Les inscriptions du temps sur les cadrans solaires

Abstract

Temporal sociology has not taken much interest in the epigraphy of sundials. We are attempting to redress this lack by showing that mottoes constitute precious archives for research into temporalities. Following a short presentation of sundials, their historic evolution and their social utility, we approach the question of mottoes by comparing gnomonic usage to emblematic rules. The empiric study is based on a voluminous collection, made up at the start of the 20th century, by a French collector (Boursier, 1936). The analysis of this corpus by the Alceste method leads to a categorisation of the data into at first two and then four classes of significance, which all bear witness to a ‘sensitivity to time’. This is expressed through a game of postures, bringing face to face an enunciator who orders time and a speaker who suffers this, not without deploring it. This staging of information, where the major roles are taken by divinity and a human subject, lead us to conclude on the theocentricity of the ancient mottoes, and consequently, on the traces of religion found in the representation of time.

Keywords

• temporalities
• Alceste
• discourse analysis
• sundials
• mottoes
• representation of time