ABSTRACT

If mechanical timepieces such as pendulum-driven clocks only measure hours of folly (as William Blake claimed), then perhaps non-mechanical horological devices quantify hours of wisdom? To explore this idea, Chapter 3 evaluates the many important roles that sandglasses played in the literature of the period as they continued to service practical social purposes (e.g., in seafaring and sermonising). Far from simply conveying nostalgia for a vanished pre-industrial past, their medieval iconographical connotations persisted, and they featured prominently in philosophical writings about atomism and finitude. Some of the authors considered in this chapter include Samuel Butler, William Cowper, and, crucially, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.