Literary notes about memory (AI summary)
In literature, the term “memory” is used in a myriad of ways to evoke both the personal and the collective. It can represent the fragile recovery of a lost self, as when a character reassures another that their memory will return ([1]), or serve as a repository for social and historical events, preserving the names of battlefields or honoring the dead ([2], [3]). Memory is at times portrayed as mutable—subject to the retelling of stories which in turn reshapes the very recollection of the past ([4])—while in other contexts it serves as an anchor to one’s identity, evoking deep personal emotions and nostalgia ([5], [6]). Authors also explore how memory functions as both a tool of remembrance and a burden, evidencing its role in both preserving and challenging our understanding of experiences ([7], [8]), and even as a mechanism underpinning scientific inquiry and cognitive processes ([9], [10]).
- I did obediently, and she told me not to worry—my memory would soon come back.
— from The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie - The memory of many a fight is recorded in the names of the fields, places, and hills on which the battle raged.
— from English Villages by P. H. Ditchfield - For after putting him to death in defiance of the laws he neither suffered him to share the tombs of his ancestors nor granted him a pious memory.)
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 2 by Emperor of Rome Julian - Each time the tale is retold it suffers a variation which is not challenged, since it is memory itself that has varied.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - She saw it in dreams more vivid than life, and as she fell away to slumber at nights her memory wandered in all its pleasant places.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell - “In this breast, madam, will abide for ever the pleasant memory of the time which I have spent with you.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol - His voice failed there, and he walked fast through the room, as if the memory of that bitter day was still unbearable.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott - I would give much to blot out from my memory that one great wrong.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. Jacobs - As a rule, modern psychology pays a little attention to memory devices.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross - It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rests on.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
