Description
Book SynopsisLina Wilder argues that the 'places' and 'objects' of the memory arts inform Shakespeare's conception of theatre, and vice versa. Ranging from Yorick's skull to Desdemona's handkerchief, Shakespeare's mnemonic objects help audiences to recall, or imagine, staged and unstaged pasts.
Trade Review'Wilder makes a convincing argument that invention and recollection were frequently figured as feminine reproductive activities.' The European Legacy
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Staging memory; 1. Mnemonic desire and place-based memory systems: body, book, and theatre; 2. 'I do remember': the nurse, the apothecary, and Romeo; 3. Wasting memory: competing mnemonics in the Henry plays; 4. 'Baser matter' and mnemonic pedagogy in Hamlet; 5. 'The handkerchief, my mind misgives': false past in Othello; 6. 'Flaws and starts': fragmented recollection in Macbeth; 7. Mnemonic control and watery disorder in The Tempest; Conclusion. A 'most small fault': feminine 'nothings' and the spaces of memory; Bibliography.
