Dear Readers,
As usual, this is my Friday Seminar, posted to you on each of your Fridays. It covers topics drawn from my Introductory class, CHRN/AUG 100.
In the past (from your perspective) I wrote about the importance of zeitgeist in my work. My last Friday Seminar covered this issue tangentially as I discussed emotions' role in gleaning the universal from anachronistic esoterica. Now I want to tie these two topics together for you.
There are obvious intersections; zeitgeist, as a spirit of an era, has a clear emotional basis. Therefore, we ought to be able to get at the zeitgeist in universal terms.
Yet there is an important difference between zeitgeist and emotions. Emotional currents in period sources are a currency of sorts, whereas a zeitgeist is a fortune of that currency.
Think back to my first few Friday Seminars, on criticizing sources and stitching them together. It is the stitching together that makes an assessment of zeitgeist from little snippets of emotion. Each source has emotional connotations, and I pool these together between sources that I know are from the same time stream and era. The emotional collage this produces allows me to say things about culture and zeitgeist, and from there a good anachronist can start to talk about what really makes a society tick.
And that's where it gets interesting. Next week, I'll apply these ideas to a case study.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
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