Visualizing Words and Knowledge: Arts of Memory from the

345 Pages·2015·7.39 MB·English

by  Seth D. Long

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Dissertations - ALL SURFACE
May 2015
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Seth D. Long
Syracuse University
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ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines rhetoric’s fourth canon—the art of memory—tracing its
development through the classical, medieval, and early modern periods. It argues that for most of
its history, the fourth canon was an art by which words and knowledge were remediated into
visual, spatial forms, either in the mind or on the page. And it was this technique of visualization,
I argue, that linked the canons of memory and invention throughout history. In contemporary
rhetorical theory, however, memory palaces and mnemonic imagery have been replaced with a
conception of memory grounded in psychology and critique. I argue that this move away from
memory as an artificial practice has obscured the classical art’s visual precepts, consequently
severing the ancient link between memory and invention. I suggest that contemporary rhetorical
theorists should return to visualization to revitalize the fourth canon in the twenty-first century.
Today, digital tools that visualize words and knowledge are ubiquitous. Framing data
visualization as a twenty-first century analogue to the art of memory allows us to think about
visualization as a tool for invention rather than as a reified representation of data. As creative
remediations, memory palaces once allowed rhetoricians to interface with knowledge in an
adaptable way and to imagine how knowledge might be assembled together in a new discourse.
Thinking about data visualization as a memory palace thus enables us to think not only about
representing data but about the new ways we might interface with it in order to generate insight.
Data visualization becomes an art to facilitate invention, as the classical art of memory was
designed to do.
VISUALIZING WORDS AND KNOWLEDGE: ARTS OF MEMORY FROM THE
AGORA TO THE COMPUTER

By
SETH D. LONG
B.A. Chapman University, 2007
M.A. California State Polytechnic University, 2010
M.A. Syracuse University, 2015

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of Philosophy in
Composition and Cultural Rhetoric in the Graduate School of Syracuse University

May 2015
Copyright 2015 Seth D. Long
CreativeCommons License: Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-
SA)
iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
No text—especially a dissertation—is the product of a single author’s labor. Invention is
a social act. I am deeply indebted to the following individuals for their time, their assistance, and
their encouragement.
Thanks, first of all, to my director, Collin Brooke, and to my second reader, Krista
Kennedy. Dr. Brooke sparked my interest in data visualization in his Rhetoric and Digital
Humanities course, which I took my first year as a doctoral student. The excitement I felt in that
course propelled everything I did afterward, and Dr. Brooke has been a source of insight through
it all. Dr. Kennedy has also profoundly shaped my thinking. Her mentorship has been
instrumental to the development both of my academic work and my professional growth.
Everything I have accomplished as a fledgling scholar has been due in no small measure to the
partnership and the advice offered by Drs. Brooke and Kennedy. There is no word to denote the
gratitude I feel toward them.
My deepest appreciation goes also to the other members of my committee: Derek
Mueller, Patrick Berry, Lois Agnew, and Jaklin Kornfilt. Dr. Mueller was kind enough to step in
as an outside reader and to take time out of his busy day visiting Syracuse to participate in my
defense. For that and for his contributions I am incredibly thankful. Dr. Berry’s commitment to
pedagogy and to the field of rhetoric and composition kept me grounded whenever I wandered
too far from my disciplinary context. His excellent ability to teach digital tools also reaffirmed
my commitment to the use of new media in rhetorical theory.
I came to SU’s program with a fondness for the history of rhetoric but a hesitance to
pursue historical research in such a competitive job market. Yet even as my interests drifted to
digital matters, Dr. Agnew’s teaching persistently reminded me that the past and the present still
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have much to say to each other. Where I succeed in this dissertation at finding generative
connections between rhetoric’s history and its present, the credit goes entirely to Dr. Agnew’s
inspiration.
Dr. Kornfilt has been a wonderful linguistics professor. Simultaneously learning about
language from a humanistic and a scientific point of view has been a challenge but also a
privilege, and Dr. Kornfilt’s courses always provided a much needed reprieve whenever I was
frustrated with the ambiguity of rhetoric. I am thankful to her for agreeing to chair my defense.
Lastly, to my family—to you I am most grateful. Dave and Rachel, pops and mama,
thank you for your enduring support. My accomplishments are yours. Thank you to my sister,
Rebekah, for laughter and for always showing me a better version of myself. Thank you to my
wife, Christina Marie, for putting up with a husband who is constantly crouched over books and
laptops when he should be drinking wine and watching a movie with his better half.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i
Title Page ............................................................................................................................ ii
Copyright ........................................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv
Contents ............................................................................................................................. vi
List of Illustrative Materials.............................................................................................. vii

Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: Natural and Artificial Memory .........................................................................22
Chapter 2: Memory as Mnemonics ....................................................................................77
Chapter 3: Memory as Method ........................................................................................138
Chapter 4: Memory in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory ................................................209
Chapter 5: Arts of Memory for the Digital Age ..............................................................252
Appendix A ......................................................................................................................303
Appendix B ......................................................................................................................310
Appendix C ......................................................................................................................312
Appendix D ......................................................................................................................319
Appendix E ......................................................................................................................322
Works Cited .....................................................................................................................324
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIALS

Figure 1.1 Most frequent words in Ad Herennium’s memory section .............................52
Figure 1.2 Most frequent words in De Oratore’s memory section ..................................52
Figure 1.3 Most frequent words in Institutio’s memory chapter .....................................53
Figure 1.4 Word cloud of terms in Table 1.2 ...................................................................58
Figure 1.5 Word cloud of terms in Table 1.3 ...................................................................58
Figure 2.1 John Shaw, The Divine Art of Memory ..........................................................84
Figure 2.2 Hymn to John the Baptist, a musical acrostic .................................................84
Figure 2.3 Coronides in ancient Greek manuscripts ........................................................89
Figure 2.4 Major system. A.E. Middleton, Memory Systems New and Old ....................90
Figure 2.5 Visual alphabet. Romberch, Congestorium Artificiose Memoria ..................94
Figure 2.6 Human alphabet. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscindi ............................................94
Figure 2.7 Ladder representing hierarchy of creation. Lull, Liber de ascensu ................97
Figure 2.8 Lull’s combinatorial system, as reproduced by Cramer .................................98
Figure 2.9 “Rhetorical machines.” Toscanella, Armonia ................................................99
Figure 2.10 Panther from the Bern Physiologus ............................................................120
Figure 3.1 Ramist dichotomies. Freige, Professio regia ...............................................162
Figure 3.2 Rationarium Evangelistarium, a reprint of Ars Memoranda ........................163
Figure 3.3 Freige, Professio regia .................................................................164
Figure 3.4 Winklemann, Logica memorativa ................................................................165
Figure 3.5 Pre-Ramus “tree.” Agricola, Della inventione .............................................166
Figure 3.6 Rosselius, Thesuari memoriae artificiosae ..................................................167
Figure 3.7 Geometric logic. Tartaret, Expositio ............................................................169
Figure 3.8 Notae of the Ars Notoria ..............................................................................183
Figure 3.9 Notae of the Ars Notoria ..............................................................................184
Figure 3.10 Notae of the Ars Notoria ............................................................................185
Figure 3.11 Memory treatises published, by country, 1551 – 1600 ..............................198
Figure 3.12 Memory treatises published, by country, 1601 – 1650 ..............................198
Figure 3.13 Memory treatises published in Europe, by half-century ............................199
Figure 3.14 von Feinaigle, New Art of Memory .............................................................208
Figure 4.1 CCC articles with canons in key terms .........................................................219
Figure 4.2 No. of articles with canons in titles (total across 6 journals) ........................222
Figure 4.3 No. of articles with canons in key terms (total across 6 journals) ................223
Figure 4.4 No. of articles with canons in titles (average across 6 journals) ..................224
Figure 4.5 No. of articles with canons in key terms (average across 6 journals) ..........225
Figure 4.6 Publication dates of articles with ‘memory’ or ‘mnemonic’
in key terms ......................................................................................................................227
Figure 4.7 Publication dates of EJ and CE articles with ‘memory’ or ’mnemonic’
in key terms ......................................................................................................................227
Figure 4.8 Publication dates of articles with ‘memor’ or ‘mnemonic’ in title ..............228
Figure 4.9 Word cloud, words appearing once in titles with ‘memor’ or
‘mnemonic’………………………………………………………………………....……235
Figure 4.10 Unique references in articles with ‘memor’ or ‘mnemonic’ in title ...........238
Figure 4.11 Most popular topics in 279 memory aritcles (10-topic run) .......................248
Figure 4.12 Most popular topics in 279 memory articles (30-topic run) .......................248
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Figure 5.1 Leporcus, Ars Memorativa ...........................................................................266
Figure 5.2 Dispersion plot of words in Ch. 1 (Before) ..................................................272
Figure 5.3 Dispersion plot of words in Ch.1 (After)......................................................272
Figure 5.4 Replicating dispersion plots with MS Word ................................................275
Figure 5.5 Text network of RSQ abstracts .....................................................................278
Figure 5.6 Text network of Eliot Rodger’s manifesto ...................................................278
Figure 5.7 Text network of Lolita ..................................................................................279
Figure 5.8 Moving through a text network in Gephi .....................................................279
Figure 5.9 Betweenness centrality .................................................................................280
Figure 5.10 Text network of Unabomber manifesto (degree centrality) .......................282
Figure 5.11 Text network of Unabomber manifesto (betweenness centrality) ..............282
Figure 5.12 Occurrence of ‘duty/ies’ in Inaugural Address Corpus ..............................293
Figure 5.13 Google N-gram Chart. Greenfield, “Changing Psychology” .....................293
Figure 5.14 Occurrence of ‘duty’ and ‘responsibility’ in Inaugural
Address Corpus……………… ........................................................................…………294
Figure 5.15 Truncating the y-axis ..................................................................................297
Figure 5.16 Different centrality measurements, different colored clusters ...................298

Table 1.1 Most frequent words (count/relative frequency) .............................................53
Table 1.2 Most frequent words in 9 early modern English memory treatises .................57
Table 1.3 Most frequent words in 28 early modern English texts ...................................57
Table 3.1 Most frequent words in 115 memory treatise titles, 1780 – 1888 .................148
Table 4.1 Titles with ‘arrangement’ or ‘organization’ in CCC titles .............................215
Table 4.2 Sense ambiguity with ‘style’ in CCC titles ....................................................215
Table 4.3 Most frequent words in 64 titles containing ‘memor’ or
‘mnemonic’ ......................................................................................................................231
Table 4.4 Most frequent citations in articles with ‘memor’ or
‘mnemonic in title ............................................................................................................239
Table 4.5 Topic list, 10-topic run in MALLET on 279 memory articles ......................244
1

Introduction

This dissertation provides commentary on the canon of memory and a history of its
practice from ancient Greece to contemporary North America. A study of the fourth canon finds
a warrant in the increasingly common recognition that, among the five canons of rhetoric,
memory has played a marginal role in rhetorical theory throughout the previous centuries
(Corbett and Connors, Classical Rhetoric 22; Crowley, “Modern” 41-44; Welch,
“Reconfiguring”; Pruchnic and Lacey, “Future of Forgetting”). The source and origin of this
neglect is often said to be technological: the advent of print leads to the gradual devaluation of
oral communication in favor of written composition, resulting in an inevitable decline in interest
in the canons—memory and delivery—most relevant to oral discourse. According to others,
however, memory has been “eradicated from discussions of writing and reading” (Welch 18) due
to the scientific epistemologies that accompanied the rise of print and that emasculated rhetoric
generally. The usual villains are summoned: Ramus, Bacon, Vico. Whatever the reasons, the
scholarly consensus is that memory has exerted a negligible influence on rhetorical theory
throughout most of the modern period.
Since the 1980s, however, calls for the canon’s revival have been regularly issued and
new theorizations of the canon have been regularly attempted. In “Modern Rhetoric and
Memory,” for example, Crowley argues for a return to the classical and medieval understanding
of memory as a communal storehouse of knowledge to aid invention; framing memory in this
way, Crowley writes, is essential for a rhetorical theory built on appeals to community ethics
rather than appeals to reason alone (43-44). Crowley also considers how memory might be
relevant in the computer age in her textbook Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students (co-