The Reformation of Memory in Early Modern Europe

TitleThe Reformation of Memory in Early Modern Europe
Publication TypeBook Chapter
Year of PublicationSubmitted
AuthorsPeter Sherlock, Susannah Radstone, Bill Schwarz,
Pagination30-40
PublisherFordham University Press
CityNew York
Notes

'\nIt is worth noting how the term memoria and its derivatives were actually used in early modern Europe. On the one hand, the term was used to describe the mental process of recollection, especially in pedagogical and scientific contexts. On the other, it described the fruits of the labor of remembrance, including {31} literary genres such as ricordanze and mémoires. The most common use of the word memory revolved around the relationship of the living and the dead. A third use, a survival from earlier centuries, was a way of referring to the retrievable past, embodied in phrases such as \"time out of mind\" or \"beyond the memory of man.\" Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, significant transformations occurred in the meaning and function of memory in all these areas. In what follows I first trace the decline of the arts of memory and the rise of empirical scientific method. I then turn to consider the impact of the Reformation and Renaissance on memorial practices, especially the commemoration of the dead, before examining how time itself was reconceived.\n'