‘Past, Present, and Hereafter to be Written’: The Polytemporal Identities of John Dee

This approach questions Dee’s relationship to periodising conventions and to the historiographical recuperation of identity following perceived temporal ruptures (such as the Reformation). It challenges the standard notion of Dee as the archetypal ‘Renaissance conjurer’ by bringing to the forefront Dee’s own assessment of the ‘past, present and hereafter’ of his reputation.

It argues that Dee’s multiple identities are instead reflective of a polytemporal reflexivity that is heightened by a conflict between his intellectual hubris and personal insecurity. Dee emerges as a figure poised uncomfortably in and outside of his society’s conceptions of temporality, influenced by the past and self-consciously aware of the future. The temporal fracturing prompted by the Reformation and the ensuing struggle to re-establish a British historiography of continuity and succession is reflected in the instability and impermanence of Dee’s own changing identities.