The capacity to ask the right questions (semester Roundup)

Well, I have to say, I am very pleased with another of Dr. Sexson's stimulating classes. It seems a lot has changed on my end since i had American Lit II three and a half years ago and vowed to never take another class from Dr. S again.

Of all of the aspects of the entire semester, I have to say Frances Yates' book effected me the most.  I am quite convinced that "The Art of Memory" is one of the best books I have ever read. I have never really gotten into scholarly writing like in Memory but I believe that will be changing.  I will probably reread the book this summer to get a better grasp on the concepts outlined by Yates.  That is of course. After I finish Yates' other book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition and maybe even a translation of the Corpus Hermeticum.

I wasn't kidding when I said the entire class finally made sense to me as I sat thinking about what I should present for my Individual presentation. I wish I could rewrite and revise my paper again with a little less painkiller influence. The connections between the three parts of class, Memory, Orality, and Myth are freakish. Bruno is the key that ties them together so completely and I just didn't quite realize it until 30 seconds before my presentation. To be quite honest, reading Bruno makes me want to drop everything and devote all of my time to discovering the Divine Mind. I am pretty convinced it exists. Though reaching Bruno's divine mind may be nearly impossible, with some properly devoted study it may be nearly attainable.  I can only imagine the possibilities with even 5% of the capability of the Divine Mind. 

Overall, I believe it important to note that we've discussed all natures of communication, from orality, to literacy, to hypertextuality and back again.  For me it is not a competition as to which is superior. The true interest is how we got to where we are and where is it going. The development of language comes at a price of loosing parts of the older method but that older method continues to exist on a more subtle level. 

Reading Rich's paper, I begin to think in our entire semester dealing with the shift from Orality-Literacy-Hypertextuality we forgot a step.  The crucial step that comes before Orality.  How did we get that far. I happen to like Rich's and Darwin's opinions on the subject matter. Orality began with communication with the earth and the natural rhythms of the earth. If we believe that this conversation started nearly 100,000 years ago, Its interesting to think what capability for knowledge these primeval people had. Especially since 100,000 years later a man named Bruno wrote that the Divine Mind originates in a conversation with the world. Either way, all knowledge seems to come from our ability to process and store conversation. The medium for the conversation is irrelevant.  This class is an excellent example. I had a great conversation with Frances Yates, I picked up a few tidbits from both Ong and Kane, and every now and then I understood lecture. But the knowledge I gained from theses conversations is almost limitless.  Like I said, even up to the moment I made my presentation the conversation continued to dump knowledge on me.  Its fascinating.  Knowledge comes from the process of the conversation. I know I'm going to sound like a broken record by saying this but the processing capability lies in the Memory and Imagination. Conversations get ordered in the Memory and Imagination then the Soul connects the dots.  The Dots can come from any compartment in the Memory and imagination and once connected presto the foundations of knowledge.  The common conception of the brain is an infinite lattice work of synapes and braincells.  Its the worlds most complex connect the dots puzzle. Though not an impossible one, unlocking this puzzle requires a powerful capacity to order the dots an and even more powerful capacity to converse with the world (people, nature, animals, universe) and ask the right questions.

Thanks for another great semester Dr. Sexson, I look forward to running across you again.

Final Paper Completed

Kevin Luby

English 337 Oral Traditions

Dr. Sexson

The Memory, Imagination, and Soul of Mythtelling

Sean Kane writes in his novel Wisdom of the Mythtellers “[…] myths were not merely flights of the imagination; they were flights of the spirit, with the narrative acting as the conduit of supernatural energies summoned and made present by story, and the mythteller acting as the conductor of the souls of the listeners” (104).  But why did mythtellers control such power?  Paraphrasing Aristotle, Frances Yates writes “memory…belongs to the same part of the soul as imagination; it is a collection of mental pictures form sense impressions but with a time element added, for the mental images of memory are not from perception of things present but of things past” (33).  In an oral tradition, storytellers held the key to personal development, morally, socially, and spiritually.  They molded the youth of the tribe.  They taught future leaders, future shaman, and future farmers the knowledge needed to survive in a threatening world.  Stories capture the imagination, and according to Aristotle, imagination connects with memory.  Both memory and imagination lie in the soul and as a result, the storyteller’s guidance of the soul becomes the single greatest influence on the development of the mind.

  Myths teach people how to interact with the world.  “Exchange with the world is made at the mouth, nose, ears, eyes, anus, sexual organs, and the skin itself” (Kane 103).  Before print, myths were used to teach children about poisonous berries, the weather, planting crops, and medical uses for plants.  These myths appealed to the imagination as colorful characters acted as the guinea pigs of the natural world.  For example excess pride will cause downfall as in the story of Icarus.  Myths remain in the collective consciousness of the tribe and teach important lessons of development and survival.  Initially, these stories guided developing souls by means of imagination and memory however, the mythteller’s true gift extends beyond practical knowledge.  The storyteller and his myths play a crucial part in the development of all knowledge.

Paraphrasing Plato, Yates writes:

The Phaedrus is a treatise on rhetoric in which rhetoric is regarded, not as an art of persuasion to be used for personal or political advantage, but as an art of speaking the truth and of persuading hearers to the truth.  The power to do this depends on knowledge of the soul and the soul’s true knowledge consists in the recollection of the Ideas.  Memory is not a ‘section’ of this treatise as one part of the art of rhetoric; memory in the Platonic sense is the groundwork of the whole. (37)

 

Plato’s theory of forms states that all knowledge comes hardwired into the brain upon birth.  Accessing this information requires little more than the proper thought or more specifically, proper remembrance.  Truth depends on the knowledge of the soul and its two main aspects, memory and imagination.  If truth lies in the soul, then the person responsible for developing the soul holds the key to knowledge.  Enter the mythteller and his true purpose in mythtelling.  Because myths develop the memory and imagination, they offer the gateway to not just practical knowledge but all knowledge of the past, present, and still to come.  A well developed memory and imagination allows access to the knowledge described by Plato in his theory of forms.  Cicero argues for the power of memory and imagination, “assuredly nothing can be apprehended even in God of greater value than this … Therefore the soul is, as I say, divine, as Euripides dares say, God …” (Yates 47).  Thus, the power imparted by an oral mythteller through his stories surpasses the power of God.  Stories that teach what is, what was, and what will be empower a human with the divine, which explains why religion roots in myth and storytellers become demi-gods.

Several centuries later, Giordano Bruno echoes the ideas of Plato and Aristotle:

"Since the divine mind is universally present in the world of nature the process of coming to know the divine mind must be through the reflection of the images of the world of sense within the mens.  Therefore the function of the imagination of ordering the images in memory is an absolutely vital one in the cognitive process. Vital and living images will reflect the vitality and life of the world--and he has in mind both magically vitalized astral images and the living striking images of the 'Ad Herennian' memory rule (Yates 259)"

 

By viewing the “mens” described by Bruno as the soul, we gain an even clearer picture of the powerful trinity developed by Aristotle and Plato. "As the world is said to be the image of God, so Trismegistus does not fear to call man the image of the world [...] man is the 'great miracle' [...] his mens is divine (Yates ???)” The ordered arrangement of the images in the memory creates the divine mind and joins with the divine consciousness of the world.  According to Bruno, the world is another entity with whom we converse. Humans build and share knowledge with the world just as we would with each other. The myths of oral storytellers create the dialogue with the earth that taps into its available knowledge.  As Sean Kane states in his book, human tradition dictates myth thus allowing them to be apart of the conversation.  The earth learns of humans just as humans learn of the earth, through the mythic conversation.  In oral cultures, storytellers nurtured this conversation by developing the imagination, the memory, and the soul and the conversation continues in the literate tradition though in a slightly varied form.

The residual influence of the oral storytelling tradition, though not as formal and revered, appears in childhood development today.  Countless studies indicate that exposing young children to aural stimulus aids development.  Reading fairytales (the modern day myth), listening to classical music, and speaking other languages work in a similar fashion today as myths did thousands of years ago.  “Sound is thus a unifying sense,” writes Walter Ong in Orality and Literacy “[…] knowledge is ultimately not a fractioning but a unifying phenomenon, a striving for harmony.  Without harmony, an interior condition, the psyche is in bad health” (71-72). “Sound […] exists only when it’s going out of existence” (Ong 90). It is up to the imagination to comprehend something that only exists instantaneously.  The imagination must connect a sound to a concrete object or visualize a sound as an action.  While the imagination processes sound, memory stores it and the soul critiques the whole experience resulting in the cognitive process. Reasonably, exposure to aural stimulus begins the development of the “unifying phenomenon” called knowledge through the development of the imagination and memory just as myths did millennia ago. 

Today, people rarely sit down with a storyteller and listen to myths about the dangers of the world.  Very few cultures continue to deify oral storytellers because of their position as knowledge transfers between earth and human and vise versa.  None-the-less, knowledge still comes from a divine mind created through a trinity of the imagination, the memory, and the soul.  In oral cultures, the primary method of gaining this knowledge was oral storytelling, thus myth and mythtelling held ultimate importance.  Today, aural stimulus builds knowledge and remains inextricably connected to memory, imagination, and soul. Humans still rely on myths and orality to convey knowledge as the basic workings of the brain remains unchanged since the time of oral cultures.  The human instinct of learning has preserved myth as myths offer the most effective method of understanding the lessons of the world.

First round of presentations

Just wanted to say good job to all of the first round of presenters including myself.  To the "Maps" group, awesome presentation. The entire story flowed like a singular myth.  I really couldn't see where one story line ended and the other began.  I would love to see the entire think posted somewhere for another more in-depth read through.  (I am of the literate tradition after all).   I especially liked Sutter's telling of the myth from the dogs perspective.  An interesting question, "Who owns who?."  Well done to everyone of that group.  I believe your presentation was an excellent way to teach the material from the chapter.

And now a bit more on "Boundaries" chapter 3.

Not only is the "boundary" an important part of the mythic formula for oral cultures, sometimes it is the only part of the myth.  What I mean is, the "boundary" explains the difference from that which is comprehendible to an oral culture and that which is unknown.  The "boundary" is where an entity contacts the outer world.  Kane writes "If one thinks of the human body as a bounded entity, one has an idea of what boundary permits and does not permit.  Exchange with the world is made at the mouth, nose, ears, eyes, anus, sexual organs, and the skin itself. (103)" A boundary "segregates the world of the mysterious others from the world human beings have some control over (102)."  But its at these "boundaries"  where the cross of information takes place.  To an oral culture, it is unknown if a plant is safe to eat until someone tries it.  This trial and error taught people how to survive in the world through very primitive methods of data collection.  This interaction across the physical boundary of the mouth between the outside world and the body spawned myths about safe berries and roots to eat in the environment.

Another important aspect of "boundary" is framing.  By having boundaries in myth, it became clear to oral culture to separate different types of knowledge.  The forest edge framed the knowledge of the forest.  As did the sea-surface or the entrance to a cave.  Often times these boundaries would have a gate keeper to serve as a reminder to switch frames of knowledge when passing from zone to zone.

As we noted in our presentation, the oral tradition of boundary still holds an incredible influence on literature today.  Its important to note, that in the oral tradition more so than today, the emphasis was as much on the boundary as on the knowledge acquired from the other-side.

Because I can't Quite escape the subject...More on Devine Memory, Imagination, Soul

Frances Yates pg. 257

"Since the divine mind is universally present  in the wold of nature (continues Bruno in the Seal of Seals) the process of coming to know the divine mind must be through the reflection of the images of the world of sense within the mens.  Therefore the function of the imagination of ordering the images in memory is an absolutely vital one in the cognitive process. Vital and living images will reflect the vitality and life of the world--and he has in mind both magically vitalized astral images and the living striking images of the 'Ad Herennian' memory rule."

continuing on to pg. 259

"The art of memory has become in Giordano Bruno's occult transformation of it, a magico-religious technique, a way of becoming joined to the soul of the world as part of the Hermetic mystery cult. When the Thirty Seals of memory are broken, this is the 'secret' revealed in the Seal of Seals"

Ok so this is just a quick sampling of quotes about my favorite topic of this course, memory, imagination, and soul.  The end of chapter 11 is littered with quotes in support of the trinity.  More importantly, the process described by Yates finally connects Bruno back to the original thoughts of the Platonic and Aristotalian view of the art of memory.  However, Bruno tends to be more in the camp of Plato. Like Plato, Bruno sees memory, imagination, and soul as the trinity that grants man limitless power of knowledge.

Bruno's memory system joins the human soul with the world. "As the world is satid to be the image of God, so Trismegistus does not fear to call man the image of the world... man is the 'great miracle' ... his mens is divine."

I don't even have to make any sort of argument, the text speaks for itself.  Memory is the divine gift.  God made man in his image.  If God is all knowing one could assume that power was transfered upon man along with his image.  Through memory man becomes God.  

Further more, all knowledge is rooted in Memory, imagination, and soul.  "The vision of the Poet, the Painter, and the Philosopher as all fundamentally the same, all painters of images in fantasy, like Zeuxis who paints the memory images, expressed by the one as poetry, by the other as painting, by the third as thought" (253).   Thus we are all equally divine as the knowledge of the divine all comes from the same place.  And its this knowledge that unites us all and unites us to the world in which we live. The world, in Bruno's tradition, is not some ownable/ conquerable hunk of rock but the root of knowledge and another being with which to share knowledge.  The method man uses to hold this conversation with the world is MYTH! 

--Enter Kane

 

I really wish I could more clearly align my thoughts on this topic and layout some linear and comprehensible narration of my thoughts rather than the clumps of jibberish.  I will do some serious work on this for my paper. Maybe I can make a bit more sense of all of this

Hermetic Tradition

Either I zoned out and glazed over Yates' explanation of the Hermetic Tradition or I simply couldn't understand her explanation.  In the sections dedicated to Bruno I constantly read how he based his memory theater on this tradition and I kept realizing I had no Idea what that meant.  I wikied and was somewhat enlightened on the subject matter.

Hermes Trismegistus is a Greek and Egyptian creation.  It is thought that he is a combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.  However, Hermes Trismegistus is thought to be an actual person contemporary to Moses.  Called Thrice the Great, Trismegistus was believed to be the greatest philosopher, greatest priest, and greatest king.  His is thought to be the author of Corpus Hermeticum and The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus. In these works he explains the "three parts of wisdom of the whole universe." Alchemy, Astrology, and Theurgy.  Many of the worlds religions have Hermetic influences and a separate religion based on Hermeticism exists.  From what I understand the three parts of wisdom, Alchemy, Astrology, and Theurgy, work together to create an understanding beyond the common conceptions of science.  Through careful study of nature, physics, magic, and the universe, one can gain knowledge that far surpasses presupposed limitations.  

Its all a bit confusing. It seems somewhat in line with Plato's theory of forms in that limitless knowledge may be obtained through proper study.  One can understand all that is the universe through alchemy, astrology, and theurgy.

check out the wikis for a bit more clear description.  I think it will help decipher Yates' dealings with Bruno.

Hermeticism

Hermes Trismegistus

A glimpse into my paper

I wrote a large portion of my paper today.  I thought I would post what I have so far for some criticism.  I haven't edited anything yet or written a conclusion so its still pretty rough.

The Memory, Imagination, and Soul of Mythtelling

Sean Kane writes in his novel Wisdom of the Mythtellers “[…] myths were not merely flights of the imagination; they were flights of the spirit, with the narrative acting as the conduit of supernatural energies summoned and made present by story, and the mythteller acting as the conductor of the souls of the listeners” (104).  But why did mythtellers control such power?  Paraphrasing Aristotle, Francis Yates writes “memory…belongs to the same part of the soul as imagination; it is a collection of mental pictures form sense impressions but with a time element added, for the mental images of memory are not from perception of things present but of things past” (33).  In an oral tradition, storytellers held the key to personal development, morally, socially, and spiritually.  They molded the youth of the tribe.  They taught future leaders, future shamen, and future farmers the knowledge needed to survive in a threatening world.  Stories capture the imagination, and according to Aristotle, imagination connects with memory.  Both memory and imagination lie in the soul and as a result, the storytellers guiding the soul become the single greatest influence on the development of the mind.

  Myths teach people how to interact with the world.  “Exchange with the world is made at the mouth, nose, ears, eyes, anus, sexual organs, and the skin itself” (Kane 103).  Before print, myths were used to teach children about poisonous berries, the weather, planting crops, and medical uses for plants.  These myths appealed to the imagination as colorful characters acted as the guinea pigs of the natural world.  For example excess pride will cause downfall as in the story of Icarus.  Because memory coexists with imagination in the soul, myths remain in the collective consciousness of the tribe continuously teaching the important lessons of development.  Initially, these stories guide developing souls through imagination and memory however, the mythteller’s true gift extends beyond practical knowledge.  The storyteller and his myths play a crucial part in the development of knowledge.

Paraphrasing Plato, Yates writes:

The Phaedrus is a treatise on rhetoric in which rhetoric is regarded, not as an art of persuasion to be used for personal or political advantage, but as an art of speaking the truth and of persuading hearers to the truth.  The power to do this depends on a knowledge of the soul and the soul’s true knowledge consists in the recollection of the Ideas.  Memory is not a ‘section’ of this treatise as one part of the art of rhetoric; memory in the Platonic sense is the groundwork of the whole. (37)

 

Plato’s theory of forms states that all knowledge comes hardwired into the brain upon birth.  Accessing this information requires little more than the proper thought or more specifically, proper rememberence.  Truth depends on the knowledge of the soul and its two main aspects, memory and imagination.  If truth lies in the soul, then the person responsible for developing the soul holds the key to knowledge.  Enter the mythteller and his true purpose in mythtelling.  Because myths develop the memory and imagination, they offer the gateway to not just practical knowledge but all knowledge of the past, present, and still to come.  Cicero argues for the power of memory and imagination, “assuredly nothing can be apprehendend even in God of greater value than this … Therefore the soul is, as I say, divine, as Euripides dares say, God …” (Yates 47).  Thus, the power imparted by an oral mythteller through his stories surpasses the power of god.  Stories that teach what is, what was, and what will be empower a human with the divine, which explains why religion roots in myth and storytellers become demi-gods.  After Plato and Aristotle, figures appear scattered through history who realize the power in stories, soul, memory, and imagination like Camillo, Lull, and Bruno, however the mythteller tradition has faded in the modern era.  Yet, even today, residual orality and residual mythtelling remains.

The residual influence of the oral storytelling tradition, though not as formal and reveared, appears in childhood development today.  Countless studies indicate that exposing young children to aural stimulus aids development.  Reading fairytales, listening to classical music, and speaking other languages work in a similar fashion today as myths did thousands of years ago.  “Sound is thus a unifying sense,” writes Walter Ong in Orality and Literacy “[…] knowledge is ultimately not a fractioning but a unifying phenomenon, a striving for harmony.  Without harmony, an interior condition, the psyche is in bad health” (71-72). “Sound […] exists only when it’s going out of existence” (Ong 90). It is up to the imagination to comprehend something that only exists instantaneously.  The imagination must connect a sound to a concrete object or visualize a sound as an action.  While the imagination processes sound, memory stores it and the soul critiques the whole experience. Reasonably, exposure to aural stimulus begins the development of the “unifying phenomenon” called knowledge.  Knowledge, that is, according to Plato, a product of the workings of the imagination, the memory, and the soul.

Visiting my memory palace

Schweitzer Mountain Resort was one of the stops on this spring break's ski road trip and was the location of my Memory palace.  My friends and I spent two nights at Schwetizer and skied one day.  Other than fog and snow, I followed the exact path of my memory theater for the first run of the day.  Even through the soupy fog, I saw the many images of my fifty things and found myself running through the list of names as images like a squaw fish and a penny singing "itsy betsy spider" or a bottle of Jones soda and Willy Nelson making turns while yodeling.  The memory theater not only alters your internal perception and ability to remember but also the actual reality of the place used as a memory theater.  No longer is the top of the Beginner lift at Schweitzer simply an unload station but rather a man in Jeans with a cowboy hat in a wheel chair playing an Austrian long horn.  I wonder if the people responsible for developing these memory theaters saw the corporeal images or the actual places once they developed the memory systems.  I would love to know if anyone else experienced this phenomena?

The story of my Memory Theater

Format:  My corporeal images followed by (what they represent)

 Every winter weekend morning I leave my ski condo and walk outside to the garage there I see my friend Gretchen dressed as the Swiss Miss girl serving. (1948 St. Moritz, Switzerland Gretchen Frazer).  I walk up the driveway over to the access trail for the ski lift and strap into my skis next to a Mead Panther sitting in a viking war ship (1952 Oslo Norway Andrea Meade-Lawrence).  I ski down to the bottom of the first lift and in line is a penny and a squaw fish singing "The itsy Betsy spider" (1960 Squaw Valley, USA Penny Pitou, Betsy Snite).  I ride the first chair and as I get of the lift I pass a man in a wheelchair wearing a cowboy hat and jeans while playing an Austrian Horn (1964 Innsbruck, Austria Jimmy Heuga, Billy Kidd, Jean Saubert).  Then I ski to the bottom of the next lift and hop on the chair with my mom and my friends mom who are eating sushi (1972 Sapporro, Japan Susan Corrock, Barbara Cochran).  Half way up the lift I look off to the left and see a bottle of Jones Soda and Willie Nelson skiing down the run yoddleing (1976 Innsbruck Austria, Greg Jones, Cindy Nelson).  I get off the lift and see three ski patrolmen.  One is a giant alligator, one is Willie Nelson, and one is Dr. Phil. (1980 Lake Placid, Cindy Nelson, Phil Mahre).  I ski down the run to the next lift and en rout I see a massive crash involving, Slobodon Milosovic, Neil Armstrong, a barrel maker, a stock broker, and twin female horses. (1984 Sarajevo Yugoslavia, Debbie Armstrong, Christian Cooper, Bill Johnson, Phil Mahre and Steve Mahre).  I ride the next lift to the top of the mountain where I see my friend Albert taking the picture of Hillary Clinton and Princess Diana (1992 Albertville France Hillary Linde, Diann Roffe)  I ski down to the top of my favorite run at the mountain and I see a viking ship with a hammer painted on the side being rowed by Moe from the 3 stooges, Princess Diana, and a piece of asphalt (1994 Lillehammer Norway Tommy Moe, Diann Roffe, Picabo Street).  I take a few turns and stop on top of my favorite cliff I like to jump.  I hit the cliff and land on a piece of asphalt and squish a sushi roll (1998 Nagano, Japan Picabo Street).  I ski down towards the base of the mountain and pass below the Terrain Park.  I look up at a jump and see the Great Salt Lake and a bottle of Miller Lite hitting a jump (2002 Salt Lake City Bode Miller).  Finally I get back to the base and take my skis off and hand them to Julia Roberts.  I have X-Ray vision and can see her ligaments and that she ate spagetti for lunch (2006 Torino, Italy Julia Mancuso, Ted Ligity).

Camillo?

Up until the section on Camillo I followed the somewhat dense and confusing logic of Yates. Now I am at a bit stuck. I could relate to the memory theories used by the Latin and Middle Age scholars but the methods of the Renaissance confuse the heck out of me. Upon reading and examining the methods of Camillo I can see no method to remember everything, past, present, and future, through his theatre. I don't quite understand how the process works with the steps and levels. Does one create paths through the different levels or are you limited to the linear movements through the levels. I tried to read slowly and purposefully but I see no practical method to Camillo's theatre. Maybe because I can't see it in 3D in person. With so many other of Camillo's contemporaries praising his work, I seems that he developed an effective system of memory but unlike earlier memory systems, his seems a bit esoteric. Even now looking back over the drawing of Camillo's theater, I only interpret jiberish. Unlike the older ideas of using coporeal images in memory theaters, I dont find Camillo's method useful. Most likely its my ignorance and inablility to interpret Yeat's explination that causes such a difficult time with this. Hopefully I will figure it out a bit more in class or from other blog posts.

"Ceci tuera cela"

The latin phrase in the title of this post comes from Victor Hugo's Notre Dame De Paris and means "The printed book will destroy the building." (Yates, 124).  Hugo makes this remark after the first printed book enters his manuscript library.  He sadly meditates on the loss of thousands of Memory cathedrals due to the creation of the printed book.  While this metaphorical meaning to the phrase certainly rings true, I immediately thought of the literal implications of the phrase.

With the creation of the printing press, the nature of society shifted drastically in Europe.  Translations of the bible became widely available in native tongues of the lay people.  The social position of the latin literate clerical elite shifted.  These newly printed bibles allowed people to study religion without the need for a chapel. Suddenly the building representing the whole religious order became less essential.  Furthermore, the printed bible ignited the protestant reformation.  The battle between the catholic old guard and the new upstart protestant feuded for generations.  How many buildings were destroyed during the conflict?  Buildings destroyed thanks in part to the printed word.  

It might be a bit of a stretch but project the nature of the printed word a couple of hundred years into the future.  Where are libraries when the entire written cannon becomes accessible on the the web?  How about Museums?  What other buildings will become obsolete as they transition to Cyberspace?  

I dont really know the answer to any of these questions but they are certainly interesting to think about with the ever advancing nature of the print culture.

Test Review

Kane
1. Moonbone- example of repetition
2.Property???- from prologue
3. Agriculture??? -from prologue I think its what ruined myth according to Kane
4. Practical - White berry story
5. Caribou/Frogs
6. Definition of Myth "Song the Earth sings to itself"

Ong
1. Primary Orality- not contact with writing at all
2. Secondary Orality- those that choose not to write
3. Chirographic- Writing culture
4. Typographic- Print Culture
5. Vision vs. Sound
6. Pg. 79 on Plato

Yates
1. Simonides the story of the first memory system
2. Transition Retoric -> Ethics -> Cosmos
3. St. Agustine pg 47 Read, its a short passage about the Trinity

Questions.
1. The Liberal Arts- (GGRANMAD)
2. Neoplatonism and Mysticism (your guess is as good as mine)
3. Feb 20th John Nay's Birthday
4. Anamnesis- recollection of all things forgotten (Plato pg. 38)
5. Feb 17th 1600 Bruno burned at the stake
6. Parataxis- additive, Ong, Stanley Fish
7. Bicameralism (Ong end of First Chapter)
8. Esoteric- mysterious, secret, info not for unwashed masses
9. Imagination- 1 hour photo of memory
10. Sharhar Azad- physical embodiment of storytellers (1001 Arabian Nights)
11. Artificial vs. Natural Memory
12. Plato's Phaedras "write it down, Look it up"
13. March 17th Sexson gives blood (Green Blood)
14. Memory--Imagination--Soul My trinity of things (not to be confused with Augustine's on Yates page 47)
15. Epithets- Sturdy Oak, Beautiful Princess, Brave Soldier, Keen Kenning Ben, Kate with the Beautiful Eyes

Images and memory in action

I think the best way to work into using images to create lasting memories starts on a small level. As great as reading about the masters ability to create these vast mental memory metaphors is, the actual practice of image memory must be built up. We in the modern age don't naturally think in these terms so I believe small exercises building to bigger ones will make the process easier. I had a Spanish test today and while I studied last night, I used flash cards. Many of the words I knew just from frequent use in class and conversation but a few words, especially verbs proved difficult to remember. So I employed the Artificial memory and related them to images.

Here are some examples

Lograr- to attain
Here I pictured a log roller working hard to attain the championship of log rolling. Instantly I remembered the verb

llorar- to cry
the Spanish word for raining is llover the two words look similer and so I pictured tears streaming down a persons face like rain drops.

parecer- to seem
I pictured my mother sewing up a pair of pants for me after I ripped a seam

pertenecer- to belong
A thief with a black mask and a bag of money "belongs" in jail

The method worked so well I will be using it on tests in every class from here on out. Now I just have to build up to the 50 meaningless things.

The Soul, the Guts of Memory, and my increasingly sore brain

Time and time again, Francis Yates, either in her own argument or by channeling others, connects the three ethereal concepts of Memory, Imagination, and Soul.  I commented on this pattern in a previous post however as I continue reading, more and more material reinforces my claims.  Based on Yates' book, the true Guts, the meat and potatoes of the Artificial Memory reside somewhere in the cross-roads of the the Imagination and the Soul.  The development of Memory not only proves useful but is of ultimate utility because of the supremely beneficial effects on the soul.  Maybe then, in the constant moral battle of souls, salvation lies in the memory.  This certainly played a huge part in Thomas Aquinas' treatise on memory.  More rationally, the better someone remembers sin the easier one can repent and work to prevent repeating the sin.  

Back to memory and the soul.  Yates makes an interesting observation critical to the development of memory.  "(1) that images are an aid to memory; (2) that many propria can be remembered through a few images; (3) that although the propria give more exact information about the thing itself, yet the metaphorica 'move the soul more and therefore better help the memory'." (pg. 65)  This statement helps refute the "clutter" argument posed in class if we conclude that memory derives from creations from the soul.  (I examined this in my previous post Mnemonic Soul Searching).  Agree or disagree, fundamentally this logic makes sense.  People commonly think of the Soul as a life force.  It plays a role in the development of personality, spirituality, relationships.  For me and my guess most people as well, these aspects of the soul provide incredibly vivid, personal memories.  I remember fondly watching sports next to my Dad as a very tiny kid which led to my passion for all sports.  I remember my first kiss, my first girlfriend, my first communion, the first time I questioned my spirituality and countless other aspects of my "Soul".  If one subscribes to the belief that the soul creates both the "human" and the "being" in the word "human-being" I would venture to guess that person can remember most of the climatic occurrences that shaped their existence.  

"What then is memory?  It is in the sensitive part of the soul which takes the images of sense impressions; it therefore belongs to the same part of the soul as imagination, but it also per accidens in the intellectual part since the abstracting intellect works in it on the phantasmata." (pg 71)  To be quite honest I don't know exactly what this quote means but it seems that Memory rests deep in the core of a person where the Soul, Imagination, and Intellect meet.  An exercise in any one of these four applications then involves some input from the other three.  Reasonably, the entire core of Academic thought no matter what kind or what subject relies completely on seamless cooperation of The Memory, The Soul, The Imagination, and The Intellect.  While this concept is a bit chewy, its kind of fun to think about.  My guess as we keep reading more and more of this will hash itself out.

My Fifty Things

I don't know if this will count because they are not quite completely discrete Items but I am going to use all of the US Ski Team Alpine medal winners as well as the year and location they won the medal.  I picked this set of items because of my mother is apart of the list and because I grew up idolizing these ski racers and even had many opportunities to meet them.  I have a signed poster in my room with almost every single one of their signatures and have some great memories of some of the personalities.  Every year my family and I would go to either Vail, CO or Jackson Hole, WY for the annual ski team reunion and charity race and I remember as a Bright eyed and bushy tailed grommit ski racer getting to shake the hands of many of these Racing Icons.

Heres the list, it comes out to about 53 items.

1948	St. Moritz, Switzerland	Gretchen Fraser	Gold, slalom; silver, combined
1952	Oslo, Norway	Andrea Mead-Lawrence	Gold, slalom; gold, giant slalom
1960	Squaw Valley, California, USA	Penny Pitou Betsy Snite	Silver, downhill; silver, giant slalom Silver, slalom
1964	Innsbruck, Austria	Jimmy Heuga Billy Kidd Jean Saubert	Bronze, slalom Silver, slalom; bronze, combined Silver, giant slalom (tie); bronze, slalom
1972	Sapporo, Japan	Barbara Cochran Susie Corrock	Gold, slalom Bronze, downhill
1976	Innsbruck, Austria	Greg Jones Cindy Nelson	Bronze, combined Bronze, downhill
1980	Lake Placid, New York, USA	Phil Mahre Cindy Nelson	Gold, combined; silver, slalom Silver, combined
1984	Sarajevo, Yugoslavia	Debbie Armstrong Christin Cooper Bill Johnson Phil Mahre Steve Mahre	Gold, giant slalom Silver, giant slalom Gold, downhill Gold, slalom Silver, slalom
1992	Albertville, France	Hilary Lindh Diann Roffe	Silver, downhill Silver, giant slalom
1994	Lillehammer, Norway	Tommy Moe Diann Roffe-Steinrotter Picabo Street	Gold, downhill; silver, super G Gold, super G Silver, downhill
1998	Nagano, Japan	Picabo Street	Gold, super G
2002	Salt Lake City, Utah, USA	Bode Miller	Silver, combined; silver, giant slalom
2006	Torino, Italy	Julia Mancuso Ted Ligety	Gold, giant slalom Gold, combined

Conversations with God...I mean a classmate

I too, like Alex, originally thought the "mental image" to remember clutters the space in our seemingly packed college student brain.  Why isn't the constant repetition of objects the superior method of memory building.  Every other time I had to memorize anything I would simply repeat the task over and over until it stuck.  Sometimes this method took a bit longer than desired but it seemed effective.  However, Francis Yates set me straight in Chapter 2 of The Art of Memory. she writes "Aristotle's statement that it is impossible to think without a mental picture is consistently brought in to support the use of images in mnemonics."  The answer seems almost too easy.  One cannot even conceptualize an "apple" without a mental picture of what an "apple" is.  This idea applies with every word in the English language.  In order to conceptualize a word, one must conjure up a mental picture that relates to the meaning of the word.  This can be as simple as a direct mental photograph as in my "apple" example or it can be a complex image with motion like for instance the phrase "running a marathon."  It would be pretty hard to understand what the phrase "running a marathon" meant without visualizing "running" and "marathon."  It stands to reason then that taking this process one step further allows the brain to connect created images that relate to a memory.  Further more this step is natural and rather than cluttering the brain with too many associations, it meshes seamlessly with natural brain function.  I suspect this also accounts for the reason obscure images from obscure places become the easiest to remember.  Using an image of an "apple" to remember a person named Adam because of the same initial letter proves a bit more difficult because there is already a clear and frequently used mental picture of an "apple" to represent an actual "apple."  Where as using a mental image of the up and down motion of an "Adam's apple" while swallowing will probably be an easier association for remembering Adam's name because of the more obscure image and reference.

Mnemonic Soul Searching

After cracking open a "thinking beer" and throwing on some Ziggy Marley (it is Friday after all I wanna think in a relatively relaxed condition), I sit down and type away at this blog entry because of a couple of undeniably powerful passages spilled out of The Art of Memory chapter 2 like a 4 man beer-bong filled a bit too high. (like I said its friday)  

Beginning on page 33, Yates argues the location of the capability of memory through the writings of Aristotle.  Essentially, "Memory ... belongs to the same part of the soul as the imagination" (33)  The foundational phenomenon of the human mind, memory, intertwines itself with the most foundational human thought, imagination, argues Aristotle as well as Yates.  Because memory is basically a series of mental pictures it cannot exist without the capability to develop these pictures.  The imagination is the "one-hour photo processing center" for the memory.  It seems to reason the biologically hardwired tendency for children to "make believe" derives from the necessity to develop these two coexisting brain functions.  Interestingly, as I write this blog, I am receiving a rush of memories from playing "make-believe" as a kid.  I vividly remember being Rafael from the Ninja Turtles, and Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antillies from Star Wars.  These memories come not from actual events that occurred in the "real" world but from a world I created in my imagination.  Besides the first time I played with fire and my favorite childhood tree to climb, these memories of "make-believe" stick out more clearly than real world events like my first day of school.  Children must play "make-believe" as a form of stimulation to hardwire the memory function into the brain, while at the same time, as Aristotle and Yates contend, they build the epicenter of memory and imagination ... the soul.  This observation was only the beginning of the delightful nuggets hidden in Chapter 2.  Aristotle was not the only one arriving at the Memory-Soul connection, Plato saw memory as the foundation to Rhetoric, the subject he emphasized his entire life

The Phaedrus is a treatise on rhetoric in which rhetoric is regarded, not as an art of 

persuasion to be used for personal or political advantage, but as an art of speaking

the truth and of persuading hearers to the truth.  The power to do this depends on a

knowledge of the soul and the soul's true knowledge consists in the recollection of the 

Ideas.  Memory is not a 'section' of this treatise, as one part of the art of rhetoric; memory in the Platonic sense is the groundwork of the whole.

(Yates, 37)

The ability to remember truth as one understands it, the ability to pull that truth from the depths of ones soul, acts as the primary purpose of Rhetoric.  Plato believed that humans came pre-programed with knowledge however the trick became discovering the method to extract the knowledge from locked memories.  The soul, it seems, is an intricate mold of understanding and learning.  One must recreate the cast that created the mold and then continuously reproduce the mold.  If the cast symbolizes memory, and the mold is imagination, then out of the critical relationship examined by Aristotle, combined with the Plato's Rhetoric, comes an emergent sculpture of "truth."  To add a bit more wierd surounding this conceptualization of "truth," this "truth" is inherrant, hardwired into our systems from the moment of birth.  Or perhaps from the "make-believe" we play as children an interesting thought. 

The limits of imagination and memory using the Platonic and Aristotalian view become unfathomable.   Now the memory feats supposedly performed by the scholars of the Middle Ages and the Reniassance become quite feasable.  Why couldn't a person remember a sequence of thousands of places in an unfrequented church.  The information is already internal waiting to be unlocked.  "A power able to bring about such a number of important results is to my mind wholly devine.  For what is the memory of things and words? What further is invention? Assuredly nothing can be apprehended even in God of greater value than this ... Therefore the soul is, as I say, divine, as Euripides dares say, God" (Yates quoting Cicero, 45). 

 While the ultimate power of memory may not rival the power of God.  Memory certainly holds the key to unlocking an unbelievable power in man.  Since I've been a kid, I've always heard a statistic that humans only use 10-15 percent of their brain.  I don't know if that statistic is true or not but if it is, it definitely makes for some food for thought.  What about the other 80%?  I suppose I have stressed the 10-15% of my brain enough for a Friday afternoon and besides, I just finished my beer so I'm going to end there.

The Visually Shredable Memory Theater

Well after much internal debate, I have come up with the location of my memory theatre.  During the past few class periods several people commented on the location of their memory theaters.  The house you grew up in, a family cabin, and a grandparents house all seem great ideas however after reading the second section of The Art of Memory entitled "Memory of the Soul," I feel a memory theater should lye as close to the soul as possible and thus, the solution easily presented itself.  Above almost all else, my soul is one of a ski bum and my fondest memories come from Schweitzer Mountain Idaho.  I grew up on the mountain, raced for the race team, poached countless hot tubs, skiied bottomless powder, spent great time with friends and know just about every inch of the hill.  I still think of Schweitzer as one of the best mountains in the country even after skiing other highly publicized resorts in Colorado, Wyoming and British Columbia.  I remember a extremely intricate and ritualized method of approaching the mountain on every powder day to maximize fresh turns.  Now I need to figure out the 50 things to put in that memory theater.  Although... I could probably remember a couple thousand things with all the distinctive places I picture in my mind.

The power of Speech and Writing

As part of an assignment for Lit Crit 300 last semester, Dr. Sexson assigned me the role of Stanley Fish to research as a literary critic.  I learned an unbelievable amount of information on the man but more importantly, I got in the habit of reading Fish's weakly blog sponsored by the New York Times.  He updates the blog every Sunday and from just a quick read through of some of his entries one instantly understands Genius.  In my personal opinion, Stanley Fish is one of the smartest human beings on the planet.  His blog transcends so much of the bullshit that pervades much of the modern media.  He is clever and directed and an extremely eloquent writer but most importantly he remains (for the most part) politically neutral.  One of my major gripes with society today is the tendency to convert conversation into a political forum.  Fish avoids this completely and in my opinion, offers criticism when needed and praise when merited regardless of the issue or his stance on the issue.  

That being said, Fish's blog entry for this week strikes a chord with our class relating the power of orality and literacy working in coexistance.   In his blog entry from 1-22-09 Fish writes "Barack Obama's inaugural address is proving to be more powerful in reading than it was in the hearing ... It is as if the speech, rather than being a sustained performance with a cumulative power, was a frame work on which a succession of verbal ornaments was hung, and we were being invited not to move forward but to stop and ponder significances only hinted at ... Obama doesn't deposit us at a location he has in mind from the beginning; he carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate."  

Fish continues by explaining how the speech when listened to seems to flutter by ones brain because of the lack of connecting and directed language.  The speech when heard seems like one be uninterrupted sentence due to lack of conjunctions and structure.  Fish explains how Obama uses a seldom utilized rhetorical strategy called parataxis which places phrases, clauses, and sentences in short suscint order without conjunctions.  The result, a prose style much like the Bible, "the style is incantatory rather than progressive" argues Fish.

Immediately the word Incantatory sticks out.  The short poetic statements are throwbacks to the oral traditions of the primary oral cultures.  More importantly, Obama uses these incantations as the primary body to each of his sections of speech.  The word incantation traditionally associates with magic and spells and thus incantations are usually cryptic and only understandable by a select few in society.  One quick google search for the presidents inauguration speech and thousands of hits and thousands of responses appear.  If nothing else, this speech provoked thought among millions.  This comes as a nice change from the lovable (although mostly hateable) Bush speeches where people were constantly hung up on pronunciation or a slip up followed by a doofy Texas grin.  This new style, whether written by the president or by a team of speech writers, got the collective brain of America and the World turning.  Personally I think this a far superior use of the collective concsiousness to the constant bashing and insulting of the last presidency.  The USA Today has already released a detailed analysis where they record the frequency of words and the use of alliteration according to Fish.  I don't recall a single speech of the past administration that received such truly academic scrutiny.  The beauty of the speech is the simple poetic nature.  One can study the speech like a poem, one line at a time.  

The inaugural address is an interesting crossroads of orality and literacy.  The parataxical oral style threw many people for a loop however the same style reevaluated as a text has created more buzz with each passing day.  Which aspect of the speech is superior is a topic of debate however I think the beauty in the orality is equaled by the intricacy of the text.  My suggestion, watch the inauguration on YouTube, read the transcript of the speech and finally read the blog written by Stanley Fish ... but only on one condition... leave all previous political biases at the door and try to look from strictly a scholarly point of view.  My guess is the excercise will be vastly beneficial to the subject matter at hand.

A little blurb from the speech to illustrate the ideas behind this post.

"Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered.  Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet."

"Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things--some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor--who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom."

Check it out

YouTube Speech

Written Transcript