Lebenszeit und Weltzeit in epischen Versdichtungen der frühen Neuzeit

Abstract

Abstract This article starts from Achim Landwehr’s thesis that the present is an invention of the 17th century, and that this is reflected not least in developments in contemporary narrative literature. It analyzes the narrative representation of the relationship between life-time and world-time (Lebenszeit und Weltzeit) in the epic poem Achilles Germanorvm, published anonymously in 1632, in which the contemporary events of the Thirty Years War are interpreted allegorically in the light of the Trojan War. It is shown that the present in the epic is not emphatically asserted as present, but presented as part of a model of time operating with the factors of repetition, recurrence, and mythical meaningfulness. World-time (Weltzeit) appears in the epic as structured by repetition and recurrence, and the role of the single individual is also embedded in this model. Landwehr’s account, however, needs to be corrected to the effect that, contrary to what he insinuates, such interpretations of the present did exist at all in the genre of epic verse in the 17th century and that the epic genre had not at all become outmoded at that period. They are highly relevant for understanding a history of the telling of time in the 17th century.