10-07-2023, 08:51 PM
"This thesis re-assesses what we know of John Dee within a context of what I have termed ‘polytemporality’. This approach questions Dee’s relationship to periodising
conventions and to the historiographical recuperation of identity following perceived temporal ruptures (such as the Reformation). It challenges the standard
notion of Dee as the archetypal ‘Renaissance conjurer’ by bringing to the forefront Dee’s own assessment of the ‘past, present and hereafter’ of his reputation. It
argues that Dee’s multiple identities are instead reflective of a polytemporal reflexivity that is heightened by a conflict between his intellectual hubris and
personal insecurity. Dee emerges as a figure poised uncomfortably in and outside of his society’s conceptions of temporality, influenced by the past and self-consciously
aware of the future."
Rachel Reid: Past, Present, and Hereafter to be Written: The Polytemporal Identities of John Dee
https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfil..._Final.pdf
conventions and to the historiographical recuperation of identity following perceived temporal ruptures (such as the Reformation). It challenges the standard
notion of Dee as the archetypal ‘Renaissance conjurer’ by bringing to the forefront Dee’s own assessment of the ‘past, present and hereafter’ of his reputation. It
argues that Dee’s multiple identities are instead reflective of a polytemporal reflexivity that is heightened by a conflict between his intellectual hubris and
personal insecurity. Dee emerges as a figure poised uncomfortably in and outside of his society’s conceptions of temporality, influenced by the past and self-consciously
aware of the future."
Rachel Reid: Past, Present, and Hereafter to be Written: The Polytemporal Identities of John Dee
https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfil..._Final.pdf