Memory in Literature & Literary Theory

Etymology, Meanings and Concept

Etymology/Term:

The term “memory” has its roots in the Latin word “memoria,” which signifies the faculty of recalling or remembering. Derived from the verb “meminisse,” meaning “to remember” or “to be mindful,” that it encompasses the cognitive processes related to storing, retaining, and recalling information, experiences, or knowledge.

Meanings and Concept:

• Cognitive Process: It is a complex cognitive process that involves encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. It is crucial for learning, decision-making, and the continuity of personal and cultural identity.
• Types: It can be categorized into various types, including sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Each type serves specific functions in processing and retaining information.
• Encoding and Storage: Information is initially encoded through sensory input and then stored in various systems. The efficiency of encoding impacts the ease of retrieval.
• Retrieval: Retrieval is the process of recalling stored information. It can occur consciously or unconsciously and is influenced by factors such as context, emotions, and associations.
• Forgetting and Amnesia: Forgetting is a natural aspect, influenced by factors like interference, decay, or lack of retrieval cues. Amnesia, on the other hand, refers to a significant loss of memory function, often resulting from injury, illness, or psychological factors.
• Emotional: Emotional experiences are often vividly remembered, indicating a strong connection between it and emotions. Emotional memory can influence behavior and decision-making.
• Cultural and Collective: It extends beyond the individual to encompass shared or collective memories within societies. Cultural memory involves the preservation and transmission of knowledge, traditions, and narratives across generations.
• Neurobiological Basis: It has a neurobiological basis, involving the formation and maintenance of synaptic connections in the brain. Different brain regions play specific roles in various aspects of memory.
• Memory Disorders: Various conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, can affect its function. Understanding memory disorders is crucial for developing interventions and treatments.
• Interplay with Identity: It plays a fundamental role in shaping individual and collective identity. It contributes to the continuity of self-awareness and personal narratives.

Memory, in its multifaceted nature, is a fundamental aspect of human cognition, influencing how individuals perceive, understand, and interact with the world around them.

Memory: Definition of a Theoretical Term

Memory, in a theoretical sense, refers to the cognitive process of encoding, storing, and retrieving information within the human mind. It encompasses the mental systems and neurological processes involved in retaining and recalling past experiences, knowledge, and skills. Its theoretical frameworks often explore its various types, mechanisms, and the interplay between individual and collective remembering.

Memory: Theorists, Works, and Argument

Theorist	Works	Argument
Endel Tulving	Episodic Memory: From Mind to Brain	Tulving’s work delves into episodic memories, proposing the distinction between episodic and semantic memories systems and exploring their neural underpinnings.
Maurice Halbwachs	On Collective Memory	Halbwachs argues that individual memory is profoundly influenced by social frameworks, and collective memories are shaped by shared experiences within social groups.
Daniel Schacter	The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers	Schacter identifies seven types of memory-errors or “sins,” shedding light on the adaptive nature and the ways in which it can sometimes fail.
Aleida Assmann	Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives	Assmann explores the concept of cultural memories, examining how societies construct and transmit collective memories through cultural practices and artifacts.
Elizabeth Loftus	The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse	Loftus challenges the reliability of repressed memories and explores the malleability, particularly in legal contexts and cases of alleged abuse.
Pierre Nora	Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past	Nora’s multivolume work investigates how collective memories are constructed and maintained, emphasizing the role of sites, symbols, and rituals in shaping national memory.
Eric Kandel	In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind	Kandel, a neuroscientist, intertwines his personal memoir with a scientific exploration of the neurobiological basis of memories, emphasizing the role of synaptic plasticity.
Jacques Derrida	Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression	Derrida explores the concept of the archive and its relationship to memories, arguing that the act of archiving is inseparable from the workings of memories and forgetting.
Paul Ricoeur	Memory, History, Forgetting	Ricoeur examines the philosophical aspects of memories and its intersection with history and forgetting, addressing questions of identity, ethics, and narrative construction.
Oliver Sacks	The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales	Sacks, a neurologist, presents clinical cases illustrating the intricate and sometimes fragile nature of memories, shedding light on its complexities and vulnerabilities.

These theorists and their works contribute significantly to the understanding of memories from various perspectives, including neuroscience, sociology, psychology, and philosophy.

Memory: Major Characteristics

• Narrative Construction:
  • In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, the narrative weaves through generations, employing memories as a key element in constructing the epic tale of the Buendía family.
• Trauma :
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien explores the impact of trauma on memories, illustrating how soldiers grapple with the weight of their memories from the Vietnam War.
• Selective Remembering:
  • J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye portrays the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, selectively remembering and idealizing his experiences, reflecting the complex nature of memories.
• Flashbacks and Foreshadowing:
  • In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrative uses flashbacks and foreshadowing to reveal characters’ memories, shaping the understanding of their motivations and relationships.
• Collective Memory:
  • Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits incorporates magical realism to explore the collective memories of a family, intertwining personal and historical recollections.
• Amnesia and Forgetting:
  • Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go delves into a dystopian world where characters grapple with suppressed memories and the ethical implications of forgetting.
• Autobiographical Memoriess:
  • Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar draws heavily from autobiographical memories, offering a semi-autobiographical account of the author’s struggles with mental health.
• Memories and Identity:
  • Beloved by Toni Morrison intertwines memory and identity, as the characters confront the haunting memories of slavery and their impact on individual and communal identity.
• Cultural
  • In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the narrative incorporates cultural memories, exploring the effects of colonialism on the Igbo people and their collective memory.
• A Motif:
  • Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore features memories as a central motif, with characters navigating a surreal world where memories blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy.

Memory: Relevance in Literary Theories

Literary Theory	Relevance of Memory
Psychoanalytic Theory	Informed by Freudian concepts, psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the role in shaping individual psychology, exploring how repressed memories influence characters and narratives.
Postcolonial Theory	It is crucial in postcolonial literature to examine the impact of colonial history on cultural memories, identity, and the collective consciousness of colonized societies.
Feminist Literary Theory	Memories are explored through a feminist lens, examining how women’s experiences are remembered, forgotten, or erased, and how memories contribute to the construction of gendered identities.
Structuralism	Structuralism analyzes narrative structures, and memories serve as a key element in understanding how stories are organized, connected, and conveyed through various textual elements.
Postmodernism	Postmodern literature often plays with memories as a fragmented, unreliable, and subjective construct, challenging traditional narrative conventions and exploring the multiplicity of perspectives.
New Historicism	Memories are significant in New Historicism as it explores how literature reflects and shapes cultural memories, providing insights into historical events, norms, and power dynamics.
Reader-Response Theory	Memories play a role in shaping reader responses, as individual readers bring their memories, experiences, and cultural backgrounds to interpret and engage with literary texts.
Cultural Studies	Cultural Studies emphasizes the cultural dimensions, investigating how literature participates in constructing and challenging cultural memories within societies.
Narratology	Narratology considers its role in narrative structure, examining how characters’ memories, flashbacks, and retellings contribute to the overall coherence and meaning of a story.
Marxist Literary Theory	It is relevant in Marxist literary analysis to explore how class struggles, historical events, and social inequalities is reflected and contested in literature.

Memory: Application in Critiques

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez:
   • Application: The novel is a tapestry of generational storytelling where memories shape the destiny of the Buendía family in the fictional town of Macondo. García Márquez’s use of magical realism emphasizes the interplay between collective memories and the cyclical nature of history, illustrating how memories transcend individual lifetimes.
2. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro:
   • Exploration of Selective Remembering: Ishiguro’s novel revolves around Stevens, an English butler who recalls his past while on a journey. It, in this context, is selective and filtered through Stevens’ perspective, revealing the impact of his personal and societal choices on his recollections.
3. Beloved by Toni Morrison:
   • Trauma: Morrison’s novel explores the traumatic legacy of slavery and its impact on individual and collective memories. The haunting presence of the character Beloved embodies the unresolved memories of the characters, illustrating how historical trauma lingers and shapes the characters’ identities.
4. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes:
   • Narrative Structure: Barnes’ novel delves into the unreliability of memories as the protagonist, Tony Webster, grapples with the accuracy of his recollections. The narrative structure explores how memory can be reconstructed, revised, and influenced by personal biases, challenging the notion of objective truth.

In these critiques, this theme serves as a lens to analyze how literary works engage with personal and collective recollections, shaping characters, narratives, and the broader thematic concerns of each text.

Memory: Relevant Terms

Theoretical Term	Brief Description
Episodic Memory	Involves the recollection of specific personal events, experiences, and contexts, contributing to autobiographical memory.
Collective Memory	The shared memories, experiences, and knowledge of a group or society, influencing cultural identity and historical narratives.
Trauma Memory	Memories associated with distressing or traumatic events, exploring how such memories impact individuals and collective consciousness.
Flashbulb Memory	Vivid and emotionally charged memories of significant events, often associated with surprising or emotionally impactful occurrences.
Memory Reconstruction	The process through which memories are recalled and pieced together, influenced by cognitive processes and external factors.
Selective Forgetting	Intentional or unintentional act of suppressing or omitting certain memories, impacting the narrative constructed by an individual.
Repressed Memory	A controversial concept involving the subconscious suppression of traumatic memories, influencing psychological and therapeutic discourses.
Autobiographical Memory	The recollection of personal life events and experiences that contribute to one’s sense of self and identity.
Cultural Amnesia	The loss or neglect of cultural knowledge and historical memory within a society, often leading to the forgetting of significant events.
Memory Palaces	A mnemonic technique involving the association of information with specific spatial locations, aiding in memory recall.

These theoretical terms provide a framework for understanding the multifaceted nature and its diverse manifestations in individual and collective contexts.

Memory: Suggested Readings

1. Tulving, Endel. Episodic Memory: From Mind to Brain. Oxford University Press, 2002.
2. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
3. Schacter, Daniel. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001.
4. Assmann, Aleida. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
5. Loftus, Elizabeth. The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse. St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
6. Nora, Pierre. Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. Columbia University Press, 1996.
7. Kandel, Eric. In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.
8. Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. University of Chicago Press, 1996.
9. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. University of Chicago Press, 2006.
10. Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. Simon & Schuster, 1985.