Memory Palaces

Somewhere in all my years, the concept of memory palaces totally escaped me so that when I recently picked up a book I'd once given a family member--The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin*--and read the chapter, "The Lost Arts of Memory," I was totally intrigued by what I read.  By how people had maintained information before the printed word by using a particular mnemonic device to refresh their memory by associating whatever they wished to remember with location.  (Also called the mind-palace technique.) 

Here is how it worked:

Preferably, you were to pick a large building filled with rooms and furnishings.  Say, a palace, castle, cathedral.   If you didn't already know such a place, you could make one up.  But whether real or imagined, you had to be very precise about what lay where.  Then, matching one item-to-be-remembered to each window, door, room, candlestick, gallery, salon, alcove, each set of linens, you "attached" by association what you wanted to remember to what lay in that location so that from the time you entered the building until you left, you had matched--in proper order--whatever it was you wished to remember.  This technique of storing specific images in specific places was apparently used by both the Greeks and Romans among others.  (And "entering" the building of course did not mean you actually had to set foot in it.  You could remember the building and thus, by association, resurrect the memory of what you had left in each spot.)

Of course, people used other mnemonic devices, as well, to the extent, as Boorstin says, that such literature as the Iliad and the Odyssey "were performed by word of mouth without the use of writing."

We are so print-oriented, we've lost our old memory skills ... such as a great grandfather of mine once demonstrated when he took a prize for committing to memory during the short space of three weeks, 1,750 verses from the Bible.  Who would attempt that today?  And then one more question: are school children even asked to memorize poetry any longer?  My impression of education today is that instead of being taught the thing itself, we are taught where to look it up.

*Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers:  A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself, published by Random House, 1983.  Daniel J. Boorstin was the Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987.