Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
The relationship between space, place and memory is longstanding. Frances Yates discusses the origins and practice of mnemonics in The Art of Memory, where she outlines the establishment of the use of space and place to remember. Following the story of Simonides of Ceos, Yates discusses how the art of memory was established after Simonides was refused full payment for a victory ode given in honour of his host - a nobleman named Scopas - on account of the number of dedications to the mythical twins Castor and Pollux. Sometime later Simonides was called out of the palace to meet two visitors - later revealed to be Castor and Pollux themselves - and while he was absent the roof of the banqueting hall collapsed, killing all inside. As the only person not killed Simonides was called upon to name the dead; he did so by recalling where each person was sat in the hall. Thus, the method of loci, or the memory palace, was created (Yates 1-3). The method of loci was used in rhetoric: "as a technique by which the orator could improve his memory, which would enable him to deliver long speeches from memory with unfailing accuracy" (Yates 2). The interest here in the method of loci is in the way in which it uses space and place as a means for remembering. In doing so it establishes a relationship between space and memory, because it creates a means whereby real-and-imagined spaces might assist us in acts of remembering - whether public or private - when revisiting the past, because the method 'houses' memory.
Repository Citation
Robertson, Elizabeth. "You’ve been here before?: Space and Memory in Stephen Poliakoff’s Dramas." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 14, no. 3, 2014, pp. 1–17. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol14/iss3/11