Is this book at all credible? The subject is interesting to me,

The capacity to memorize is a key indicator of intelligence in my opinion. The stupidest people I've known, mostly women, can't remember a thing nor make any attempt to. In my case I memorize literally everything I experience. My genius is unbearable.

>>9241897
http://theconversation.com/the-instability-of-memory-how-your-brain-edits-your-recollections-22737

dork

I'm not sure if i've read it or not.

nah, whoever wrote a biography of giordano bruno can't be taken seriously.

>>9241765
Sure, it's credible. It was an art practiced by scholars and such before printing (and for some time after) and at a time when paper was scarce. Yates is a great writer and a fantastic scholar too. The best book of this trilogy (Art is actually part of a trio) is Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition-- which is not a 'biography of Bruno' but an account of the Hermetic Arts scene in London toward the close of the 15th c, when Bruno among others was active there. The third v. is Theatre of the World.

>>9242198
Also, Sherlock's 'memory palace' is completely derived from this book, fwiw.

>>9242198
>>9242206
Thank you. I'll have a look at this book after all.

>>9241765
If you looked up the author, you must also have seen that she taught at the University of London and her books are widely respected (though not unchallenged, of course). So yes, obviously.

>>9243713
Further: Warburg Institute-- famous for interesting writers on early-mod Europe, from Gombrich to Charles Nichol.

>>9241909
This is why I try to write down detailed accounts of important events in my life (which don't happen very often, admittedly). I want to have an accurate recording of what happened I can still rely on years later.

>>9242206
Wasn't the concept of memory palaces invented by Cicero?

>>9243800
he got it from frances yates too

File: tumblr_kr9mwhzABK1qzcab6o1_400.jpg (70KB, 366x600px) Image search: [Google]

70KB, 366x600px

>>9241765

Not only it is credible, Yates virtually changed Renaissance studies from being an endless wankfest and fawning over humanists being the enlightened proto-modernists who single-handedly defeated the superstitious and decadent 'dark ages', to the realization that most humanists were themselves highly superstitious and way more invested into the occult and fake ancient books (e.g. corpus Hermticum) than of any scientific thought or motivations.

Her basic claim in regards to ars memoria in the Renaissance is that many humanists used it in order to memorize the entire creation (by ordering many subjects into weird and estoric shapes and forms like the zodiac wheel) in order to become semi-gods who can manipulate matter and control the elements.

Much has been done in regards to scholarly work on ars memoria since Yates released this book, but its still a classic, with mostly relevant treatments of the textual evidence, and her general conclusions are still accepted among most Early Modern scholars.

Read this, if you liked it read her work on Bruno, and if you enjoyed both just keep reading everything from her. She writes quite nicely and has many interesting references especially of Italian and German works on the subject.

>>9243800
The modern archetype isn't a palace, I believe, but a theatre. In Yates' final book Theatre of the World she investigates how classical notions fed into the building of the Rose, the Swan, and the Globe theatres in Elizabethan England... Cicero invented nothing, he was a celebrity lawyer, for God's sake! Memory systems antedate the Romans by at least a thousand years.

>>9243776
lol, you're an unreliable narrator dummy

>>9243970
hey ape

>>9243970
underrated post

>>9244547
hey

>>9243970
>genuinely informative post on /lit/
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