Introduction: The Temporal Turn in Eighteenth-Century Studies

Abstract

This introduction has two aims. First of all, it argues that that time and temporality have become favored topics within interdisciplinary research on eighteenth-century culture, especially within Britain. Second of all, it seeks to situate well-known figures, such as Isaac Newton, Henry Fielding, William Hogarth, Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Joseph Priestley, and William Cowper, within newly emergent attitudes toward temporality. Particular attention is given to the various efforts, within the music, literature, art, science, and technology, to overcome an older sense of time as cyclical or recurring.