The Art of Memory

Front Cover
Random House, Oct 31, 2011 - Psychology - 448 pages

This unique and brilliant book is a history of human knowledge.

Before the invention of printing, a trained memory was of vital importance. Based on a technique of impressing 'places' and 'images' on the mind, the ancient Greeks created an elaborate memory system which in turn was inherited by the Romans and passed into the European tradition, to be revived, in occult form, during the Renaissance.

Frances Yates sheds light on Dante’s Divine Comedy, the form of the Shakespearian theatre and the history of ancient architecture; The Art of Memory is an invaluable contribution to aesthetics and psychology, and to the history of philosophy, of science and of literature.

 

Contents

PREFACE
11
The Three Latin Sources for the Classical Art
17
Memory and
42
The Art of Memory in the Middle Ages
63
Medieval Memory and the Formation of Imagery
93
The Memory Treatises
114
The Memory Theatre
135
Camillos Theatre and the Venetian Renaissance
163
Ramism as an Art of Memory
228
The Secret of Seals
239
Conflict between Brunian and Ramist Memory
260
Last Works on Memory
279
The Art of Memory and Brunos Italian Dialogues
298
The Theatre Memory System of Robert Fludd
310
Fludds Memory Theatre and the Globe Theatre
330
The Art of Memory and the Growth of Scientific
355

Lullism as an Art of Memory
175
The Secret of Shadows
197
NOTES
375
Copyright

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About the author (2011)

Dame Frances Yates achieved a world-wide reputation as an historian. She was Reader in the History of the Renaissance at the Warburg Institute of the University of London and gained many academic honours. In 1972 she was appointed OBE and in 1977 DBE.

Her publications include Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Theatre of the World, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, and Shakespeare's Last Plays. Frances Yates died in 1981.