A dense but interesting study of how medieval people understood memory, thought, and reading. Thinking was an intensely physical, visual, and emotional practice in the Middle Ages. Mary Carruthers uses both the texts preserved in medieval manuscripts and the physicality of the manuscripts themselves to demonstrate how memorisation was considered a key part of an active process of internalising and thus understanding a text, and so become a morally upright and respected member of civic society. It was fascinating to see how well some medieval conceptions of thought processes and learning fit with recent discoveries in neurobiology (ones which even postdate Carruthers' writing.) One thing I would have liked, however, would have been to see Carruthers tackle some of the ways in which medieval concepts of memoria must have butted up against reality. For instance, medieval writers put a lot of emphasis on the idea of visualisation as being a key part of memory, that the memory could not really work without it—even information heard orally must be converted into an image in order to be properly understood and stored. An obvious question springs to mind: did medieval people think that someone blind from birth could have a memory? It's always a good sign, though, when your biggest quibble about a book is a desire to know even more about a topic. ( )

Topic
Memory

Question
What role did memory play in medieval learning and writing? What was the attitude towards memory in the Middle Ages?

Thesis
Memory played a far more important role in medieval culture than scholars have hitherto realized: memorization was an essential part of learning and of writing, and the increase in literacy and book production did not lead to a decrease in reliance upon memory.

Argument
"Memorizing" wasn't just an act of mindless rote learning as we think of it today. It was a very active process of understanding and internalizing a text, and of making that text a part of oneself. Memory was communal property: one wasn't a good human being until one had internalized and memorized texts; only then could one act judiciously and morally and participate in culture. Memory was an essentially visual process: one memorized things by taking them in with the eye and committing images to memory. Readers had to carefully organize their memories so that information would be readily retrievable later, and they had to break things down into small chunks so they could remember them. This explains how medieval writers could make lots and lots of crazy connections between texts, and why they were so good at quoting lots of authorities for every statement. Emotion was an important component of memory, because emotion aids memory.
Carruthers examines memory techniques in detail, which is pretty fascinating.
The increase in books after the 13th century did not mean a decrease in reliance on memory. Books were aids to memory, but did not replace it. In fact, there is strong evidence that scholars could memorize an entire book in one careful reading, and this is how texts were disseminated across Europe. The process of memorizing, internalizing, and using a text meant that there was no sharp divide between reader, text, and author: the author might create the original text, but the reader memorized and internalized it and turned it into something uniquely his own [medieval people were so postmodern!]. A texts exists in the reader's head as a part of the reader. A reader or scribe can also change a text as they memorize or re-write it, and it is this process of emending and commenting upon it that gives a text authority: it is no longer the production of one person, but is a communal endeavor.
Their relationship with the past was also very different, because the past was memorized and therefore became a part of the collective experience.The past couldn't exist independently, but only within people's memories, where it would be changed into something different and continue to live on.
Carruthers also examines how texts were composed: it appears that most authors started by writing a text in their heads, then perhaps writing a rough draft, then a final draft. But the text wasn't really considered finished until other readers had internalized and emended it.
Images, particularly those found in books, were aids to the memory, even when the images had absolutely nothing to do with the text. Many texts describe images in detail, but never actually draw them: they don't need to, because the image exists in the reader's head and can still be a mnemonic device.

Evidence
Manuscripts; artworks; philosophical, theological, and pedagogical writing

State of the Question
This book has caused some pretty major changes in how we think about the relationship between orality and literacy, and even how we define literacy. ( )

This volume is an elegant and intricate study of the medieval understanding of the educated memory, addressing the pedagogy of memory, theory of memory, nature of mnemonic technique, and cultural value assigned to memory. "For this book can be read in at least two ways: as a history of a basic and greatly influential practice of medieval pedagogy, and as a reflection on the psychological and social value of the institution of memoria itself, which is in many ways the same as the institution of literature," writes Carruthers.

The book is an explicitly "cultural" history, stressing continuity over change. It draws on an almost bewilderingly wide variety of elite sources throughout the medieval (and late classical) period. Carruthers chose not to highlight the Neoplatonist/Aristotelian intellectual divide in medieval thought, maintaining that memoria is a matter of praxis rather than doxos, and one that was equally pertinent and similarly approached on both sides of the doctrinal coin.

Carruthers' unavoidable predecessor in the study of the education of memory is Frances Yates (The Art of Memory, et al.), and key fellow medievalists are Brian Stock and Jean Leclercq.

She advances a distinction between textualist (interpretational) and fundamentalist (anti-interpretational) cultural perspectives, as well as a contrast between mechanical mental recall and recollection/reminiscence. She also draws a useful line between heuristic and hermeneutic processes.

She succeeds admirably in her effort to demonstrate the collaborative relationship of literacy and memory in medieval culture, and the emphasis on memory as reflecting the value of rhetoric. Although I have made more use of its successor volume The Craft of Thought in my researches, The Book of Memory is one of a small handful of books that persuaded me to become a medievalist.