Dante’s Memory: From Fixity to Fluidity
17 giugno 2022 alle 18:00
Faculty of Arts Library, Msida Campus
Abbiamo l’onore di aver collaborato con il Department of Italian della Faculty of Arts e l’Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies della University of Malta per questa conferenza in inglese della Dott.ssa Eleonora Buonocore (University of Calgary).
ABSTRACT
Memory played a key role in the Middle Ages: it was ubiquitous in medieval education, from rhetoric to philosophy and even theology. Dante’s Divine Comedy is a masterpiece of medieval culture, yet, before Dr Buonocore’s research, there was no comprehensive study of Dante’s concept of memory.
Dr Buonocore argues that memory is one of the underlying structuring principles of the Comedy itself. Dante begins with a rhetorical memory trap, rooted in the fixity of the art of memory, that is a punishment in Inferno. In Purgatorio memory becomes a force for good, linked to prayer, which reduces penance. In Eden, at the rivers Lethe and Eunoè, signifying oblivion and good memory, there is a paradigm shift: from memory to forgetfulness. This oblivious memory fluid and altruistic, informed by theology, is the only memory left in Paradiso.
Dr Buonocore is currently completing a book showing the Divine Comedy‘s importance within the studies of memory in the European Middle Ages.