Memory in Culture (eBook)

ASTRID ERLL is Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She has published on memories of the First World War and on fiction, cinema, media culture, transculturality and narratology. With A.Nuenning she is general editor of the series Media and Cultural Memory.

Cover 1
Title 4
Copyright 5
Contents 6
List of Tables and Figures 8
Acknowledgements 9
I Introduction: Why ‘Memory’? 11
I.1 Why ‘memory’? 11
I.2 Why now? 13
I.3 What is meant by ‘memory’? 16
I.4 Memory, remembering or forgetting? 18
I.5 Goals and structure of this book 19
II The Invention of Cultural Memory: A Short History of Memory Studies 23
II.1 Maurice Halbwachs: Mémoire collective 24
II.2 Aby Warburg: Mnemosyne – pathos formulas and a European memory of images 29
II.3 Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire – and beyond 32
II.4 Aleida and Jan Assmann: The Cultural Memory 37
III The Disciplines of Memory Studies 48
III.1 Historical and social memory 48
III.2 Material memory: Art and literature 76
III.3 Mind and memory: Psychological approaches 92
IV Memory and Culture: A Semiotic Model 105
IV.1 Metaphors – productive, misleading, and superfluous, or: How to conceive of memory on a collective level 106
IV.2 Material, social and mental dimensions of memory culture 111
IV.3 Autobiographical, semantic and procedural systems of cultural memory 115
IV.4 Related concepts: Collective identity and cultural experience 119
V Media and Memory 123
V.1 Media and the construction of memory 123
V.2 The history of memory as the history of media 126
V.3 Medium of memory: A compact concept 130
V.4 Functions of media of memory 136
V.5 Concepts of media memory studies 141
VI Literature as a Medium of Cultural Memory 154
VI.1 Literature as a symbolic form of cultural memory 154
VI.2 Literary text and mnemonic context: Mimesis 162
VI.3 Literature as a medium of collective and individual memory 170
VII Afterword: Whither Memory Studies? 182
References 186
Index 213