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Book Review: Art of Memory by Frances Yates
Posted on Sunday 09 June @ 15:26:36
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Every week (or thereabout) HGLEE.COM will review a book or film. Each work will have a brief review and a quick link to Amazon, should you decide to pick up a copy for yourself. This week's selection: Frances A. Yates' The Art of Memory.
An arduous, fruitless journey into trivia and occultism...Yates has produced what may be the most scholarly historical work on memory. And, like most pedantry, it takes a Herculean effort to finish it—and perhaps an even greater effort not to feel short-changed by the experience. Although the work was initially a fascinating and erudite tour through the history of early Greek and Roman culture, it then degraded into a detailed history of the occult.
At 400 pages, The Art of Memory promises to be a very thorough account of the finer points of mnemotechnics, otherwise known as the art of memory. However, if the reader is approaching this work with an agenda of obtaining anything other than a very thorough history lesson, don't bother. There is precious little of practical use in this tome, and the paucity of technique that does exist is presented in an exclusively in a historical context.
The preface frames up a genuinely misleading agenda for readers. While it promises to explore the art from a historical perspective, it promises that the "exploration of it must include more than the history of its techniques." Regrettably, all that the reader is served is a history of the key figures and their works—in short, nothing other than the history of techniques. I found very little of substance in the book. Indeed, there are no techniques explained in any useful detail at all, and there is nothing whatsoever for the reader to practically apply from these thinkers.
I came to this work fascinated by powerful mnemonic systems that can be employed for any subject matter, concepts such as "memory palaces" and "memory theaters." I left this work with only a grasp of where these arts began (at least historically) and a sense of the depths to which this art sank. For after the art of memory left the able hands of Aristotle and Cicero, it degraded into occultism of one form or another—and this is where Yates expends all of her energy.
The book traces the formal lineage of mnemotechnics through key figures in history. From the ancient Greek orator Simonides to The Philosopher Aristotle, we see the Greek influences on the art. In the Roman era, the author relies (almost entirely) on Cicero to explain the lineage. From the Romans, we enter a very dark period whose only bright spot is Quintillian in the first century A.D.
The Middle Ages brings us to Thomas Aquinas and his teacher Albertus Magnus. From there we move through Petrarch and into the Renaissance. Although there are numerous figures discussed in the Renaissance (roughly two thirds of the book), the singular characteristic of these Renaissance thinkers is that they all appear to be alchemists of some variety or another.
Understandably, most of these thinkers were religionists of one variety or another leading up through the Middle Ages. While religious orders were the only home to scholarly pursuits during this era, this does not explain Yates' bizarre and unswerving focus on the occult use of memory. This is an especially strange focus indeed considering that it is in the Renaissance that the scientific method as the single unifying force in man's ability to explain the universe.
Instead of carrying through to modern times, the book ends in the early Renaissance. Thus, the reader is left with the impression that the "true" art of memory is dead because objective thinkers require rational frameworks in which to operate. The absurdity of this is quite ironic. For if there is anything that could make sense of the rambling, mystical attempts of the early Renaissance quacks lauded by Yates, it would be an objective view of where they fell short and where they were possibly onto something useful. However, the closest we come to this perspective is in the author's articulation that these thinkers seemed to be very close to some "universal secret" that would have unlocked man's ability to see the universe as it really is. The author makes no attempt to explain further, claiming only that the inability of modern readers to solve this secret is the byproduct of being unable to locate lost texts from these inventive and insightful souls.
Throughout the author's painfully detailed investigation of these early Renaissance occultists, I became intensely bored at the appalling complexity and utter silliness of the methods employed in these "arts." Indeed, it was hard not to laugh outright at many of these characters, for their attempts seemed little else that child's play or witchcraft.
Whether discussing the Memory Theatre of Guilio Camillo or the ridiculous rantings of Ramon Lull or Giordano Bruno, the reader must work hard not to snicker at these goofy attempts to treat memory as the Philosopher's Stone. The book carries us through the magical rantings of Peter Ramus and Robert Fludd, detailing their political motivations and prodigious publishing records in excruciating detail. Finally, the book simply ends, without the benefit of a unifying message or even a satisfactory attempt at a summary statement—as if the author were so tired of looking up minutiae that she simply submitted whatever she had to the publishers. For perhaps the first time since the introduction, the reader is in step with the author; it was a sheer relief to put this book behind me.
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