Periodicals and the History of their Present: Die Zeiten (1805–20) as Chronopoetic Historiography

This article discusses periodicals as media forms that are dependent on and correlated with time. It treats periodical publication as a form of chronopoetics, exploring modes of writing the present at work in journals as well as their varied relationships to writing history. Focusing on Die Zeiten (1805–20), a German-language historio-political monthly journal of the Napoleonic Era, the article describes chronopoetic writing as the layering of history; the experience of time in and through medial formats, and the more specific rhetorical, material, and medial temporalities of periodicals.