The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) [Paperback]

Mary J. Carruthers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0521429730 | ISBN-13: 978-0521429733

The Book of Memory is a magisterial and beautifully illustrated account of the workings and function of memory in medieval society. Memory was the psychological faculty valued above all others in the period stretching from late antiquity through the Renaissance. The prominence given to memory has profound implications for the contemporary understanding of all creative activity, and the social role of literature and art. Drawing on a range of fascinating examples from Dante, Chaucer, and Aquinas to the symbolism of illuminated manuscripts, this unusually wide-ranging book offers new insights into the medieval world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I have been looking at medieval illuminations for years, but after reading what Mary Carruthers has to say about them (well illustrated by thirty reproductions) I can never look at them in quite the same way again....A short review can do no more than scratch the surface of this profound book." Canadian Journal of History

"Mary Carruthers...has much enlarged our conception of memory in the Middle Ages....The Book of Memory is the work of a careful and erudite scholar, scrupulous and yet imaginative..." Times Literary Supplement

"The Book of Memory is not only a very fine ethnographic study of folk psychology and an exemplary study of material culture (medieval books), but also a very significant contribution to general anthropological theory." Man

"...a delightful and erudite presentation on the role of memoria, or memory, in the Middle Ages." Elwood E. Mather III, The Sixteenth Century Journal

"Mary Carruthers has presented a detailed study of the importance of memory to the preservation and transmission of knowledge and written material. She also gives us an important insight into the relationship between writing and orality....This book is excellent reading....it is a specialized book in a neglected field of study." Elmer Clark, History

"Just as memory was fundamental to the Middle Ages, Mary Carruthers's The Book of Memory will be fundamental to our understanding and teaching of medieval mentalité. Rather than asking who needs Carruther's book when Frances Yates's The Art of Memory, written from a Renaissance perspective, has served scholars since 1966, I would wonder who can do without it. Carruthers's documentation of the layout of medieval memory and of books as both echoes of and aids to memory formation deserves the attention of all serious students of the history of ideas....Though Carruthers positions her work with respect to Yates's scholarship, she supersedes it. Scholars from all disciplines who have sought support in Frances Yates will want to enlarge their conception of medieval books and their rememberers by consulting Mary Carruthers's The Book of Memory." Elaine E. Whitaker, South Atlantic Review

"Carruthers has done a great service by providing so lucid and authoritative an account of medieval memory systems." Modern Language Quarterly

"This is an excellent and important book, and like all good works of scholarship it has major implications beyond the subject matter actually treated by the author....This book will open up new, historically focused ways of understanding reading and writing in the Middle Ages as social practices based on educational objectives and cultural assumptions quite different from our own. As I was reading, I saw many ways to apply Carruther's arguments to Old and Middle English poetical codices and to the works of Dante, Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. The Book of Memory opens a door to future research that I hope many scholars and students will pass through." Martin Irvine, Modern Philology

"Of making many books there is no end, but for some books we are continually grateful. Occasionally, we find a book that opens up a whole new vista, a work so solidly organized and so carefully detailed that it immediately becomes a standard reference book. Mary Carruthers's The Book of Memory is that sort of book." Joyce Sutphen, Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Book Description

Mary Carruthers's classic study of the training and uses of memory 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. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 407 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (May 29, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521429730
• ISBN-13: 978-0521429733
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #891,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Window on the Past..., January 23, 2001

By 

John M. Green (Pelham, AL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) (Paperback)

This extraordinary book and its companion volume, "The Craft of Thought," represent the most thorough, complete and accurate treatment of the arts of memory available in English. If you have a good academic vocabulary and a latin dictionary handy, this is quite a page turner. It gives you a look inside the heads of ancient and medieval scholars, whose imaginary "memory machines" are conceptual forerunners to the random-access memory in modern computers. Its themes are also a revelation to anyone interested in medieval art history. For example, after reading this, one realizes that medieval manuscripts were colorfully illuminated for the purposes of recollection, not just to make pretty pictures in the margins. This work expands and corrects some of the conclusions of Frances Yates in her pioneering work, "The Art of Memory." This is an intellectual thrill ride!

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and well-written academic text, May 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) (Paperback)

Carruthers's *Book of Memory* deals with the ways reading, composition, and memory interacted in the Middle Ages. She explores the way texts were used as memory tools or mnemonic devices by medieval readers. Texts, she argues, were not meant to be simply informational. Instead, readers and listeners used mnemonic skills to store the information gleaned from texts in their minds and use that information as the matter for future composition or meditation. Carruthers's writing is clear and informative. This text is comprehensive, often fascinating, and displays the author's vast knowledge of her subject matter. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in expanding his or her understanding of memory and composition in the Middle Ages. However, this book is not for everyone. It is very dense and goes into great technical detail about its subject matter. Students of medieval language and history will find it most useful.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Work on Medieval Mnemonics, November 26, 2008

By 

A. Keiser "Ite ad Thomam." (A backwater.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) (Hardcover)

In this review, I intend to describe what the book is, who it is for, and its pluses and shortcomings. Then, I'd like to recommend a few companion volumes. Finally, I want to answer the complaint of one reviewer who claimed that Frances Yates book "On Memory" is better.

Mary Carruthers did the world a tremendous service by writing the book. What she does is investigate the world of pre-modern memory in 500 pages beginning with the Ancients and then using that background as a base from which to cover medieval mnemonics-which both borrowed from and added to ancient systems of memory. She also discusses the role of memory as an art and a part of virtue, how the medievals perceived it, a brief set of theories on how memory works, memory's effects on composition and books, and the like, mnemonic-architectonics (I'll explain this term in a following section), and, finally, the "end" of memory as an art. Some of the work is conjecture, but most of it is simply solid historical material, which Mrs. Carruthers carefully documents and references. The work is, for the most part, divided according to subject rather than time period. Three appendices and two indices, one general and one of the manuscripts referenced, are included as well. Several black and white plates are included as well which are generally reproductions historical examples that are examined. As for the work's physical characteristics, I have a paperbound edition, but it is still quite sturdy.

This book is useful for a variety of people. Obviously, the student of medieval thought is one target. However, for those wishing to educate themselves about a well-nigh forgotten area of knowledge, which was was considered absolutely vital, this work is a godsend. Additionally, for the person who wants to learn how to memorize things systematically, the book provides descriptions of several methods for doing so and breaks down the various systems into their common components. Of especial interest is the system of mnemonic-architectonics, in which one memorizes a physical place, such as a building (or "builds" an imaginary one in one's mind ["castles in the air", anyone?])and uses it as a place to store information in an orderly fashion. The systems described are not simple mnemonic tricks but are extraordinarily useful tools that were vital in an age before the printing press and were (and could still be) invaluable aids in composition. The authoress gives an extended description of how this was done. The copious references also make it possible to go directly to the primary sources, which is a tremendous help.

As for the work's shortcomings, there are very few, in my opinion. The biggest problem is that it is rather dry. However, this is to be expected as it is academic. However, it manages to stay on subject well and deliver a great deal of information. A few digressions into literary theory may or may not interest the reader and some of the conclusions she draws using modern literary theory are debatable. The only other difficulty is that some may disagree with a few of the conjectures of the authoress regarding memory and the medieval mind. Nevertheless, the presence of conjecture in a field that is relatively unexplored is inevitable. Other than that, it is a solid, well-documented work.

There are several works that may work as valuable accompaniments to this book. A translation of some of the primary sources referenced is available in a companion volume The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Material Texts) and another volume, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) discusses the role of memory (in detail) in medieval rhetoric, meditation, and other areas of life, particularly in the religious communities. Frances Yates's book on memory is also useful as a sort of broad overview.

Finally, I wish to answer an unfair comparison. One previous reviewer claimed that Frances Yates's book, "The Art of Memory" is superior. It is superior only in the sense that it is more readable, at least for the majority of the work. That book is written with a broader audience in mind and has more of a conversational style for recreational reading. However, Yates's specialty in writing tends to lean towards the history of occult movements and the like, and as such, she focuses on these aspects of the history of memory and the medievals don't get all that much space, and, in the end, memory gets pushed off the the side as well. Instead, the thrust of the work is ultimately towards the history of science with a focus on modern science's gnostic and occult roots (she theorizes about the philosopher's stone being the memory, etc, etc). In the last few chapters, the work becomes nearly wholly absorbed in discussions on the hermetic tradition, occultism, and various proto-modern scientists. Yes, it's readable, but readability is not a criterion for excellence save in thrillers and yellow journalism. I didn't find the information to be nearly as valuable or as useful or even as structured as "The Book of Memory". It's not a bad book, but it is much inferior to Mary Carruther's seminal work.