Metaphors of Memory: From the Classical World to Modernity

How can memory be understood if not through metaphor? It seems that every attempt at definition has necessitated this shift towards the figurative; each age calling forth a new language for tracing the contours of remembering, with these new-minted metaphors sometimes struggling to keep up with humanity’s desire to plumb the depths of its own past. The aim of this chapter is to examine the evolution of this language, to explore how metaphors have shaped our understanding of the mind. From the earliest characterizations of memory as a wax tablet or a storehouse to the modern mind-as-computer, metaphors have been used to offer models designed to illuminate a process so central to our understanding of what it is to be human that one might be tempted to call our species homo recordans.