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The Art of Recollection and Renaissance Memory

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The Art of Recollection and Renaissance Memory 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 disfigured that they could quet of a rich nobleman. Following common prac‐ no longer be identified. 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 influential 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 (first 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 edifice--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 offer thought-pro‐ working form of artificial memory, and others voking discussions of various test cases--and in more skeptical about the virtues of artificial 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 benefited 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‐ difference 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 significantly, 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, offer 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. Significant 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 significance 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, offers 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, offers a marily to offer 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 nificance 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 superficial collection for the formation of a collective memory" (p. 80). of snippets, avoiding an internalization of moral Whether or not one agrees, this essay offers 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 different strands of seven‐ manuscripts, commonplace books, and personal teenth-century society, Burke offers a rewarding recollection. James Nelson Novoa discusses and consideration of the complex and ambivalent role offers 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.
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