Titre du document / Document title

Memory and medieval preaching : Mnemonic advice in the Ars praedicandi of Francesc Eiximenis (ca. 1327-1409) = Mémoire et prédication médiévale : conseilmnémotechnique dans les Ars praedicandi de Francesc Eiximenis (1327-1409)

Auteur(s) / Author(s)

RIVERS K. ⁽¹⁾ ;

Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s)

⁽¹⁾ Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901-8671, ETATS-UNIS

Résumé / Abstract

Although scholars often assume that the friars, the group in medieval society most devoted to a kind of public oratory, would be the people most in need of memory techniques like that of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, relatively little medieval material has been found to support that assumption. The most abundant sources for understanding the preaching of the friars, sermons and ars praedicandi treatises, rarely address the topic of memory explicitly. The lack of direct information about the role of memory in medieval preaching makes the ars praedicandi of Francesc Eiximenis particularly important. Written in the last half of the fourteenth century, Francesc's tract includes an entire chapter detailing techniques for preachers to remember their sermons, techniques that are similar to those found in the Ad Herennium. His recommendations explain ways that medieval preachers could recall what they wanted to preach, they serve to set mnemonic strategies in the context of the rhetorical, logical, and theological teaching of the schools, and they illustrate in part what medieval audiences were meant to take away from preaching by revealing what made a sermon memorable. His treatise helps to explain why the friars eagerly promoted the Ad Herennium's mnemonic system when twelfth-century scholars had almost universally rejected it; and it demonstrates that many medieval preachers used devices that Francesc considered mnemonic to structure their compositions.

Revue / Journal Title

Viator   ISSN 0083-5897 

Source / Source

1999, vol. 30, [Note(s): ix, 253-284 [33 p.]]

Langue / Language

Anglais

Editeur / Publisher

University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, ETATS-UNIS  (1970) (Revue)

Mots-clés anglais / English Keywords

Preaching ; Middle Ages ; Sermon ; School ; Method ; Memory ; Francesc Eiximenis ; Mnemonics ;

Mots-clés français / French Keywords

Prédication ; Moyen Âge ; Sermon ; Ecole ; Méthode ; Mémoire ; Siècle 14 ; Francesc Eiximenis ; Mnémotechnique ;

Localisation / Location

INIST-CNRS, Cote INIST : 23418, 35400008997067.0110