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  THE BOOK OF MEMORY

  Mary Carruthers’s classic study of the training and uses of memory

  for a variety of purposes in European cultures during the Middle Ages

  has fundamentally changed the way scholars understand medieval

  culture. This fully revised and updated second edition considers

  afresh all the material and conclusions of the first. While responding

  to new directions in research inspired by the original, this new edition

  devotes much more attention to the role of trained memory in

  composition, whether of literature, music, architecture, or manu-

  script books. The new edition will reignite the debate on memory

  in medieval studies and, like the first, will be essential reading for

  scholars of history, music, the arts, and literature, as well as those

  interested in issues of orality and literacy (anthropology), in the

  working and design of memory (both neuropsychology and artificial

  memory), and in the disciplines of meditation (religion).

  M A R Y C A R R U T H E R S is Remarque Professor of Literature at New

  York University and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She is also

  the author of The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the

  Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998; paperback edition,

  2000) and co-editor, with Jan M. Ziolkowski, of The Medieval Craft

  of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (2002).

  C A M B R I D G E S T U D I E S I N M E D I E V A L L I T E R A T U R E

  G E N E R A L E D I T O R

  Alastair Minnis, Yale University

  E D I T O R I A L B O A R D

  Zygmunt G. Baranśki, University of Cambridge

  Christopher C. Baswell, University of California, Los Angeles

  John Burrow, University of Bristol

  Mary Carruthers, New York University

  Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania

  Simon Gaunt, King’s College, London

  Steven Kruger, City University of New York

  Nigel Palmer, University of Oxford

  Winthrop Wetherbee, Cornell University

  Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, University of York

  This series of critical books seeks to cover the whole area of literature written in the

  major medieval languages – the main European vernaculars, and medieval Latin

  and Greek – during the period c.1100–1500. Its chief aim is to publish and

  stimulate fresh scholarship and criticism on medieval literature, special emphasis

  being placed on understanding major works of poetry, prose, and drama in

  relation to the contemporary culture and learning which fostered them.

  R E C E N T T I T L E S I N T H E S E R I E S

  Piers Plowman and the Medieval Discourse of Desire Nicolette Zeeman

  The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms 1300–1500 Anthony Bale

  Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt Robert J. Meyer-Lee

  Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages Isabel Davis

  Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante and Jean de Meun

  John M. Fyler

  Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England Matthew Giancarlo

  Women Readers in the Middle Ages D. H. Green

  The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions

  Mary Dove

  The Creation of Lancastrian Kingship: Literature, Language and Politics in Late

  Medieval England Jenni Nuttall

  Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 Laura Ashe

  The Poetry of Praise J. A. Burrow

  A complete list of titles in the series can be found at the end of the volume.

  THE BOOK OF MEMORY

  A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture

  Second Edition

  MARY CARRUTHERS

  New York University

  and

  All Souls College, Oxford

  C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

  Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo, Delhi

  Cambridge University Press

  The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

  Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

  www.cambridge.org

  Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521716314

  # Mary Carruthers 1990, 2008

  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

  and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

  no reproduction of any part may take place without

  the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

  First published 1990

  First paperback edition 1992

  Second edition 2008

  Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

  A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-0-521-88820-2 hardback

  ISBN 978-0-521-71631-4 paperback

  Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for

  the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or

  third-party internet websites referred to in this book,

  and does not guarantee that any content on such

  websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  Contents

  List of illustrations

  page vi

  Preface to the second edition

  ix

  List of abbreviations

  xv

  Introduction

  1

  1

  Models for the memory

  18

  2

  Descriptions of the neuropsychology of memory

  56

  3

  Elementary memory design

  99

  4

  The arts of memory

  153

  5

  Memory and the ethics of reading

  195

  6

  Memory and authority

  234

  7

  Memory and the book

  274

  Appendix A

  339

  Appendix B

  345

  Appendix C

  361

  Notes

  369

  Bibliography

  458

  Index of manuscripts

  494

  General index

  496

  v

  Illustrations

  1. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 917, p. 300.

  With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  page 48

  2. Paris, Bibliothe

  `que nationale de France MS. n.a.l. 2334,

  fo. 9r. With permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

  52

  3. Cambridge, University Library MS. Gg 1.1, fo. 490v.

  With permission of the University Library, Cambridge.

  66

  4. University of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Lat.th.b.4,

  fo. 21v. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library,

  University of Oxford.

  108

  5. Paris, Bibliothe

  `que nationale de France MS. lat. 15009,

  fo. 3v. With permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 119

  6. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 860,

  fo. 8v. With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  120

&nb
sp; 7. Cambridge, Trinity College MS. B.5.4, fos. 146v–147r.

  Reproduced with permission of the Master and Fellows of

  Trinity College Cambridge.

  266

  8. University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat.th.b.4,

  fo. 23v. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library,

  University of Oxford.

  270

  9. University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 717,

  fo. 287v. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library,

  University of Oxford.

  280

  10. Utrecht, University Library MS. 32, fo. 82v. With

  permission of the University Library, Utrecht.

  284

  11. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 756,

  fo. 60r. With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  286

  12. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 756,

  fo. 105v. With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  288

  13. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 756,

  fo. 79r. With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  289

  vi

  List of illustrations

  vii

  14. University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 104,

  fo. 79r. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library,

  University of Oxford.

  290

  15. University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lyell 71, fo. 3v.

  Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library,

  University of Oxford.

  305

  16. University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lyell 71, fo. 4r.

  Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library,

  University of Oxford.

  306

  17. San Marino, California, Huntington Library MS. HM 19915,

  fo. 5r. Reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library.

  311

  18. San Marino, California, Huntington Library MS. HM

  19915, fo. 36v. Reproduced by permission of The

  Huntington Library.

  312

  19. San Marino, California, Huntington Library MS. HM

  19915, fo. 46r. Reproduced by permission of The

  Huntington Library.

  313

  20. London, British Library MS. Royal 10. E. I V, fo. 62r. # The

  British Library Board.

  316

  21. London, British Library MS. Royal 10. E. I V , fo. 62v. # The

  British Library Board.

  316

  22. London, British Library MS. Royal 10. E. I V , fo. 63r. # The

  British Library Board.

  317

  23. London, British Library MS. Royal 10. E. I V , fo. 63v. # The

  British Library Board.

  317

  24. London, British Library MS. Royal 10. E. I V, fo. 64r. # The

  British Library Board.

  318

  25. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 917, p. 240.

  With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  319

  26. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 945, fo. 20r.

  With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  320

  27. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 917, p. 247.

  With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  321

  28. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 917, p. 266.

  With permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library.

  322

  29. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 286, fo. 125r. With

  permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi

  College, Cambridge.

  326

  30. Dublin, Trinity College MS.A.1 (58), fo. 34r. With permis-

  sion of The Board of Trinity College Dublin.

  334

  Preface to the second edition

  Preparing a wholly new edition of work first undertaken more than twenty

  years ago has offered me an opportunity to rethink, recast, correct, and

  generally reassess the conclusions I offered in 1990. It is a task that carries

  mixed rewards. I have resisted my initial temptation to rewrite the entire

  thing from the beginning – this book cannot be started again. Published

  some eighteen years ago, translated entirely or in part into several other

  languages, and cited in many contexts by scholars with a great diversity of

  interests, it has a life of its own now and my control over it is limited. So the

  book begins as it did before, and the general ordering of the materials is

  unchanged. But each sentence and note has been reconsidered. I hope this

  has resulted in greater correctness in the translations and citations, increased

  felicity of style and clarity of presentation. I have also, however, updated the

  content when new scholarship has made old conclusions untenable. And

  I have added material to some of my analyses, reduced some discussions, and

  expanded others. The images selected for reproduction are somewhat differ-

  ent. I have also updated the notes and bibliography, to incorporate trans-

  lations and editions that have appeared since I did my original research, and

  scholarly discussions that have matured over the past dozen years.

  I wrote in 1989 that The Book of Memory was to be the first of three. It

  seemed an audacious promise at the time, but in fact it turned out to be

  truthful. The Craft of Thought (1998) examined an earlier medieval period, and

  focused even more particularly on the inventive and creative nature of

  recollection as it was cultivated in the practices of monastic reading and

  composition. An anthology of English translations of many of the medieval

  texts that had proved important in this history, The Medieval Craft of Memory,

  followed in 2002, prepared with my good friend Jan Ziolkowski, a consum-

  mate scholar of medieval Latin, and with the keen participation as translators

  and annotators of several members of his medieval Latin literature seminar.

  Inevitably, as I have continued to work over the two decades intervening

  since The Book of Memory was first published, my own understanding of

  ix

  x

  Preface to the second edition

  medieval memory culture (as it has come to be called) has changed and

  deepened. In this edition, I have adjusted and corrected more than just my

  Latin translations. I have come to understand far more clearly the place

  which the craft of memory training, memoria artificialis, had in medieval

  education, its perceived strengths, its accepted limitations, and most

  importantly its status as an instrument of thought, employing particular

  devices for specific goals and uses. Ars memorativa is not itself theoretical,

  though, like all crafts, it has its general principles. Two themes in particular

  stand out, which I did not focus on in the earlier edition, and it may be

  helpful to point them out now.

  Though I did not know it at the time, The Book of Memory appeared just as

  interest was picking up in issues of memory and forgetting, particularly in

  relation to historical narratives of various sorts and to monuments. The Book

  of Memory was swept into this concern, although in fact the subject with

  which it dealt had little directly to do with monuments, and, while it

  certainly had a bearing on the construction of historical narratives, it was

  not directly illuminating of the issues of material selection and presentation

  that have most conc
erned historians like Pierre Nora, Patrick Geary, and

  Jean-Claude Schmitt. In rhetoric, memory craft is a stage in composing a

  work; presupposed is the axiom that recollection is an act of investigation and

  recreation in the service of conscious artifice. Its practitioners would not have

  been surprised to learn what was to them already obvious: that recollection is

  a kind of composition, and by its very nature is selective and formal.

  Analysts of the postmodern have been particularly concerned for the

  past decade with issues of forgetting, which they often ally with issues of

  trauma and repression, as though remembering everything were the natural

  and desirable human condition, and forgetting was due to various psychic

  pathologies, if not to outright political immorality. In this postmodern

  presentation, the arts of memory have fared badly, the very idea of a

  memory art dismissed as a hoax or at best a chimerical quest. But the

  rush to condemn has itself created a historical illusion. For ancient and

  medieval writers supposed that human memories were by nature imperfect,

  and that humans recollected best by applying their reasoning abilities.

  These in turn could be aided by certain learned practices that build on

  some natural principles they had observed, concerning how people best

  learn and construct their thoughts and other artifacts.

  St Augustine writes:1

  I arrive in the fields and vast mansions of memory, where are treasured innumer-

  able images brought in there from objects of every conceivable kind perceived by

  Preface to the second edition

  xi

  the senses. There too are hidden away the modified images we produce when by

  our thinking we magnify or diminish or in any way alter the information our

  senses have reported. There too is everything else that has been consigned and

  stored away and not yet engulfed and buried in oblivion . . . The huge repository

  of the memory, with its secret and unimaginable caverns, welcomes and keeps all

  these things, to be recalled and brought out for use when needed; and as all of them

  have their particular ways into it, so all are put back again in their proper places . . .

  This I do within myself in the immense court of my memory, for there sky and

  earth and sea are readily available to me, together with everything I have ever been

  able to perceive in them, apart from what I have forgotten.

  ‘‘[A]part from what I have forgotten’’: in the cheerful admission of that

  phrase lies an essential difference between a modern and a medieval under-