The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture

Mary Carruthers
Paperback, 540 pages
9780521716314

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 manuscript 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).

Contents
1. Models for the memory
2. Descriptions of the neuropsychology of memory
3. Elementary memory design
4. The arts of memory
5. Memory and the ethics of reading
6. Memory and authority
7. Memory and the book