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Article published In:
Writing and the Mind
Edited by David R. Olson and Marcelo Dascal †
[Pragmatics & Cognition 21:3] 2013
► pp. 505–520

The Classical art of memory as immaterial writing

| Charles University in Prague
The Classical art of memory is analyzed as a form of mental writing. The ancient authors of works on the art of memory often likened their art to a sort of writing, and a careful analysis of the methods of formation of agent images — the signs of the art of memory — shows that it very closely parallels the methods of sign formation in logophonetic writing systems (such as ancient Egyptian or Chinese). Thus the Classical art of memory can be viewed as an immaterial (and personalized) writing system.
Keywords: loci method, mnemography, memory, Matteo Ricci, Thomas Bradwardine, rhetoric, Ptolemaic writing, art of memory, imagines agentes, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, logophonetic writing
Published online: 24 July 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21.3.05lan
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