Kuwakino, Koji. “The ars memorativa and ecfrasis: technical and exhortative descriptions to construct the great theatre of memory”. Galilæana XXI, 2 (2024): 149-173 (original) (raw)
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The Medieval Review, 2023
Memory and Recollection in the Aristotelian Tradition is a ten-chapter edited volume on the reception of Aristotle's De memoria et reminiscentia in the Middle Ages across Latin, Arabic, and Byzantine traditions. Aristotle's short, two-chapter De memoria text is mysterious in many senses, including its tangled manuscript tradition, debated position within the Aristotelian corpus, and, perhaps most of all, in its tantalizingly enigmatic accounts of the faculties of memory (mnēmē) and recollection (anamnēsis) that are its subject. Aristotle tells us that these faculties are "common to body and soul" and entail a mediation of images and thinking via imagination (phantasia) with respect to time. Hence, the text is significant for our understanding of many central Aristotelian notions, including hylomorphism, the composition of the soul, the nature of time, and the relationship between perception and cognition. Because the accounts of these entities and relations are textually elusive, generations of readers have been tasked with extensive interpretive work.
The essay aims at analyzing the manuscript Trattato della Memoria Locale by Paolo Beni (1552-1625), which tested the classical mnemotechnic rules in the architectural structure of Santa Giustina's church in Padua. By showing us a logical mental way to represent our memories through the introjections of an artificial external order, the treatise also implicitly suggests a way to analyze a real architectural space and the iconic-plastic elements that it contains, e.g. the precious and impressive wooden choir of the fifteenth century composed of two series of stalls with illustrated backs: the scenes of Jesus' life in the upper side are semantically and mnemonically linked to the underlying emblems of Virtues and Vices.
The Memory Palace, Step by Step: Embodiment in Late Renaissance Italy's Memory Manuals
Dissertation (Northwestern University), 2024
Contrary to the common narrative that modernity disembodied rhetoric, 16th century Italian memoria—the discipline's fourth partition dealing with techniques of memorization—presented human cognition as solidly rooted in the body. Faced with the challenge of information overload brought about by the printing press, Renaissance thinkers turned to traditional Western memorization techniques, or the Memory Arts, which had been developed for oral knowledge practices. The techniques' embodied components were not erased in Renaissance Italy but instead used strategically for maximum cognitive advantage. This study examines memory manuals by six Italian authors—Della Porta, Gesualdo, Dolce, Marta, Marafioto, and Del Riccio—revealing a persistent belief in the body’s crucial role in knowledge acquisition. Usually obscured by the combined influences of pre- and post-Cartesian dualisms, the Renaissance belief in embodied cognition is free to emerge in these texts, which prioritize practice over theory. These texts showcase how physical stimuli, emotions, and even unconscious reactions were employed to organize and manage memory, thought, and behavior. The embodied nature of these techniques not only facilitated the acquisition of knowledge but also shaped thought processes and moral character. This was an especially valuable skill in the participatory political landscape of Renaissance Italy, where these books circulated widely, thanks to the printing press, their use of the vernacular, and their unassuming genre. Central to these manuals is the memory palace technique, which teaches readers to convert information into vivid, quasi-sensory visualizations (imagines) mapped onto familiar spaces (loci). By mentally navigating these spaces, memorization becomes more efficient, combining unconscious acts (like navigating known loci) with conscious interpretation (analyzing imagines). The memory palace leverages two key principles, activated by the technique's quasi-physical stimuli: habituation, which eases navigation through repeated exposure; and wonder, which enhances attention through emotional engagement and surprise. These principles reflect a careful integration of classical and medieval techniques, merging their respective political and moral goals. This early modern Art of Memory had been capable of fostering both the orator's social and political skills, and the monk's self-regulatory discipline. The wide, non-erudite, urban audience of the 16th century memory manuals reoriented these practices toward social performance. So conceived, the memory palace technique expanded rhetoric's compositional tasks into citizenship training, aligning with the unique socio-political demands of Renaissance Italy.
“Associations in Late Medieval Art of Memory (example of the Czech lands).” Ágora. Estudos Clássicos em Debate 24:1 (2022): 17–32., 2022
Using two late medieval treatises from Bohemia as examples, the study presents various ways of creating images in the context of the art of memory, showing a tension between relying on common, generally shared associations which the mind easily interprets, and using rare, personal connections which are imprinted in one's mind more deeply. The tension remains unresolved: both methods are applied in the art of memory, the actual choice seems to be ad hoc. Both types of associations provide a unique and so far neglected insight into the medieval mind.
Creating Memories in Early Modern and Modern Art and Literature
Culture of remembrance is one of the central matters of our times, characterized by a wide range of memory-related phenomena, such as construction of artificial memories, mass media and production of mass memories or destruction of public memorials. Besides their obvious social and political importance, memories also pertain to the most intimate spheres of our individual lives and identities.
Jommelli’s ‘tenacious memory’: replications in L’Ifigenìa (1751)
Studi musicali, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 361-387, 2009
Jommelli's «Tenacious memory»: reminiscences in L' IfIgenìa (1751) if you have capacious and officious memories, able to receive, contain and preserve much, keep them not as empty Bladders, puft up with Wind and Fancy, but fill them, while you are at the Fountain, with the profitable Knowledg [sic] of God and nature, of sound learning, of true Wisdom, and of those liberal arts and sciences by which you design to be useful and do good in your Generation. 1 once upon a time, memory played a role of such unquestionable prominence that speeches were seldom read from the paper, but rather memorized and delivered by heart in front of an awed audience. long before the word processor assumed control over human expression, thereby exposing our memory to irremediable erosion, it was indeed a very usual thing to imprint large stretches of information in the mind before entrusting them to paper. rhetorical considerations proved instrumental in this matter, as eloquent 'orators' -in the broadest sense -were expected to persuade their listeners through the improvised recall and recombination of so-called 'loci' or 'topoi'. The panoply of aids developed to retain these commonplaces helped the 'art of memory' acquire near-scientific status. 2 although the printing press did little to further this time-honored tradition, scholars and artists alike continued to hinge upon their memories for the conception, arrangement, and performance of their knowledge and artistry. even in the enlightenment, as philosophers attempted to break down the hegemony of rote memorisation in college, mnemonic tools re-1 marius d'assigny, The art of memory: a treatise useful for such as are to speak in public, london, Bell & Bible, 1706 3 , p. vi. 2 see mary J. Carruthers, The book of memory: a study of memory in medieval culture, new york, cambridge university Press, 2008 2 ; W. den Boer, The art of memory and its mnemotechnical traditions, amsterdam, north-Holland, 1986; Paolo rossi, Clavis universalis: arti mnemoniche e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz, Bologna, il mulino, 1983 2 ; FranCes amelia yates, The art of memory, chicago, university of chicago Press, 2001 14 . a musicological variation on the theme is anna maria Busse Berger, Medieval music and the art of memory, Berkeley, university of california Press, 2005 (it. trans. La musica medievale e l'arte della memoria, subiaco, Fogli Volanti edizioni, 2008).