Ananachronism (from theGreekἀνάana, 'against' andχρόνοςkhronos, 'time') is achronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially ajuxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common type of anachronism is an object misplaced in time, but it may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a plant or animal, a custom, or anything else associated with a particular period that is placed outside its proper temporal domain.
An anachronism may be either intentional or unintentional. Intentional anachronisms may be introduced into a literary or artistic work to help a contemporary audience engage more readily with a historical period. Anachronism can also be used intentionally for purposes of rhetoric, propaganda, comedy, or shock. Unintentional anachronisms may occur when a writer, artist, or performer is unaware of differences in technology, terminology and language, customs and attitudes, or even fashions between different historical periods and eras.
Aparachronism (from theGreekπαρά, "on the side", andχρόνος, "time")[2] postdates.[1]: 9 It is anything that appears in a time period in which it is not normally found (though not sufficiently out of place as to be impossible).
This may be an object, idiomatic expression, technology, philosophical idea, musical style, material, custom, or anything else so closely bound to a particular time period as to seem strange when encountered in a later era. They may be objects or ideas that were once common but are now considered rare or inappropriate. They can take the form of obsolete technology or outdated fashion or idioms.[3]
Aprochronism (from theGreekπρό, "before", andχρόνος, "time")[4] predates.[1]: 7 It is an impossible anachronism which occurs when an object or idea has not yet been invented when the situation takes place, and therefore could not have possibly existed at the time. A prochronism may be an object not yet developed, a verbal expression that had not yet been coined, a philosophy not yet formulated, a breed of animal not yet evolved or bred, or use of a technology that had not yet been created.[5]
Ametachronism (from theGreekμετά, "after", andχρόνος, "time")[6] postdates.[1]: 7 It is the use of older cultural artifacts in modern settings which may seem inappropriate. For example, it could be considered metachronistic for a modern-day person to be depicted wearing atop hat or writing with aquill.[7]
Works of art and literature promoting a political, nationalist or revolutionary cause may use anachronism to depict an institution or custom as being more ancient than it actually is, or otherwise intentionally blur the distinctions between past and present. For example, the 19th-century Romanian painterConstantin Lecca depicts the peace agreement betweenIoan Bogdan Voievod andRadu Voievod—two leaders in Romania's 16th-century history—with the flags ofMoldavia (blue-red) and ofWallachia (yellow-blue) seen in the background. These flags date only from the 1830s: anachronism promotes legitimacy for the unification of Moldavia and Wallachia into theKingdom of Romania at the time the painting was made.[citation needed]
Moldavians andMuntenians become Brothers: 19th-century flags in a 16th-century scene
Anachronism is used especially in works of imagination that rest on a historical basis. Anachronisms may be introduced in many ways: for example, in the disregard of the different modes of life and thought that characterize different periods, or in ignorance of the progress of the arts and sciences and other facts of history. They vary from glaring inconsistencies to scarcely perceptible misrepresentation. Anachronisms may be the unintentional result of ignorance, or may be a deliberate aesthetic choice.[9]
SirWalter Scott justified the use of anachronism in historical literature: "It is necessary, for exciting interest of any kind, that the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners as well as the language of the age we live in."[10] However, as fashions, conventions and technologies move on, such attempts to use anachronisms to engage an audience may have quite the reverse effect, as the details in question are increasingly recognized as belonging neither to the historical era being represented, nor to the present, but to the intervening period in which the artwork was created. "Nothing becomes obsolete like a period vision of an older period", writesAnthony Grafton; "Hearing a mother in a historical movie of the 1940s call out 'Ludwig!Ludwig van Beethoven! Come in and practice your piano now!' we are jerked from our suspension of disbelief by what was intended as a means of reinforcing it, and plunged directly into the Americanbourgeois world of the filmmaker."[11]
It is only since the beginning of the 19th century that anachronistic deviations from historical reality have jarred on a general audience.C. S. Lewis wrote:
All medieval narratives about the past are ... lacking in a sense of period.... It was known thatAdam went naked till he fell. After that, [medieval people] pictured the whole past in terms of their own age. So indeed did theElizabethans. So didMilton; he never doubted that "capon and white broth" would have been as familiar to Christ and the disciples as to himself. It is doubtful whether the sense of period is much older than theWaverley novels. It is hardly present inGibbon.Walpole'sOtranto, which would not now deceive schoolchildren, could hope, not quite vainly, to deceive the public of 1765. Where even the most obvious and superficial distinctions between one century (or millennium) and another were ignored, the profounder differences of temper and mental climate were naturally not dreamed of.... [InChaucer'sTroilus and Criseyde], [t]he manners, the fighting, the religious services, the very traffic-regulations of his Trojans, are fourteenth-century.[12]
Anachronisms abound in the works ofRaphael[13] andShakespeare,[14] as well as in those of less celebrated painters and playwrights of earlier times.Carol Meyers says that anachronisms in ancient texts can be used to better understand the stories by asking what the anachronism represents.[15] Repeated anachronisms and historical errors can become an accepted part of popular culture, such as the belief that Roman legionaries wore leather armor.[16]
St Dominic, active in the 13th century, shown presiding over anauto-da-fé ceremony of a kind only instituted more than two hundred years after his death[17]
Comedy fiction set in the past may use anachronism for humorous effect. Comedic anachronism can be used to make serious points about both historical and modern society, such as drawing parallels to political or social conventions.[18]
Even with careful research,science fiction writers risk anachronism as their works age because they cannot predict all political, social, and technological change.[19]
Futuristic technology may appear alongside technology which would be obsolete by the time in which the story is set. For example, in the stories ofRobert A. Heinlein, interplanetary space travel coexists with calculation usingslide rules.[22]
Language anachronisms in novels and films are quite common, both intentional and unintentional.[23] Intentional anachronisms inform the audience more readily about a film set in the past. In this regard, language and pronunciation change so fast that most modern people (even many scholars) would find it difficult, or even impossible, to understand a film with dialogue in 15th-century English; thus, audienceswillingly accept characters speaking an updated language, and modernslang and figures of speech are often used in these films.[24]
A Russian commemorative coin of 1995 depicting Soviet and American troops meeting atTorgau in 1945. It shows the 50-starU.S. flag, first used in 1960, instead of the 48-star flag used at the time.
Unintentional anachronisms may occur even in what are intended as wholly objective and accurate records or representations of historic artifacts and artworks, because the perspectives of historical recorders are conditioned by the assumptions and practices of their own times, in a form ofcultural bias. One example is the attribution of historically inaccurate beards to variousmedievaltomb effigies and figures instained glass in records made by Englishantiquaries of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Working in an age in which beards were in fashion and widespread, the antiquaries seem to have unconsciously projected the fashion back into an era in which they were rare.[25]
In historical writing, the most common type of anachronism is the adoption of the political, social or cultural concerns and assumptions of one era to interpret or evaluate the events and actions of another. The anachronistic application of present-day perspectives to comment on the historical past is sometimes described aspresentism.Empiricisthistorians, working in the traditions established byLeopold von Ranke in the 19th century, regard this as a great error, and a trap to be avoided.[26]Arthur Marwick has argued that "a grasp of the fact that past societies are very different from our own, and ... very difficult to get to know" is an essential and fundamental skill of the professional historian; and that "anachronism is still one of the most obvious faults when the unqualified (those expert in other disciplines, perhaps) attempt to do history".[27]
The ability to identify anachronisms may be employed as a critical and forensic tool to demonstrate the fraudulence of a document or artifact purporting to be from an earlier time.Anthony Grafton discusses, for example, the work of the 3rd-century philosopherPorphyry, ofIsaac Casaubon (1559–1614), and ofRichard Reitzenstein (1861–1931), all of whom succeeded in exposing literary forgeries and plagiarisms, such as those included in the "Hermetic Corpus", through – among other techniques – the recognition of anachronisms.[28] The detection of anachronisms is an important element within the scholarly discipline ofdiplomatics, the critical analysis of the forms and language of documents, developed by theMaurist scholarJean Mabillon (1632–1707) and his successorsRené-Prosper Tassin (1697–1777) andCharles-François Toustain (1700–1754). The philosopher and reformerJeremy Bentham wrote at the beginning of the 19th century:
The falsehood of a writing will often be detected, by its making direct mention of, or allusions more or less indirect to, some fact posterior to the date which it bears. ...The mention of posterior facts; – first indication of forgery. In a living language there are always variations in words, in the meaning of words, in the construction of phrases, in the manner of spelling, which may detect the age of a writing, and lead to legitimate suspicions of forgery. ...The use of words not used till after the date of the writing; – second indication of forgery.[29]
Examples are:
The exposure byLorenzo Valla in 1440 of the so-calledDonation of Constantine, a decree purportedly issued by theEmperorConstantine the Great in either 315 or 317 AD, as a later forgery, depended to a considerable degree on the identification of anachronisms, such as references to the city ofConstantinople (a name not in fact bestowed until 330 AD).
A large number of apparentanachronisms in the Book of Mormon have convinced critics that the book was written in the 19th century, and not, as its adherents claim, inpre-Columbian America.
The "William Lynch speech", an address, supposedly delivered in 1712, on the control of slaves inVirginia, is now considered to be a 20th-century forgery, partly on account of its use of anachronistic terms such as "program" and "refueling".[31]
^Lewis, C. S. (1964).The Discarded Image: an introduction to medieval and Renaissance literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 182–84.OL5918225M.
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![St Dominic, active in the 13th century, shown presiding over an auto-da-fé ceremony of a kind only instituted more than two hundred years after his death[17]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aPedro_Berruguete_Saint_Dominic_Presiding_over_an_Auto-da-fe_1495.jpg)
