The First Part of Rhetoric: Invention - Memory

11 important questions on The First Part of Rhetoric: Invention - Memory

Why is memory important in a speech?

It is about allowing the elements of the speech, and the ideas behind it, to inhabit your mind so that what's being delivered arises freshly and naturally from your thoughts. 

Who was Robert Lowell?

 

American poet known for saying "memory is genius": the idea of a presiding spirit as in genius loci (spirit of a place). We often think in places. 

Where is the seat of memory?

In the hippocampus; the same part of the brain that dealt with spatial awareness.

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Who was Simonides of Ceos?

  • 556-468BC
  • the first to teach an art of memory
  • poet for hire
  • known for method of loci / memory palace (persons desiring to train this faculty must select localities and form mental images of the facts they wish to remember and store those images in the localities)

Who was Thomas Aquinas?

  • studied under Albertus Magnus
  • renowned for  having a word-perfect recollection of everything he read
  • outlined four precepts for memory:
  1. Invent a 'convenient similitude' of the things to be remembered
  2. put them in a considered order
  3. cleave with affection to them (emotional attachment)
  4. meditate frequently on them

Who is Gyles Brandreth?

  • author of The Complete Public Speaker (1983)
  • recommends the use of notes but by the time you rise to make your speech you will be so familiar with what you want to say that you won't need to read it. Need notes to keep you on the right track but they should only consist of bald headings.
  • Memory will improve with practice at public speaking
  • If you forget what you are going to say it may be a good thing (Herbert)

Advice for the inexperienced public speaker:

  1. write out your speech
  2. read it over and over
  3. break it down into sections (1-2 paragr)
  4. give each section a bullet-point heading 
  5. write those headings on a card (or series of cards)
  6. deliver the speech, in a practice run, from the cards
  7. for the main event carry the cards: don't use them unless you have to

How can the internet be seen as a communal memory place?

all human data are stored in linked sites: marvelous efficiency and range: an imaginary geography of knowledge to which we all have access.

Who was Tony Judt?

  • historian
  • died in 2010 of motor neurone disease
  • used to compose essays after his degenerative disease robbed him of the ability to move
  • created memory chalet (using the chalet in Switzerland of skiing holidays as his background)

Political leaders succeed when:

 

they are an ultimate product of place / time / personality / luck and oratorical command 

What are the qualities of a good wartime leader?

  • you need to make yourself both of and above your audience
  • you need to stress the identity of their interests with yours
  • you need to create unity in a common purpose
  • you need to cast yourself as the ideal exemplar of all that is best and most determined and most courageous in your people

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