We broke into groups for the stated purpose of percolating on epithet possibilities at the end of class today. The majority of class had been spent discussing memory systems and how they may in fact simply change from a literate from oral tradition rather than disappearing.

There's a passage from Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame(or Notre Dame de Paris which ever you prefer)in which a medieval scholar is working in a room from which he sees the cathedral from the window, and bemoans that the book will supplant the cathedral(that is to say, the memory theatre). And this is partially true of course, since a Catholic church in and of itself is replete with images which serve as something of a memory theatre for believers(ie. the 12 stations of the Cross). Even the rosary is a mini memory system.

But is this really the case? Is it actually possible that the book can now do the job that the cathedral did, and that there is nothing really wrong with this? I shouldn't speak too quickly perhaps, being as a tradition that vests authority in "the word" or "the Book" is fraught with peril of its own in ways related if not completely similar to the perils of the institution, since the book becomes the institution or "the law". Catch-22 provides an example of this in a literary context. But enough of that.

We also passed around and read random passages from Finnegans Wake, in which plays upon the whole foundation for what written literature is supposed to be, and what levels of linguistic reality can be held(the title itself plays upon at least four different meanings for both of the words). In this book, words are not fixed or stable in their meaning.

We also had an impromptu presentation from Sutter on Ramon Lull, who introduced the concept of"movement" into the art of memory according to Francis Yates. We will be spending more time with Lullism as we go on(not to be confused with "luddism", though they are both isms that begin with an L).