Abstract

The traditional history of the ancient rhetorical canon of memory depicts memory primarily as the art of mnemonics useful for storing information or memorizing speeches, as a neutral repository for knowledge. As such, memory is a lost canon to the field of rhetoric and composition. Current work on a theory of discourse and the composing process draws on post-structuralist and sociological theories of language, theories which believe that there are no neutral repositories of knowledge, whether language or memory. But, this dissertation shows that the canon of memory was more than memorization. Memory was also believed to be a capacity for storing perceptual experience which actively shaped more advanced or abstract kinds of knowledge. ;Plato rejected theories of perceptual memory's participation in the formation of knowledge, creating instead the concept of recollection as that process by which we uncover the reasons for that which we know. That which we know, for Plato, consists of a priori knowledge of divine forms. Though language can only approximate that knowledge, we can recollect truths like Beauty and Good through dialectic. ;Aristotle remained faithful to Plato's concept of recollection while finding a different source for the knowledge within, a source which allows rhetoric a position alongside dialectic in the discovery of knowledge. For Aristotle, knowledge within consists of a blend of individual perceptions and cultural knowledge; it is this blend which shapes what we call "knowledge" and guides invention of discourse. Aristotle defines memory as a process whereby perceptions are modified by their use in thought until they turn increasingly away from the world of objects and into more abstract kinds of knowledge. Recollection is the means by which we can "read" the "text" of memory; Aristotle's topoi in the Rhetoric constitute aids for recollection. Recollective thought, or enthymematic reasoning, is manifested in particular texts through the rhetorical enthymeme. ;Finally, this dissertation argues that Aristotle's view of memory and recollection are valuable for developing a model of the composing process consonant with current post-structuralist views of language, yet one more sympathetic to the needs of scholars and teachers in composition