Elizabeth-Anne Scarth, Mnemotechnics and Virgil: The Art of Memory and Remembering. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2008, v-109 p.
ISBN 13 (ean): 9783836476669
Recension par Giampiero Scafoglio (Università di Salern) dans Bryn Mawr Classical Review: 2008.12.40
Présentation de l'éditeur:
Cicero, Quintilian and the anonymous author of the ad Herennium eachdescribe the art and practice of using an artificial memory system tohelp aid remembrance. Each of the authors' respective treatises offersan exploration of how both loci (places) and imagines (images) wereused to facilitate remembrance of both res (things) and verba (words).The methods delineated by each author provide valuable insight into thevisual process, used by educated Romans to retrieve and recallinformation stored in their memories. By understanding how rememberingand recollection were inherently important to the Romans the modernreader can apprehend how Virgil, as a member of the Roman elite, eitherconsciously or subconsciously, would portray his characters as beingfamiliar not only with the system of artificial memory, but also withthe Roman process of using different spaces and places to stimulateremembrance. This book looks at the rhetoricians' discussions of theart of memory and posits that Virgil uses the artificial memory systemfeatures of sequential order, discriminability, and distinctivenesswhen describes the way his characters look at various images in theAeneid.