Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life by Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life by Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm
• Marie Schilling Grogan

dillian adler and paul strohm, Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life. Medieval Lives Series. London: Reaktion Books, 2023. Pp. 247. isbn: 978–1789146790. £16.95.

In this handsome volume from Reaktion Books’ Medieval Lives series, Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm limn the ways that medieval people experience, measure, and theorize time, arguing for ‘the subtlety and complexity of medieval time’ (p. 103) as a byproduct of the age’s rich array of temporalities. Expertly ranging from the cloister to the civic square, from Benedict’s Rule to Arthurian romance, incorporating forty-nine color plates and quotations from a wide range of literary sources, this volume provides an overview of its subject that is intended to be accessible to a general readership but also offers much to engage medievalists and philosophers of time.

The book begins in ‘Varieties of Time,’ Chapter One, by examining the ‘colliding systems’ of time under which medieval people lived, especially the seasonal and the liturgical. Certainly, rural laborers experienced their days and year according to the diurnal movement of the sun and the annual cycle of changing seasons, but Adler and Strohm argue that agricultural rhythms were also shaped by the temporality of monastic life. The authors mine works of imagination such as Pearl and Piers Plowman for evidence that the world beyond the cloister adopted the language of the liturgical hours and calendar; and, indeed, for everyone, the pealing of church bells at regular hours was the ‘sound of time’ (p. 44).

Chapter Two, ‘Measuring Time,’ explores medieval efforts to gauge the passage of time with a variety of ingenious devices—candles, sundials, water clocks— culminating in the invention of mechanical clocks that would revolutionize the human experience of time, especially as large tower clocks in cathedrals regulated commerce and other secular social activities in the public square. But the authors also emphasize that, while many have imagined the late medieval advent of the mechanical clock as a modernizing moment, it is in fact the natural development of the long monastic history of time measurement. Chapter Three, ‘Time and the Planets,’ looks to the heavens to explore medieval understandings of how astral and planetary positions affected human life. Paying particular attention to the popularity—at least in courtly circles—of astrolabes and miscellanies devoted to astrology and time measurement, Adler and Strohm demonstrate a widespread belief that the order of the cosmos both reflected and influenced earthly experience. Of course, Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe illustrates this fascination; the chapter also considers the prevalence of [End Page 97] the zodiac and other astrological referents in a range of medieval texts to chart the widespread belief that every human life was to some degree regulated by cosmic forces.

The next two chapters take a closer look at some well-known medieval texts (as well as a few lesser-known works) to examine how theories of time shape both fictional and non-fictional narrative structures. ‘Lives in Time,’ Chapter Four, revisits the real-life testimonies of Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and Thomas Usk, paying attention to their expressed concerns with how well they have ‘managed’ the time each has been given to serve God (Julian and Margery) or the king (Usk); this much-debated question of the ‘duration’ of service as a factor in achieving sanctity is raised in the difficult parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16). Chapter Five, ‘Timescapes: Narrative Shapes in Time,’ explores how episodes in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Malory’s Morte Darthur exploit the ‘supple time-sense’ (p. 121) of medieval temporality. Strohm and Adler are both Chaucerians and one of the delights of the volume is to re-visit several of Chaucer’s works with their guidance.

Chapter Six, ‘Allegories of Time,’ reminds readers that allegorical representations of time-related concepts abound in the medieval imagination: the virtue Temperance, for instance, often depicted with a clock to abet moderation; Fortune with her wheel of inescapable change; dancing Death, that grim figure betokening the end for every life. ‘Ages of Humankind,’ Chapter Seven...