1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910861973403321

Autore

Dominguez Julia

Titolo

Quixotic Memories : Cervantes and Memory in Early Modern Spain

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2022

©2022

ISBN

9781487543914

9781487543921

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (277 pages)

Collana

Toronto Iberic

Disciplina

863/.3

Soggetti

Memory in literature

Memory - Social aspects - Spain - History

History

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Spain

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Obsessions with remembering -- The anatomy of early modern memory -- Mental libraries: the places of memory -- Ut pictura memoria: the mnemonic power of images -- Information overload: stocking memory in the age of Cervantes -- Disputes over memory: Sancho and the artful manipulation of memory -- Epilogue: Lethe and the laws of oblivion: sites of forgetting in Don Quixote.

Sommario/riassunto

"This study offers insight into the plurality and complexity of memory's cultural scope through the lens of Cervantes, and specifically through his novel Don Quixote. The author explores the many spaces that memory created for itself in early modern Spain, particularly in the fields of philosophy, medicine, rhetoric, mnemotechnics, the visual arts, and pedagogy. More than a theme, memory is a system of understanding in Cervantes's world resulting from the major social, religious, and economic changes that epitomize Renaissance humanist culture and that concurrently will inform the transition to modernity. In Don Quixote, he draws on theories regarding memory that had been developed since classical antiquity and adapted to the specific circumstances of his own time: nostalgia for an earlier period as a



means to confront the fears that come with a rapidly changing society; exploiting the two interior senses, imagination and memory, as a powerful tool to detach oneself from society's impositions and instead endorse the right to be forgotten; pedagogical theories that evolved as a response to the intellectual overload and the impositions of the imitatio; the role of memory in a society that continued to cling to the oral tradition; the use of influential mnemonic images as persuasive devices within highly visual cultural environments; and, finally, the immense power of memory in individual and collective identity formation and, paradoxically, memory's fragility and malleability when faced with social, religious, and cultural demands."--