Donald Beecher, Grant Williams, eds.. Ars Reminiscendi: Mind and Memory in Renaissance Culture. Publications of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009. 440 pp. $37.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-7727-2048-1.
Reviewed by Asaph Ben-Tov
Published on H-German (January, 2010)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher
Once upon a time, the poet Simonides of Ceos their loved ones their due funerary rites, but the (557-467 BCE) delivered a panegyric at the ban‐ dead had been so badly disfgured that they could quet of a rich nobleman. Following common prac‐ no longer be identifed. Simonides was able to re‐ tice, the patron's praise was coupled with the locate each diner to the place where he had been praise of a deity; in this case, the twin gods Castor seated, thus inaugurating the mnemonic tech‐ and Pollux (the Dioscuri). The stingy nobleman in‐ nique of according mnemonic images to mental formed the bard he would pay him only half the places (topoi/loci)--as well as earning a handsome price for the commissioned poem, and that he commission for his mnemonic service. should ask the twins to pay the rest, since he had Renaissance readers knew this starting point awarded them half the commissioned praise. from Cicero's infuential treatise De Oratore (55 Such mythological acts of meanness rarely go un‐ BCE). It posits classical mnemonic techniques in punished, and so, soon after, as the banquet was antiquity and later in a rhetorical context. Memo‐ underway, a message was brought to Simonides ry, the fourth part of rhetoric (after invention, dis‐ that two young men were awaiting him outside. position, and elocution), was a basic requirement Castor and Pollux were no longer there when the for ancient orators, who were expected to deliver poet stepped outside, but as he did so the roof speeches by heart. Rhetorical treatises, such as the over the banquet hall collapsed, killing the ungra‐ pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium (frst century cious host and his unfortunate guests. The fairy BCE) suggested that the orator locate striking tale account of Simonides's divine rescue might mental images to remind him of the things he was not have been handed down had it not been for meant to memorize (forensic evidence, rhetorical the story's second part, which is the foundation tropes, and so on) within a mental edifce--most myth of the art of memory. The distraught rela‐ commonly a mental picture of an actual building tives of the banquet's victims were eager to award well known to the memorizer. This theme had H-Net Reviews many variations, with some seeing it as a wonder- welcome. Many contributions ofer thought-pro‐ working form of artifcial memory, and others voking discussions of various test cases--and in more skeptical about the virtues of artifcial mem‐ some cases point at fecund stretches of arable ory. The images could either be striking-- land waiting to be ploughed. Conversely, precisely grotesquely humorous, cruel, or otherwise memo‐ because of the pervasiveness of memory (if not rable--or more lean, and the places range from mnemonics) in any culture, the historian, as recommendations for a fairly simple local system Beecher rightly cautions in his introduction, must to the contested claim of Metrodorus of Scepsis (c. draw some distinctions, lest everything becomes 145-170 BCE) to be able to use the zodiac as his memory, and the term lose any heuristic value. elaborate loci system. Most of the contributors heed this caution. Still, A fairly neglected aspect of western intellec‐ the degree to which various Renaissance phenom‐ tual history, the art of memory has benefted from ena shed light on, and are explained by, mnemon‐ the scholarly attention it deserves in recent ic habits is a question that allows for a legitimate decades, most famously in Frances Yates's beauti‐ diference of opinion. While the essays included ful The Art of Memory (1966), which re-estab‐ in this volume are interesting and worth reading lished the art's central position in antique and in their own right, I fnd some more convincing high medieval learned practices and conceptions than others as guides to mnemonic arts and of the human mind, described its moralization in habits. the high Middle Ages as memory was acknowl‐ The frst section, "Revisioning the Classical edged as part of the secondary virtue of prudence, Art of Memory," opens with Brenda Dunn- and, most signifcantly, traced the occult recon‐ Lardeau's discussion of Jehan du Pré's Palais des struction of the art in Renaissance thought with nobles Dames (1534). An interesting discussion of Giulio Camillo's mnemonic theater and L'idea del du Pré's work in its own right, this article indi‐ theatro (completed in 1544) and Giordano Bruno's cates a mnemonic substratum of the work but more radical occultization of the art, developing does not, to my understanding, ofer a considera‐ in tandem with Pierre de la Ramée's (Ramus) "as‐ tion of the art of memory, or the ways in which its cetic" dialectics, evocatively portrayed by Yates as employment in this work relates to the tradition an act of internal iconoclasm. Signifcant as the or the revision of the art. Andrea Torre, consider‐ occult aspects of Renaissance mnemonics are, as ing the uses of images as referential and meta‐ Yates herself acknowledged, these reveal but a phoric accompaniments of texts, concentrates on fraction of the role and signifcance of mnemonics three Italian texts of the late ffteenth, late six‐ in Renaissance culture. Though valuable work has teenth, and seventeenth centuries--three been done on the subject since, rewarding work mnemonic treatises of various cultural back‐ on Renaissance memory and mnemonics remains grounds that remind us of the various Renais‐ to be carried out. The present volume, based on a sance social contexts where such skills would be 2006 conference, ofers sixteen essays on a broad required, such as among preachers, merchants, spectrum of Renaissance memory, followed by a and orators. Il memoriale, by Emanuele Tesauro detailed overview by Donald Beecher. It aims pri‐ (1592-1675), a text discussed by Torre, ofers a marily to ofer a consideration of broader aspects case of a distinctly non-classical choice of loci: the of mnemonics in their rhetorical, literary, politi‐ etymologies of the stigmata (plaga) as a meta‐ cal, and psychological contexts in the Renais‐ phoric model of memory. The section ends with sance. Such an attempt at gauging the broader sig‐ Wolfgang Neuber's thought-provoking argument nifcance and cultural validity of mnemonic tech‐ on the link between mnemonic imagery and early niques and attitudes is, needless to say, highly modern collective memory. Pivoting on the
2 H-Net Reviews mnemotechnical injunction to forge striking, cru‐ ian experiences, but a later literary construction, el, or comic mnemonic images, Neuber considers merging genuine recollection with classical erudi‐ the construction of New World cannibalism in six‐ tion, and, most importantly, extensive unacknowl‐ teenth-century German woodcuts. Although the edged translations of Descrittione di tutta Italia "savages" not only acquired a cruel, and therefore by Leonardo Alberti (1479-c.1552). For Hoby, mnemonically successful image, these texts also Bartlett suggests, memory was a literary construct posited the Americas as part of real and imagin‐ meant to establish his own uniqueness and au‐ able postlapsarian reality, rather than a mnemon‐ thority. Perhaps, as Bartlett suggests, Hoby's gen‐ ically pallid paradisiacal utopia, so that the imma‐ uine memories and Alberti's work were not clear‐ nence of profane human phenomena, Neuber ar‐ ly distinguished for Hoby or other Renaissance di‐ gues, was being asserted: "Not only the visual im‐ arists. Victoria Burke probes the complex relation‐ ages of mnemonic treatises, but also the structural ship between commonplace books and memory. principles of mnemonics can be held responsible Were commonplace books a superfcial collection for the formation of a collective memory" (p. 80). of snippets, avoiding an internalization of moral Whether or not one agrees, this essay ofers much precepts? Or were they to some extent mnemonic to think about. props? Considering a broad spectrum of common‐ The second section is dedicated to place usages among diferent strands of seven‐ manuscripts, commonplace books, and personal teenth-century society, Burke ofers a rewarding recollection. James Nelson Novoa discusses and consideration of the complex and ambivalent role ofers a transliteration and English translation of and social standing of commonplace books among a short Sephardic art of memory, or possibly a a broad spectrum of seventeenth-century society, sketch of what was meant to be a more elaborate and points to their important gender aspects. manual. The ffteenth-century Jewish mnemonic The third section, "Learning, Rhetoric, and treatise (written in Castilian using Hebrew letters) the Humanist Challenge," opens with Paul Nelles's is not perhaps striking in its own right--interest‐ study of Conrad Gessner's Bibliotheca Universalis ingly, it is devoid of any Jewish (for instance: Kab‐ (1545) and Pandecta (1548) as Renaissance balist) elements, and while demonstrating up-to- Melanchthonian loci communes attempts at di‐ date classical and scholastic learning (itself an in‐ gesting and sorting the vast library of sixteenth- teresting fact) is not original. Novoa, however, of‐ century learning. Unlike the print-manuscript di‐ fers us a rewarding glance both at the decidedly chotomy in much of modern scholarship, describ‐ unheroic trappings of ffteenth-century mnemon‐ ing a transfer from a culture of memory to a cul‐ ic Alltag, and a glimpse at the work, however ture of documentation, Nelles argues through the modest, of a learned member of a Jewish Iberian case of Gessner for a more porous relationship. community in all its attentiveness to the intellec‐ For Gessner the culture of the book was rooted in tual currents of its Christian surroundings--short‐ mnemonic culture: memory as an adjunct of log‐ ly before it was to be consigned to the past. Ken‐ ic--fxing knowledge in its place. Within the con‐ neth Bartlett discusses the travel journal of text of the humanist stress on memory, as op‐ Thomas Hobys (1530-66). The learned Elizabethan posed to the Cartesian stress on reason, John courtier and urbane admirer of Italian culture un‐ Hunter's "The Well-Stocked Memory and Well- dertook two journeys to Italy, and composed a Tended Self: Erasmus and the Limits of Humanist travel diary, which remained in manuscript, and Education" considers Erasmus's stress on memory was in all likelihood meant for his son, Edward. as part of the learned self and the learned care for This highly stylized account, Bartlett demon‐ one's mental well-being and stability, stemming strates, is not an authentic recollection of his Ital‐ from the pedagogical need to shield pupils from
3 H-Net Reviews the explosion of printed knowledge. The dilem‐ Virgil in Elizabethan classrooms, refected in the mas of coping with so much information and con‐ scene. Rote memorizing, though it has had bad taining it within accessible memory--at one's fn‐ press in modern times, was also linked to sympa‐ gertips--were a measure of real internalization of thetic imagination. Wallace relates this mnemonic knowledge. Hunter identifes echoes of a corre‐ incident to Hamlet's tackling of the problem of the sponding crisis of humanist education in Christo‐ communicability of experience. Hamlet's ex‐ pher Marlowe's Faustus (1589) and in William change with the frst actor refects on the one Shakespeare's Hamlet (c. 1599-1601)--the discrep‐ hand the mnemonic practice of Elizabethan class‐ ancy between accumulated knowledge and will. rooms and that of the stage. These, as Wallace Marie-Alice Belle, in one of the fnest contribu‐ points out, are two very diferent mnemonic set‐ tions to the volume, examines Johann Sturm's use tings: actors had only their own lines to memorize of fgurative drafts as part of his mnemonic in‐ and their mnemonic exertion was not a shared struction, which merges Aristotelian concepts of experience but a fragmented memorization--the memory as storehouse of images, and the Platonic frst rehearsal, as in the famous scene, was some‐ theory of recollection, positing Sturm's mnemonic thing of an epiphany, where it all formed a coher‐ pedagogical theories between traditional Renais‐ ent mosaic. sance pedagogy and Ramist dismissal of Aristotle In the ffth section, Joseph Khoury, Danièle and fgures: "Sturm's method fulflls the implica‐ Letocha, and Christopher Ivic consider the role of tion of Aristotle's analysis of the workings of Renaissance memory in national historiography memory as inference, or induction: only, it shifts and cultural identity. Khoury discusses Machiavel‐ the traditional principle of organizing mnemonic li's concept of memory as a political civic tool; that images by serial order, on which Classical and is, history as a manipulated account of the past Medieval practices of the art of memory relied, to‐ designed to control the political present. Khoury wards an order based on the induction of rhetori‐ considers the role of terror in Machiavelli's politi‐ cal or logical types" (p. 205). This method was a ra‐ cal understanding of history--a terror needed to tionalization of the art of memory leading stu‐ keep members of the commonwealth in general, dents, through a convergence of Aristotelian dia‐ and a republic in particular, under rein. Letocha lectics and Platonic reminiscence, to partake in scrutinizes Conrad Celtis's Ingolstadt Oration the divine order of the world. (1492). Letocha is no doubt right in identifying the In the interesting fourth section, Raymond general humanist nexus of cultural forgetfulness Waddington and Andrew Wallace consider the (of the Helleno-Roman tradition) as a cause of cul‐ role of memory in John Milton's Paradise Lost tural decay, and therefore the link in humanist (1667) and Shakespeare's Hamlet. Waddington thought between memory and an imagined "re‐ considers the mnemonic aspect of Paradise Lost turn to the sources." A concentration, however, on and the dire consequences of forgetfulness in the the 1492 Oration is perhaps not the best platform epic. Like the Bible, it is a "narrative of recollec‐ for a consideration of memory in Celtis's thought, tion ... designed to enable and deepen the reader's and Letocha'a stress on the contradiction between memory of Christian truths" (p. 217). The epic's Celtis's Latinity and Germanic nostalgia is to my fgures, Satan, Adam, and Eve, have the mnemon‐ mind unconvincing. Christopher Ivic ofers an in‐ ic freedom (in fact necessity) to depart from the teresting analysis of Edmund Spenser's A View of original loci and occupy new ones. Wallace scruti‐ the Present State of Ireland (written 1593; pub‐ nizes the theater scene in Hamlet, "What's Hecuba lished 1633) from the standpoint of memory and to him?" considered against the backdrop of rote forgetfulness. The English colonialists' forgetting memorization, translation, and re-Latinization of of themselves, analogous to that of the knight Ver‐
4 H-Net Reviews dant in Acasia's Tower of Bliss in the Faerie Queen and among its essays readers will fnd much that (1590-96), requires for Spenser a restoration of is worth recollecting. one's memory of oneself through external agents. Forgetting is here linked with failed social perfor‐ mance. Spenser advocates a reform of Irish soci‐ ety "in a way that will force the Irish to forget themselves" (p. 303). In the fnal section, "Natural memory vs. Arti‐ fcial Recollection," Grant Williams and Rhodri Lewis consider diferent aspects of natural and artifcial memory in early modern natural philos‐ ophy in two highly interesting articles. Williams, in a forceful and at times convoluted essay, argues for the transmateriality of early modern psycho‐ logical concepts of memory. This is a highly inter‐ esting argument about early modern natural philosophers' understanding of the mechanics of memory and recollection. To a layman like myself, the argument about early modern memory-mate‐ riality paranoia, though in itself rich (trans)material for thought, seems overstated. Lewis concludes the section with a highly reward‐ ing account of memory and mnemotechnique in the early Royal Society, focusing on Robert Hooke. Mnemotechniques--as Rhodri pointedly remarks-- are not an art of memory (ars memoriae) but an art of recollection (ars reminiscendi). Ofering a sketch of seventeenth-century natural philoso‐ phers' grappling with memory and the artifcial art of recollection, this purview is also instructive on the intricate philosophical, moral, and reli‐ gious dilemmas introduced in the seventeenth century by changing concepts of the soul. The vol‐ ume concludes with a lengthy and detailed post‐ script by Donald Beecher, ofering an overview of the wide range of topics considered in the volume and concluding with suggestions for future stud‐ ies of the ars reminiscendi. Despite my occasional disagreement with this or that application of memory in some of the vol‐ ume's essays, this collection makes a welcome contribution to the study of Renaissance memory,
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Citation: Asaph Ben-Tov. Review of Beecher, Donald; Williams, Grant, eds. Ars Reminiscendi: Mind and Memory in Renaissance Culture. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2010.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25903
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