a summary of: Chronographical Analysis: an Essay in Methodology, KronoScope, September 2018, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15685241-12341415.
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