Visualizing Words and Knowledge: Arts of Memory from the Agora to the Computer
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Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE May 2015 Visualizing Words and Knowledge: Arts of Memory from the Agora to the Computer Seth D. Long Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Long, Seth D., "Visualizing Words and Knowledge: Arts of Memory from the Agora to the Computer" (2015). Dissertations - ALL. 222. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/222 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT This dissertation examines rhetoric’s fourth canon—the art of memory—tracing its development through the classical, medieval, and early modern periods. It argues that for most of its history, the fourth canon was an art by which words and knowledge were remediated into visual, spatial forms, either in the mind or on the page. And it was this technique of visualization, I argue, that linked the canons of memory and invention throughout history. In contemporary rhetorical theory, however, memory palaces and mnemonic imagery have been replaced with a conception of memory grounded in psychology and critique. I argue that this move away from memory as an artificial practice has obscured the classical art’s visual precepts, consequently severing the ancient link between memory and invention. I suggest that contemporary rhetorical theorists should return to visualization to revitalize the fourth canon in the twenty-first century. Today, digital tools that visualize words and knowledge are ubiquitous. Framing data visualization as a twenty-first century analogue to the art of memory allows us to think about visualization as a tool for invention rather than as a reified representation of data. As creative remediations, memory palaces once allowed rhetoricians to interface with knowledge in an adaptable way and to imagine how knowledge might be assembled together in a new discourse. Thinking about data visualization as a memory palace thus enables us to think not only about representing data but about the new ways we might interface with it in order to generate insight. Data visualization becomes an art to facilitate invention, as the classical art of memory was designed to do. VISUALIZING WORDS AND KNOWLEDGE: ARTS OF MEMORY FROM THE AGORA TO THE COMPUTER By SETH D. LONG B.A. Chapman University, 2007 M.A. California State Polytechnic University, 2010 M.A. Syracuse University, 2015 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of Philosophy in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric in the Graduate School of Syracuse University May 2015 Copyright 2015 Seth D. Long CreativeCommons License: Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC- SA) iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS No text—especially a dissertation—is the product of a single author’s labor. Invention is a social act. I am deeply indebted to the following individuals for their time, their assistance, and their encouragement. Thanks, first of all, to my director, Collin Brooke, and to my second reader, Krista Kennedy. Dr. Brooke sparked my interest in data visualization in his Rhetoric and Digital Humanities course, which I took my first year as a doctoral student. The excitement I felt in that course propelled everything I did afterward, and Dr. Brooke has been a source of insight through it all. Dr. Kennedy has also profoundly shaped my thinking. Her mentorship has been instrumental to the development both of my academic work and my professional growth. Everything I have accomplished as a fledgling scholar has been due in no small measure to the partnership and the advice offered by Drs. Brooke and Kennedy. There is no word to denote the gratitude I feel toward them. My deepest appreciation goes also to the other members of my committee: Derek Mueller, Patrick Berry, Lois Agnew, and Jaklin Kornfilt. Dr. Mueller was kind enough to step in as an outside reader and to take time out of his busy day visiting Syracuse to participate in my defense. For that and for his contributions I am incredibly thankful. Dr. Berry’s commitment to pedagogy and to the field of rhetoric and composition kept me grounded whenever I wandered too far from my disciplinary context. His excellent ability to teach digital tools also reaffirmed my commitment to the use of new media in rhetorical theory. I came to SU’s program with a fondness for the history of rhetoric but a hesitance to pursue historical research in such a competitive job market. Yet even as my interests drifted to digital matters, Dr. Agnew’s teaching persistently reminded me that the past and the present still v have much to say to each other. Where I succeed in this dissertation at finding generative connections between rhetoric’s history and its present, the credit goes entirely to Dr. Agnew’s inspiration. Dr. Kornfilt has been a wonderful linguistics professor. Simultaneously learning about language from a humanistic and a scientific point of view has been a challenge but also a privilege, and Dr. Kornfilt’s courses always provided a much needed reprieve whenever I was frustrated with the ambiguity of rhetoric. I am thankful to her for agreeing to chair my defense. Lastly, to my family—to you I am most grateful. Dave and Rachel, pops and mama, thank you for your enduring support. My accomplishments are yours. Thank you to my sister, Rebekah, for laughter and for always showing me a better version of myself. Thank you to my wife, Christina Marie, for putting up with a husband who is constantly crouched over books and laptops when he should be drinking wine and watching a movie with his better half. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Title Page ............................................................................................................................ ii Copyright ........................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Contents ............................................................................................................................. vi List of Illustrative Materials.............................................................................................. vii Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Natural and Artificial Memory .........................................................................22 Chapter 2: Memory as Mnemonics ....................................................................................77 Chapter 3: Memory as Method ........................................................................................138 Chapter 4: Memory in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory ................................................209 Chapter 5: Arts of Memory for the Digital Age ..............................................................252 Appendix A ......................................................................................................................303 Appendix B ......................................................................................................................310 Appendix C ......................................................................................................................312 Appendix D ......................................................................................................................319 Appendix E ......................................................................................................................322 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................324 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIALS Figure 1.1 Most frequent words in Ad Herennium’s memory section .............................52 Figure 1.2 Most frequent words in De Oratore’s memory section ..................................52 Figure 1.3 Most frequent words in Institutio’s memory chapter .....................................53 Figure 1.4 Word cloud of terms in Table 1.2 ...................................................................58 Figure 1.5 Word cloud of terms in Table 1.3 ...................................................................58 Figure 2.1 John Shaw, The Divine Art of Memory ..........................................................84 Figure 2.2 Hymn to John the Baptist, a musical acrostic .................................................84 Figure 2.3 Coronides in ancient Greek manuscripts ........................................................89 Figure 2.4 Major system. A.E. Middleton, Memory Systems New and Old ....................90 Figure 2.5 Visual alphabet. Romberch, Congestorium Artificiose Memoria ..................94 Figure 2.6 Human alphabet. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscindi ............................................94 Figure 2.7 Ladder representing hierarchy of creation. Lull, Liber de ascensu ................97 Figure 2.8 Lull’s combinatorial system, as reproduced by Cramer .................................98 Figure 2.9 “Rhetorical machines.” Toscanella, Armonia ................................................99